Keats and Mythology (1819-2019) – A Call for Papers

Rome, 22-23 February 2019

This conference celebrating the bicentenary of Keats’s annus mirabilis, 1819, the year he wrote the Odes, will be organised by the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association in collaboration with the Société d'Études du Romantisme Anglais and hosted at the British School at Rome.

All papers will be given on Friday 22nd February, and delegates remaining in Rome on Saturday 23rd February will be invited to take part in special tours of the Non-Catholic Cemetery, where Keats and Shelley are buried, and of the Keats-Shelley House, Keats’s final dwelling place, in order to mark the anniversary of Keats’s death.

Mythological considerations of Keats’s life and art will be welcomed: myths and literary influences, myth and tradition, myth and science, myth and genre, myth and painting, myth and literary criticism, myth and modernity (including cinema and popular culture). Papers may explore the study of Greek and Roman myths in Keats’s poetry (Psyche, Apollo, Endymion, Hermes, Hyperion). They could also consider the modern mythology (from the Middle French,mythologie, ‘legend or story’) which has amassed around Keats’s life and work, and engage with the complexity of the Keatsian mythologia, a subtle mix of poetic fiction (mythos) and romanticised discourse (logia).  

The conference is being organised by Giuseppe Albano, Curator of the Keats-Shelley House, Caroline Bertonèche, from the University of Grenoble Alpes and President of the SERA (Société d’Études du Romantisme Anglais), and Maria Valentini from the University of Cassino and Chair of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association in Rome.

Papers may be given in English, French or Italian, and abstracts accepted in any one of these languages. Deadline for submission of abstracts (c. 200 words):1st November 2018.

For further information on registration, and to send your abstract, please contact:

Dr Giuseppe Albano: [email protected] or

Prof. Caroline Bertonèche [email protected] or

Prof. Maria Valentini: [email protected]

Registration fee €50. We plan to publish a selection of papers from the conference in an issue of the Keats-Shelley Review.