Poetry and Place

Saturday 18^th September 2010
 10.00 am - 4.00 pm

Tutor: Lynn Robson

This course will give students a taste of what it’s like to study poetry at university. Students will read the poems against the fascinating context of 17^th century cultural and political life, including the English Civil War, attitudes to women’s writing and religious controversy.

Students will work in and around the 17^th century Old Medicine House. The house itself and the objects in the archives of The Blackden Trust that relate to the poems will add an extra dimension to our journey from domestic life to the contemplation of the divine.

We shall look at the garden and consider how the symbolism associated with it and the language of herbs would have been a part of the culture of the 17^th century and how that knowledge informs these poems:
    Christopher Marlowe, Come live with me and be my love
    Katherine Philips, To Ardelia: Retired Friendship

We shall examine the impact prison, war and the fickle fortunes of princes have on poets and poetry during the English Civil War:
    Richard Lovelace. To Althea from Prison
    Andrew Marvell, A Nymph Complaining on the Death of her Fawn

Finally, we shall examine the sacred space of the Church, the importance of shrines, and the individual’s relationship to the divine:
    Sir Walter Ralegh, As you came from the holy land
    George Herbert, The Altar

People of Blackden

Saturday 2^nd October 2010
 10.30 am - 4.00 pm

Tutor: Richard Morris

This course will introduce you to interdisciplinary ways to reconstruct past lives.  We shall find connections between objects, text, image and landscape and learn how to trace the stories of people back to before the age of writing.

We shall see how written records about Toad Hall's past occupants – their wills, names, relationships, occupations, arguments - things that they made, used or wore, the fabric of the hall and evidence in the land itself all combine in ways that can illuminate their lives.

The day will culminate in disclosure of the scientific dating of Blackden's oldest-known occupant so far.