4TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM OF THE ANTHONY BURGESS CENTRE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ANGERS, FRANCE, NOVEMBER 19-20, 2010

Marlowe – Shakespeare – Burgess:
Anthony Burgess and his Elizabethan Affiliations

Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare were twin stars in Anthony Burgess’s intellectual and artistic firmament. Inspired by them, he wrote and composed abundantly, from his MA thesis on Marlowe’s Dr Faustus to the last novel published in his lifetime, A Dead Man in Deptford. He absorbed Shakespeare along the way, spawning Nothing Like the Sun, Enderby’s Dark Lady, a biography, short stories, articles both journalistic and scholarly, a film script, a television series, songs, even a ballet suite for full orchestra. In this, its fourth international symposium, the Anthony Burgess Centre examined the contrasted influences of these two Elizabethan heavyweights on Burgess and his work, exploring what they brought to it and what he, in turn contributes to our understanding of them.

The programme included:
Speakers Charles Nicholl, author or The Reckoning on the murder of Marlowe and The Lodger, Shakespeare on Silver Street
Andrew Biswell, author of The Real Life of Anthony Burgess and Director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation
Paul Phillips, author of A Clockwork Counterpoint: the Music and Literature of Anthony Burgess
Dominique Goy-Blanquet, Emeritus professor of Elizabethan literature and author of Shakespeare’s History Plays, from Chronicle to Stage
Alan Shockley, author of Music in the Words: musical form and counterpoint in the twentieth century novel

Programme:

Friday November 19

8.30 Welcome
9.00 Opening speeches
9.15 – 10.15 Guest speaker : Charles Nicholl - Voicing the past: Burgess and the Elizabethans
First session : Anthony Burgess and his Elizabethan Affiliations. Chair: Graham Woodroffe (Université d’Angers)
10.15 – 10.30 Discussion
10.30 – 11.00 ‘Enter as Balthazar’ : Burgess in Shakespeare’s Company – Dominique Goy-Blanquet (Université de Picardie)
11.00 – 11.15 Coffee
11.15 – 11.45 Proto-Elizabethan literary achievement : Style as a Form of Life - Gareth Farmer (University of Sussex)
11.45 – 12.15 A Poet to Escape From: The Pursuit and Evasion of Shakespeare in Will! and Other Works by Anthony Burgess – Jonathan Mann (Manchester Metropolitan University)
12.30 – 14.30 Lunch
14.30 - 15.00 ‘An Ape, a Crow, a Tiger’: Animal imagery in Anthony Burgess’s Nothing Like the Sun and A Dead Man in Deptford – Katherine Adamson (Liverpool Hope)
15.00 – 15.30 Discussion

19.30 Première of Anthony Burgess’s ‘Mr W.S.’ (‘Monsieur Shakespeare’) at le Théâtre Chanzy, Angers. See Events / Music and dance

Saturday November 20
Second session (continued): Burgess, Music and the Elizabethans. Chair: Marc Jeannin (Université d’Angers)
9.00 – 9.15 Coffee
9.15 – 10.00 Thoughts on the ballet Mr. W.S., Three Shakespeare Songs, and Burgess’s setting in his Third Symphony of the "musical theme" from Love’s Labour’s Lost – Paul Phillips (Brown University, USA)
10.00 – 10.30 Andrew Biswell commented on previously un-aired recordings made by Anthony Burgess
10.30 – 11.00 Coffee and discussion

Third session : Burgess and Marlowe. Chair: Charles Nicholl
11.00 – 11.30 Burgess, Marlowe and Tamburlaine – Andrew Biswell (Manchester Metropolitan University)
11.30 – 12.00 ‘The secret theatre of our society’: the spy as outsider in Burgess.’ – Rob Spence (Edge Hill University, UK)
12.00 – 12.30 Discussion
12.30 – 14.30 Lunch at le Centre Beaussier

Fourth session : Burgess and Shakespeare. Chair: Ben Forkner
14.30 – 15.00 Shakespeare, Joyce, Burgess: Fictionalized Biography and Dedalus’s Will – Alan Shockley (California State University)
15.00 – 15.30 The ‘alternative universes’ of Enderby’s Dark Lady – Teodora Wiesenmayer (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)
15.30 – 16.00 A sort of SF Shakespeare in ‘The Muse’ – Anthony Levings (University of Kent)
16.00 – 16.30 Anthony Burgess and Cultural Materialism: staging ‘Will Shagspere’ Materially – Aude Haffen (Université de Paris III)
16.30 – 17.00 Discussion and tea/coffee break
17.00 Close

18.00 Reception organized by the Anglophone Library of Angers, 60 rue Boisnet

19.30 Performance of Anthony Burgess’s ‘Mr W.S.’ (‘Monsieur Shakespeare’) at le Théâtre Chanzy, Angers