The Stuart Successions project colloquium took place at Jesus College, Oxford at the end of September. The event marked the halfway point of the project and was an opportunity for scholars contributing essays to the project volume to share their work-in-progress and to discuss with other literary critics and historians the importance of succession writing to the political culture of the early-modern period. The papers delivered over the two days of the colloquium analysed succession writing in a variety of generic forms, and alongside different media, from across the full chronological range of the project.

The first day was started by Richard McCabe who explored the uncertainties of the verse panegyric that was produced to mark the accession of a Scottish monarch to the English throne and the commencement of a new dynasty in 1603. Shifting the focus onto 1625, David Colclough examined the sermon as a genre of succession writing, looking especially at John Donne’s response to a last minute call-up to preach before the new king, Charles I, in April 1625. Continue reading →