̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Adrian Poole

Photograph of former Prince of Wales’ 1967 arrival at Cambridge released for the first time

Anonymous — Sat, 29 Apr 2023 08:17:02 +0000

̽��ֱ��18-year-old Prince of Wales posed for his photograph in the Wren Library in October 1967, continuing the rite of passage that marks the start of undergraduate study at Trinity and Cambridge: Matriculation and Admission.

̽��ֱ��photograph, in Trinity’s archive since it was taken 56 years ago, is being released for the first time prior to the Coronation of His Majesty King Charles III, as part of the College’s celebrations.

As the Prince of Wales, Charles studied Archaeology and Anthropology in his first year and then History for two years. He graduated in 1970.

At Cambridge, students matriculate when they agree to observe the Statutes and Ordinances of the ̽��ֱ��. They are then admitted to their chosen College – one of 29 Colleges in Cambridge that accept undergraduates.

In the Prince of Wales’ day, Admission to Trinity involved three elements: being photographed individually for the record, filling in the Admissions Book, and donning a gown for the Matriculation photograph (of Freshers - the new cohort of students.)

Trinity Fellow, Professor Adrian Poole, a contemporary of the former Prince of Wales, recalls the experience of the matriculation ‘mugshot.’

"For virtually all of us, it was our first time in the Wren Library. We were overawed and a bit intimidated. Were we in the right place? So many books. Busts of Cicero and Marcus Aurelius. A statue of Byron. A Prince more or less scarcely seemed out of place."

Two of the above traditions of Admission to College remain today. Freshers must enter their details in the Admissions Book; joining the year-group photograph is optional.

In a postage-stamp-sized photograph, the boyish Prince Charles is identified ‘WALES. H.R.H. ̽��ֱ��Prince of.’

A photo of the former Prince of Wales’ 1967 arrival at Cambridge has been released for the first time Credit: Trinity College

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Cambridge academics head for Hay

bjb42 — Thu, 31 May 2012 15:00:16 +0000

A series of talks and debates by Cambridge academics on pressing contemporary issues kicks off this week at the Hay Festival.

This year is the 25^th anniversary of the Festival and the fourth year running that the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has run a series of talks there as part of its commitment to public engagement.

This year's line-up includes Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, who will be participating in three of the 10 sessions on in the Classics series on Herodotus, the “Father of History”, on Plato and on the aspirations and concepts of civilisation, democracy, drama, virtue, victory, liberty and xenia and what the study of Classics has meant in the wider world.

For the first time, Cambridge academics will take part in a series of debates about contemporary political and social issues, including Europe, democracy and urban violence. Among those taking part in the Europe debate is Professor Robert Tombs who has written a blog on the implications for France and Europe of the election of Francois Hollande as president of France.

Another debate covers the broader cultural implications of current events, with Professor Adrian Poole, Professor Alison Sinclair and Jennifer Wallace discussing the modern meaning of tragedy and literary representation of current events. Other speakers include Professor Susan Golombok on alternative family structures, Professor Martin Jones on the archaeology of food, Carolin Crawford on the birth and death of stars, Dame Patricia Hodgson on media regulation in the shadow of the Leveson Inquiry, Professor David Spiegelhalter on our risk society and Professor Stefan Collini on what universities are for.

Professor Lawrence Sherman will talk about how science is transforming policing in a session entitled “ ̽��ֱ��new police knowledge”. ̽��ֱ��session will be introduced by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Denis O’Connor.

Brendan Burchell, senior lecturer in the Sociology Department, will be in conversation with Julia Hobsbawm, honorary visiting professor in networking at Cass Business School, about the future of work.

Other Cambridge academics speaking at Hay are Professor John Thompson, Professor Robert Macfarlane, Professor Martin Rees, Professor John Barrow, Dr Julian Allwood and Professor David MacKay.

Nicola Buckley, head of public engagement at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “ ̽��ֱ��Cambridge series is a wonderful way to get the fascinating research being done at the ̽��ֱ�� out to the public. ̽��ֱ��Hay Festival draws an international cross-section of people, from policy makers to prospective university students. It is a fantastic platform for our research and this year’s debates aim to highlight the broad range of what we do at the ̽��ֱ�� and its relevance to the key issues we face today.”

Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival, said: “What’s thrilling about this year’s series is how exacting it is about society. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge experts cut through the political and media spin on big issues and look at them with real attention and intellectual rigour - from policing to European integration and 21st century family structure and risk. It’s a timely reminder about the value of authority; an aspiration that ‘policy’ might be formed by the best ideas and analysis rather than doctrinaire inclination or what’s easiest to sell. What else would you want from the world’s greatest ̽��ֱ�� but the best thinking on subjects that matter?”

Cambridge is fielding a series of talks and debates by leading academics on a range of global challenges at this year's Hay literary Festival.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge experts cut through the political and media spin on big issues and look at them with real attention and intellectual rigour.

Peter Florence

Hay Festival.

̽��ֱ��main site at the Hay Festival.

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Reinventing tragedy in the modern age

bjb42 — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:00:47 +0000

This year's Cambridge series at the Hay Festival will include a debate about how we make “good tragedy” today.

Taking part are Professor Adrian Poole, Professor Alison Sinclair and Jennifer Wallace. ̽��ֱ��debate is just one of five panel discussions organised by the ̽��ֱ�� for the Festival, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary. ̽��ֱ��series also includes a number of stand-alone talks by Cambridge academics, including Professor Susan Golombok and Professor Lawrence Sherman.

It is the fourth year for the Cambridge series at Hay, which takes place from 31st May to 10th June, and the first time it has included panel discussions on a range of contemporary issues. Professor Poole, who has taught an undergraduate course on tragedy for many years and is author of Tragedy: a Very Short Introduction, says Aristotle set out to answer the question of what makes good tragedy when he composed his influential handbook, ̽��ֱ��Poetics. He says: “For Aristotle, 'tragedy' mainly meant a form of drama, though it also connoted a kind of story, of which Homer's Iliad was exemplary. ̽��ֱ��answers to this question are bound to look very different in 2012.

“We have many more ways of telling stories in words, sounds and visual images than were available to the ancient Greeks, Shakespeare and Racine, and of disseminating them to audiences around the world, now at the press of a button – all of which will have some impact on our ability to make - and respond to - 'good tragedy'.”

Jennifer Wallace, author of ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy, says that the media and the public still tend to respond to tragic events in ways that echo the age-old traditions which go back to Greek tragedy, for instance, turning horror into narrative and seeking an explanation for events by telling individuals' stories. However, she says Aristotle's notion of catharsis is much more problematic now and can be hard to justify.

She says: “Aristotle implies that through witnessing tragedy, we purge ourselves or gain relief. This suggests tragedy has some moral or therapeutic function in society. But is there such a phenomenon now as "compassion fatigue" or "tragedy porn"? Is it still possible to consider witnessing others' suffering morally improving or enriching?”

For Alison Sinclair, professor of modern Spanish literature and intellectual history, our continuing fascination with the tragedies of others and the popular media's obsession with offering up disaster for consumption opens up interesting questions about the fine line we often tread between thrill and horror. “I am intrigued by why we are moved to consume such stories. While they may not qualify as cathartic our consumption of them raises interesting issues about our experience, and our experience of our experience, that it might be difficult to confront.”

She says 20th century Spanish writers like Federico Garcia Lorca and Ramon del Valle- Inclán grappled with the need to reinvent tragedy for a modern audience. Lorca sought to meld elements of Greek tragedy with contemporary social realities in plays such as Blood Wedding, she says, but arguably either avoided catharsis or undercut it. By contrast, Valle-Inclán theorised in 1920 that a new form was needed to replace tragedy. “ ̽��ֱ��aim,” she says, “was to interrupt the processes of identification and/or catharsis, the point of this being to free the spectator, or indeed to force the spectator, not to feel, but to think, both about what is on the stage, but also about the implications for him or herself.”

Jennifer Wallace adds: "In an era of 24/7 news and constant potential exposure to tragedies around the globe through the internet, it may be paradoxically difficult to focus the kind of active, sympathetic attention on suffering which dramatists could do in the past. Does that matter? Is the capacity to make what might be termed a 'good tragedy' the hallmark of human civilisation, or an indication of a humane society?"

For more information on the Cambridge series at the Hay Festival and to find out about booking, click here.

Is tragedy the perfect dramatic form for our current predicament? Or has the classic idea of catharsis through viewing the suffering of others become much more problematic in an age of 24/7 news and the internet? An event at this year's Hay Festival will investigate.

Is there such a phenomenon now as "compassion fatigue" or "tragedy porn"? Is it still possible to consider witnessing others' suffering morally improving or enriching?

Jennifer Wallace

Jeff Rozwadowski, Creative Commons

Tragedy.

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Yes

Reading closely: Faculty of English

bjb42 — Sat, 01 May 2010 14:17:12 +0000

̽��ֱ��Faculty of English boasts one of the largest concentrations of research activity in the discipline in the UK. ‘Perhaps we could be accused of being overambitious but we’d like to think that, across the 100 or so Faculty members here, our combined research areas gather together all the threads that make up the fabric of English,’ said Professor Adrian Poole, Head of the Faculty.

Research ranges chronologically from the 7th to the 21st centuries; linguistically from Classical to French and German literary traditions; geographically from colonial America to post-colonial India; thematically from early Christian music to 21st-century environmentalism; intellectually from the history of the language to the history of moral philosophy; even alphabetically from Aaron’s Rod to Louis Zukofsky.

‘To some extent, what we’re doing is preserving and keeping alive the great heritage of English Literature,’ added Professor Poole. ‘Of course this might take a multitude of different forms, whether it’s constructing arguments for the importance of a certain poet, bringing a fresh perspective to a genre, or drawing comparisons between contemporary literature and screen media.’

Founded in 1919, the Faculty was the first in the country to encourage the study of English literature up to the present day and to approach the discipline from a ‘literary’ point of view, rather than as a product of the history of the language. In 2004, a new chapter began, with the opening of a £15 million building funded by the ̽��ֱ��, external donors, including major gifts from Garfield Weston Foundation, ̽��ֱ��Kirby Laing Foundation and ̽��ֱ��Atlantic Philanthropies, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

For the first time in the history of the Faculty, its research and teaching, a drama studio and 80,000 library books were together, as well as the closely linked Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC) and the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics (RCEAL).

A close read

Great importance is attached to the ability to read literary texts closely and attentively, combining this with detailed historical research. New vistas in understanding writers and their work can be opened up by unpicking the rich historical patchwork that influences them, as Professor Helen Cooper, expert in medieval and Renaissance literature, is finding.

Professor Cooper’s most recent research, due to be published later this year, investigates Shakespeare and the medieval world. ‘Although we think of him as quintessentially belonging to the English Renaissance, Shakespeare’s world was still largely a medieval one,’ she explained. ‘ ̽��ֱ��cityscape of London was still medieval, his ideas about what could be staged and how it was done were carried forward from the late days of the Mystery Cycles, and half his plays have medieval roots. We can only measure what he achieved, or even see it clearly, when we recognise how much the underlying culture of the Middle Ages shaped the world’s greatest playwright.’

Working in a very different period, Dr Ben Etherington, a newly arrived Faculty-funded Research Fellow, also brings together close reading with an awareness of historical context. His research focuses on post-colonial and international literatures in English, a fast-growing research area in Cambridge and elsewhere. Studying literary primitivism in the early 20th century, and reading the work of writers and intellectuals from the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean, Britain, West Africa and France, Dr Etherington is interested in the spread of primitivist modes of writing and what this can tell us about colonialism in the early to mid-20th century.

Embracing a digital age

Members of the Faculty have been in the vanguard when it comes to embracing the changing landscape brought about by digital advances. ̽��ֱ��recently completed Scriptorium project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, has assembled a digital archive of medieval and early modern manuscripts, and teamed this up with a fully interactive online course to help scholars learn how to read these notoriously difficult texts.

A computational approach is being taken in a groundbreaking collaborative research programme in RCEAL called English Profile, supported by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press and Cambridge ESOL. ‘ ̽��ֱ��idea is to understand how English is acquired as a second language and then apply this knowledge to improving textbooks and testing,’ explained Dr Henriëtte Hendriks, Acting Director of RCEAL and one of its Principal Investigators. A corpus of 26 million words taken from test sheets for speakers representing over 100 different languages is being analysed by linguists and computational linguists for the common developmental paths that learners of English follow over time. This study is just one of several RCEAL projects that are helping to solve practical problems involving the English language – in language teaching, textbook publishing and even medical diagnosis.

A pioneering study by Professor Peter de Bolla could have implications for transforming research methodologies of the future. In a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust, Professor de Bolla has been mapping how an idea, or concept, develops through literature. Rather than attempting the impossible task of reading many thousands of books, letters and manuscripts, Professor de Bolla has taken the innovative step of searching for and counting the incidence of sets of keywords in the huge digital archives that have only recently become available to scholars. It’s new territory for scholars of English, forging a methodology that has the potential to reap significant academic dividends.

Anglo-Saxon gold

Recent headlines might give the impression that to strike Anglo-Saxon gold you need a metal detector but, as ASNC academics Professor Simon Keynes and Dr Rosalind Love discovered, there’s still plenty awaiting the historians and literary scholars who depend on texts.

When a 14th-century compilation of historical materials that had lain undiscovered in the library of the Earl of Devon for centuries went under the hammer at Sotheby’s, an eagle-eyed expert (and former ASNC graduate student) spotted that it contained a copy of a much older and incredibly rare text. It was the Encomium Emmae Reginae, a highly charged polemic written on behalf of Queen Emma, wife of King Æthelred the Unready and then of King Cnut, in 1041. But, unlike the only other surviving copy, it was preserved here in a version with a different ending, added after the accession of her son Edward the Confessor in 1042. Coincidentally, a related discovery was made in Oxford, where papers of a 16th-century antiquary were found to include a long-lost section from a biography of King Edward, written soon after his death in 1066.

Both ‘new’ texts have now been studied closely at ASNC, and interpreted in relation to each other. ‘ ̽��ֱ��variant ending of the Encomium is rather explosive in its implications for our understanding of how Edward’s accession was perceived by contemporaries, spinning it as the longed-for restoration of the Anglo-Saxon royal line,’ explained Professor Keynes. ‘And it provides the perfect context for understanding a poem, now fully recovered, which describes a magnificent ship given to Edward at precisely that time,’ added Dr Love.

̽��ֱ��word in the world

̽��ֱ��newest initiative for the Faculty of English has been the launch of the Centre for Material Texts, which will foster the next generation of research and teaching relating to texts of any form, from spoken words to celluloid, from manuscript to XML. As any academic in the Faculty will attest, text is the product both of its creator and a mass of worldly circumstances; unravelling how texts of many kinds have been embodied and circulated is becoming one of the most exciting areas of humanities research today, and continues a tradition at the Faculty of English of getting close to the written word.

For more information about research at the Faculty of English, please visit www.english.cam.ac.uk/

ASNC: www.asnc.cam.ac.uk/

Close scrutiny of text is the bedrock of a research culture that spans practically the whole range of contemporary English studies.

To some extent, what we’re doing is preserving and keeping alive the great heritage of English Literature.

Professor Adrian Poole

Dr Jason Scott-Warren and Dr Andrew Zurcher

English collage

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