COURSE: The Anglican Literary Tradition
26th March - 28th March 2025
The Anglican Literary Tradition
Wednesday 26th - Friday 28th March
Rates below. Book by emailing [email protected] or call 01244 532 350.
We are delighted to welcome two new course leaders to Gladstone’s Library, Judith Maltby and Helen Wilcox, who will deliver a course focussing on The Anglican Literary Tradition.
Anglicanism has been the inspiration for countless works of literature over more than four centuries. This short course will take as its focus some of the many poets and hymn writers, preachers and novelists in the Anglo-American Anglican literary tradition.
The authors whose work will be considered include Mary Sidney, John Donne, Lancelot Andrewes, George Herbert, Thomas Browne, T.S. Eliot, Rose Macaulay, Vassar Miller, R.S. Thomas and Regina Walton.
The discussions will explore how Anglicanism shaped the work of these writers, and how Anglicanism in turn has been shaped by their writings. The programme will not only enable participants to read and appreciate a selection of superb literary texts, but also to consider the vital place of the creative imagination in the understanding and expression of faith.
Judith Maltby is Emerita Fellow of Corpus Christi College (where she was the College Chaplain for thirty years) and Emerita Reader in Church History in the University of Oxford. Her recent work focuses on the literary history of Anglicanism: Anglican Women Novelists: Charlotte Brontë to PD James (Bloomsbury, 2019), co-edited with Alison Shell. She is now engaged in a book length study of the Episcopalian poet and disability rights activist, Vassar Miller. Born and brought up in the Episcopal Church, Judith was among the first women to be ordained to the priesthood in the Church of England in 1994.
Helen Wilcox is Professor Emerita of English Literature at Bangor University, Wales, having previously taught at the universities of Groningen (The Netherlands) and Liverpool (England). Her research interests include seventeenth-century lyric poetry, early modern devotional writing in prose and verse, Shakespearian tragicomedy and early women’s writing. Her publications include The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern English Literature and Religion (2017) and the Arden 3 edition of All’s Well That Ends Well (2019). She is a life-long Anglican who has served on the Governing Body of the Church in Wales and is an Honorary Lay Canon of Bangor Cathedral.
Schedule:
Day 1
2.30pm Welcome and introductions
3pm–4.30pm Session 1: Introduction - The Book of Common Prayer
6pm Dinner
7.30pm Session 2: Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs
Day 2
9.45am Session 3: The Rhetoric of Religious Prose
11am Coffee break
11.30am Session 4: Poetry as Prayer and Meditation
1pm Lunch
2.30pm-4pm Session 5: Modern Anglican Voices in Verse
5pm Public Lecture: Vassar Miller and the Anglican Literary Tradition (individual tickets available here)
6pm Drinks in the Gladstone Room
6.45pm Dinner
Day 3
9.45am Session 6: An Anglican Novel – Rose Macaulay’s Towers of Trebizond (1956)
11am Coffee break
11.30am Session 7: Literary readings for Lent, Passiontide and Easter
1pm Lunch and departure
Required pre-reading: The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay.
Suggested pre-reading: Anglicanism: A Very Short Introduction?by Mark Chapman
If you buy these on bookshop.org, please select Gladstone's Library as your preferred bookshop. We will then receive up to 30% of the cover price at no extra cost to you.
Residential rates (includes breakfast, two course lunch with tea or filter coffee on Saturday and Sunday and a two course dinner with tea or filter coffee on Friday and Saturday)????
One delegate in a single ensuite: £407 (or £359 with a student, clergy or Society of Authors discount)
Two delegates in a twin or double: £627 (or £565 with discounts)
One delegate in a double or twin occupancy: £477 (or £415 with discount)??
One delegate and one non-delegate guest in a twin or double: £577 (or £515 with discount)
Prices:
To be confirmed. Please email [email protected] to join the waiting list