The Book History Colloquium at Columbia University is pleased to announce the following lecture

Peter Stallybrass, “Authorship, Attribution, and Anonymity”

In this talk, Stallybrass will be looking at what were perhaps the two most popular poems to circulate in manuscript in the seventeenth century. Both are now attributed to Sir Walter Ralegh, and it is under his name as a poet that they circulate and are read and studied today. But the two poems circulated quite differently in the seventeenth century. The first, “Even such is time,” appeared most frequently in collections of state papers, where it is invariably attributed to Ralegh. Indeed, for a short poem, attribution plays a striking role: we are usually told not only who wrote it but also the day and place of writing. And it is often the only poem in these collections, nearly always associated with Ralegh’s final speech before he was executed. The other poem, “What is our life?,” is now also said to be by Ralegh, although it was first printed anonymously as the lyrics for an air by Orlando Gibbons and then circulated, in the great majority of cases anonymously, in poetic miscellanies.

Peter Stallybrass is Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English and of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, University of Pennsylvania

Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Butler Library, room 523
6pm
This event is free & open to the public.