“One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons” (Twelfth Night)
Depuis plus de 10 ans, Victoria Bladen (Université du Queensland, Australie) anime un programme d’écoles d’été annuelles intitulé “Shakespeare for all” itinérant à travers l’Europe: Stratford-upon-Avon (2015), Oxford (2016), Florence (2013), Rome (2014), Vérone (2019) ou encore Montpellier (2018). Ouverte à tous, cette “Shakespeare Summer School” propose généralement aux participants, sur quelques jours, des conférences, des lectures suivies de pièces et/ou des ateliers d’art dramatique, ainsi que des visites culturelles ou des excursions, autour d’une thématique Shakespearienne spécifique. L’édition 2025 de l’école d’été “Shakespeare for all”, qui se tiendra à Rouen, aura pour thèmes les femmes, la transformation et la perspective, et se concentrera sur Henry VI, La Nuit des Rois (Twelfth Night) et Le Songe d’une Nuit d’Eté (A Midsummer Night’s Dream).
Programme
Monday 30 June
Perspectives on the English and the French at war
9.00 — Coffee
9.30 — Welcome to the Summer School (Victoria Bladen) and Welcome to Rouen (Sylvaine Bataille-Brennetot): place, history and Shakespeare’s Joan of Arc.
9.45 — [Lecture] Christine Sukič, Shakespearean history à la française: losing and winning on the battlefield and on the stage
10.30 — [Lecture] Line Cottegnies, A theatre of war: the crisis of chivalric values and the issue of a just war in Henry VI, part 1
11.15 — Q&A
11.30 — Coffee break
11.45 — [Lecture] Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille, Representations of Joan of Arc in England and France: an overview
12.15 — [Lecture] Florence Cabaret, Joan of Arc as a figure of Indian resistance to the British Empire
12.45 — Q&A
1.00 — Lunch
2.00 — [Concert] with audience participation: Minstrelsy: From Shakespeare to Here (David C Kendall)
3.30 — TEOR Shuttle to city center (T1- stop at Cathedral); meet at the Cathedral at 4.30.
4.30-6.30 — [Excursion] Discovery of medieval Rouen: guided tour in the historical centre
Tuesday 1 July
Warriors and witches
9.30 — [Lecture] Charlotte Picker, Wearing the Crown, Leading the People: God’s Will in Shakespeare’s Wars
10.00 — [Playreading] Henry VI, part 1 (led by David Stevens)
11.45 — [Lecture] Victoria Bladen, Imagining Witchcraft: Macbeth v The Witch of Edmonton
12.30 — Lunch
Shakespeare’s Afterlives
1.15 — [Lecture] Madeleine Dale, The Afterlives of Shakespeare’s Sonnets
1.45 — [Lecture] Erica Fryberg, Shakespeare in Opera: Evolving Interpretations
2.15 — [Lecture/Discussion] Sylvaine Bataille-Brennetot, Florence Cabaret & Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille, Joan of Arc in Screen Adaptations
3.15 — TEOR Shuttle to city center (T1- stop at Cathedral); meet at 7, rue Saint Romain at 4.30
4.30–6.00 — [Excursion] Historial Jeanne d’Arc (Historial Jeanne d’Arc Location: 7, rue Saint Romain)
7.00 — Apéro dinatoire/Cocktail dinner at the Café Hamlet (Café Hamlet Location: Aître Saint Maclou, Rouen)
11.00 — Cathédrale de lumière (Cathédrale de lumière sound and light show at the Cathedral)
Wednesday 2 July
Gender, Translation and Adaptation
9.30 — [Lecture] Anne-Marie Miller Blaise, A presentation of her new bilingual edition of Twelfth Night
10.30 — [Playreading] Twelfth Night (led by David Stevens)
12.30 — Lunch
1.15 — [Lecture] Johann Paccou, Gender, desire, and the female pageboy in Twelfth Night
2.00 — [Lecture] Florence Cabaret, Multiculturalism in the 2003 TV adaptation of Twelfth Night by Tim Supple
2.45 — Coffee break
Pedagogy Techniques: Scaffolding and Creativity
3.00 — [Lecture] Victoria Bladen, Scaffolding techniques in literary studies projects
3.30 — [Creativity workshop] on zines and collage (Victoria Bladen) at the CETAS library.
To bring: some paper, pens, scissors and glue. You may wish to bring some collage materials: eg, you could bring some paper ephemera (eg photocopies of old maps Old Map Collage Background Photos, Images & Pictures | Shutterstock ; emblem images available online http://emblematica.grainger.illinois.edu/browse/emblems ; old dictionaries, patterned paper, magazines, or images of Renaissance costume https://pixabay.com/images/search/renaissance%20costumes/ etc) We will also have a selection of collage materials to share with you.
4.45 — [Optional] browsing at the CETAS library.
The CETAS library hosts more than 3.700 rare books on Shakespeare and early modern literature. It welcomed its first books in 1969 and expanded over the years. The collection exists thanks to the dedication of Pr. Michèle Willems, a renowned Shakespearean and now retired professor of Rouen University who was the architect of the library in more senses than one, ordering the books and designing the custom-made furniture. The CETAS (Centre d’Etudes du Théâtre Anglo-Saxon) was a research centre focusing its activities on English-speaking drama: Michèle and her husband Raymond, as well as Jean-Pierre Maquerlot and Gérard Dallez were respected figures of the centre and beloved teachers.
Thursday 3 July
Fairies and magic in the green world
9.00 — [Lecture] Alice de Nanteuil, “We the World Can Compass Soon”: The Otherworldliness of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
9.30 — [Lecture] Victoria Bladen, Fairy-Thinking and the Labyrinth: Constructing the Forest in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595)
10.30 — [Playreading] A Midsummer Night’s Dream (led by David Stevens)
12.30 — Lunch
1.30 — TEOR Shuttle to Roumare forest (T3 Stop at Jean Jaurès – Hôtel de Ville)
2.30 — [Excursion] La Forêt Monumentale [to be confirmed: guided tour]
5.00 — End of the Summer School
Convenors
- Dr Sylvaine Bataille Brennetot (sylvaine.bataillebrennetot@univ-rouen.fr), Université de Rouen Normandie, France
- Pr Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille (claire.gheeraert-graffeuille@univ-rouen.fr), Université de Rouen Normandie, France
- Dr Florence Cabaret (florence.cabaret@univ-rouen.fr) Université de Rouen Normandie, France
- Dr Victoria Bladen (v.bladen@uq.edu.au), University of Queensland, Australia
To bring
For the playreading sessions, if you are able, either bring physical copies of Henry VI part 1, Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream or a device to access them online [eg via Open Source Shakespeare]
Playreading: Playreading sessions involve an informal reading of scenes from the play together. We will ask for volunteer readers for each character in a scene (with readers up on their feet). No prior experience or expertise is required. After each scene we will have a brief discussion on points of interest, questions and issues that the text raises.
Creativity workshop: bring some paper, pens, scissors and glue. Optional: some paper ephemera (see programme for details).
Excursion: For the excursion to Forêt Monumentale, walking shoes are recommended.
Bios of the speakers
Dr Victoria Bladen is Lecturer in English Literature at The University of Queensland, Australia. Her publications include: The Tree of Life and Arboreal Aesthetics in Early Modern Literature (Routledge, 2022); seven Shakespearean text guides in the Insight (Melbourne) series, including The Taming of the Shrew (2021); and nine co-edited volumes, including Shakespeare on Screen: Romeo and Juliet (Cambridge UP, 2023); Hamlet in the 21st century (Belin / CNED, 2022), and Onscreen Allusions to Shakespeare (Palgrave 2022).
Dr Sylvaine Bataille Brennetot is a Senior Lecturer in Literature and Film Studies in the English department, member and co-head of the ERIAC research team, at the University of Rouen Normandie, France. Her publications include articles and book chapters on early modern literature, Shakespearean screen adaptations, and drama television series. She has recently co-edited the volume Brevity and the Short Form in Serial Television (EUP, 2024) (with F. Cabaret and S. Wells-Lassagne) and an issue of Anglistica AION entitled Continuity and Change in Screen Shakespeare(s) (with V. Bladen).
Dr Florence Cabaret is a Senior Lecturer in Literature and Film Studies at the University of Rouen (Normandy, France) and a member of the interdisciplinary research group ERIAC. Her researches focus on novelists from the English-speaking Indian diaspora, as well as on South Asian diaporic films and TV series. She co-edited Mauvaises Langues ! (2013) with Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, Retranslating Children’s Literature (2014) with Virginie Douglas, and several issues of the online journal TV/Series (on revue.org) with Sylvaine Bataille and with Claire Cornillon. Her latest co-edited volume (with Sylvaine Bataille and Shannon Wells-Lassagne) is about Brevity and the Short Form in Serial Television (EUP, 2024). She is also the translator of the novels of Hanif Kureishi and of Chloé Hooper (published by Christian Bourgois in Paris).
Prof. Line Cottegnies teaches early-modern literature at Sorbonne Université. She has co-edited several collections of essays, including Authorial Conquests: Essays on Genre in the Writings of Margaret Cavendish (2003, with N. Weitz), Women and Curiosity in the Early Modern Period (2016), with Sandrine Parageau, and Henry V: A Critical Guide (Bloomsbury, 2018), with Karen Britland. She has published articles and chapters on seventeenth-century literature, from Shakespeare and Raleigh to Aphra Behn and Mary Astell. She has developed a particular interest in editing early modern texts: she had edited half of Shakespeare’s plays for the Gallimard Pléiade complete works alone or in collaboration with Gisèle Venet, and for that edition has also translated the 3 parts of Henry VI (a translation which was used by director Thomas Jolly for his Henry VI in 2014). Alone, she has also edited Henry IV, Part 2, for The Norton Shakespeare 3 (2016), and with Marie-Alice Belle, Robert Garnier in England (which includes editions of plays by Mary Sidney Herbert and Thomas Kyd), (2017). She is currently working on an edition of three texts by Aphra Behn for Cambridge.
Madeleine Dale is a poet and researcher who grew up on Tamborine Mountain and now lives in Brisbane. She holds first-class honours and a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Queensland. Her work has been published in Meanjin, Westerly, Cordite and Australian Poetry Anthology. Her first chapbook, On Fire with Dangerous Cargo, was published by Queensland Poetry in 2023. Her first full-length poetry collection, Portraits of Drowning, won the 2023 Thomas Shapcott Prize and is published by University of Queensland Press. She was a 2024 MacDowell Fellow and worked on her second book of poetry – an exploration of the ancient Plague of Athens and its connection to contemporary pandemics. Madeleine is currently completing her PhD, investigating the role of classical reception in contemporary poetics.
Alice de Nanteuil is a PhD candidate at the university of Rouen-Normandie. She holds the agrégation of English and is a graduate from the ENS de Lyon. Her thesis, under the supervision of Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille, examines the poetic traditions of women in Ireland and Scotland during the early modern period. She recently won an award with the SEAA 17-18 for her master’s dissertation. Her article on memorial space in the oral poetry of two Scottish Gaelic poetesses is to be published in Études écossaises in 2026.
Erica Fryberg is an award-winning writer, producer, editor, academic, and executive arts manager. She holds first-class honours and a Master’s degree in Writing, Editing and Publishing (UQ). Awards include the George Essex Evans Scholarship for English, Margaret Piddington Prize for Excellence in Humanities, and first prize in the Open Division of the 2022 ESU Roly Sussex Short Story Competition. Commissioned by Brisbane Festival, Erica worked as dramaturg and librettist with composer Elena Kats-Chernin to create the large, symphonic orchestral and choral work Symphonia Eluvium (Queensland Performing Arts Centre, 2011). From 2015-20 Erica produced Opera Queensland’s annual mainstage season and programs. Erica is currently Executive Producer of the TOXICITY project for Assembly of Elephants and will present an invited paper on her research in Germany, 2025.
Prof. Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille is a professor in Early Modern Studies at the Université de Rouen Normandie and a member of the research team ERIAC. She has co-edited Autour du Songe d’une nuit d’été (Rouen UP, 2003) with N. Vienne-Guerrin, Anti-Catholicism in Britain and Ireland, 1600-2000: (Palgrave 2020). She is the author La cuisine et le forum. L’émergence des femmes sur la scène publique pendant la Révolution anglaise (L’Harmattan, 2005) and of Lucy Hutchinson and the English Revolution, Gender, Genre and History Writing (Oxford UP, 2022).
David C Kendall chose a career in music and street theatre in San Diego, California, after discovering traditional British Isles folk music in his youth. He formed the group ‘Jackstraws’ in 1978, presenting street theatre and maritime music at touristic locations in San Diego and Renaissance faires for more than twenty years. He has performed numerous times at the Société Française Shakespeare Paris, and currently performs in the duo ‘Musica Vitae’ with Chantal Schutz singing theme oriented folk and renaissance music. David continues his musical pursuits with ‘Jackstraws’ in Paris, including original songs and traditional ballad adaptations in their repertoire.
Prof. Anne-Marie Miller Blaise is vice-president of the Société Française Shakespeare and a professor at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. A specialist in early modern poetry and theatre, she contributed to the critical edition of Shakespeare’s poems for the Pléiade (2021) and recently edited Twelfth Night for Gallimard’s Folio Théâtre collection, as well as a volume of studies devoted to the play for Éditions Atlande. With Christine Sukic, she has also translated Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris (forthcoming with Classiques Garnier).
Johann Paccou is a PhD candidate at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, an alumnus of the ENS de Lyon, and a holder of the agrégation in English. In his thesis, entitled “Rhetoric and Homoerotic Desire in Early Modern English Literature,” he explores the literary strategies at work in the expression of queer desire. He has recently published on Richard Barnfield’s pastoral poetry and on masculinity and sexuality in Shakespeare’s comedies – including a chapter in the volume dedicated to Twelfth Night for Éditions Atlande.
Charlotte Picker is currently undertaking a dual Law (Honours)/Arts degree at the University of Queensland, Australia, majoring in English Literature and Writing. A passionate storyteller and literary enthusiast, Charlotte has honed her craft through roles with Cathartic Literary Magazine and the UQ Jacaranda Journal, alongside completing writing and literature programs with the Australian Writers Centre and the University of Southern Queensland. Her work spans both short and long-form writing, reflecting a deep appreciation for language and narrative. Charlotte has a deep interest in the works of Shakespeare, with a particular focus on themes of battle and conflict. Her background in law and involvement in social justice initiatives lend her a unique lens to explore the intersections of literature, justice, and power. She hopes to continue her research into the unique convergence of legal history and literature, examining how classic texts reflect and challenge societal structures.
David Stevens trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in the 1980’s and subsequently worked all over the UK and in Austria, Italy, Hungary, Norway and former Yugoslavia. His Shakespearian credits include Hamlet, Richard II, Malcolm, Henry IV, Oberon, Lorenzo, Don John, Roderigo, and even King Lear (!). He moved to France in 1999 and has taught anglophone theatre at Rouen University since 2008.
Prof. Christine Sukič is professor of early modern English literature and culture at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne and is the current president of the French Shakespeare Society (Société Française Shakespeare). She has published studies on Shakespeare, George Chapman, Christopher Marlowe and Samuel Daniel and has edited or co-edited eight collections on the heroic body and representations of the immaterial. Her latest monograph (Ineffable Bodies: Heroism on the Early Modern Stage) has been published by Routledge this year. She has co-translated and co-edited Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris with A.-M. Miller-Blaise, to be published by Classiques Garnier in 2025.