The Poly-Olbion Project

Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion, published in two parts in 1612 and 1622, is an epic of national description. Structured topographically, into thirty songs devoted to different counties or regions of England and Wales, the 15,000-line poem, a product of an era that had already produced Christopher Saxton's Atlas and William Camden's Britannia, includes an enormous range of historical and geographical material. There are extended passages, for instance, on the nation's monarchs, saints and civil wars, as well as catalogues of birds, trees and flowers. In addition to the poem, the first eighteen songs are accompanied by prose 'illustrations', written by one of the greatest intellectual figures of the seventeenth century, John Selden. These quirky, digressive and deeply learned notes, totalling c.110 folio pages, demand attention in their own right. Finally, each song is preceded by a map, engraved by William Hole.
While the poem made little impact at the Jacobean court, leaving Drayton frustrated in his quest for patronage, it has won a consistently wide readership over the four centuries since its publication. Yet Poly-Olbion has not been the subject of an independent scholarly edition, and the existing authoritative edition, published in 1933 as one volume of Drayton's Works, is at once dated and slight in its textual apparatus and annotation. The poem has therefore enjoyed nothing like the editorial attention that has been committed to many of Drayton's contemporaries. Given its own level of scholarship and detail, appreciation of the poem has doubtless suffered as a result.
This project aims to use a new edition as a vehicle to resituate the poem within our national and regional cultures. The project's foundation is the scholarly work required to produce that new edition. This work is not especially complex in textual terms, since Drayton left us with a reliable printed source; however, it is more complex given the aim to annotate the texts of both Drayton and Selden to an appropriate level, in light of the importance of their works and the expectations of Oxford University Press. The project aims further to generate scholarly work on Poly-Olbion, culminating in a conference and a published volume of essays.
While a scholarly edition and critical publications may reasonably be expected to command attention among an academic readership, the project also aims to reach a wider audience. It posits that Poly-Olbion, with its wealth of detail, is potentially an accessible and engaging text to any inhabitant of the United Kingdom. The project website will include an open-access version of the text, with a linked index of places and connections to googlemaps. Moreover, the project team will work in collaboration with 'Flash of Splendour Arts' ('FSA'), a not-for-profit creative arts organisation that works with music, poetry and the visual arts to effect societal change, particularly within the field of heritage education. FSA will be contracted to present workshops involving children with special educational needs, using innovative methodologies to introduce, explore and reinterpret Poly-Olbion. The directors of FSA will also collaborate with the project team on a linked public exhibition and academic conference at the Royal Geographical Society.
The proposed PI and CI are Renaissance literary scholars with established reputations in the field of Drayton studies. The proposed ARF 1, who would be responsible for producing much of the textual annotation of Drayton's poem, is a PhD student due to be examined in September 2012, who supported the PI and CI on a pilot project that produced an online edition of the poem's first song. The proposed ARF2, who would be responsible for annotation of Selden's text, is a Warburg-trained intellectual historian who has been identified on the basis of his relevant skills and expertise.

The 'Poly-Olbion Project', though founded on scholarly editing, proposes some innovative impact-oriented work. This may be divided into two categories: activities undertaken by 'Flash of Splendour Arts' ('FSA'), and activities undertaken by the project team.
FSA is a groundbreaking not-for-profit creative arts organisation, working with music, poetry, story, performance and the visual arts to effect societal change through innovative educational paradigms. It specializes in fostering creativity and self-determination in children and young adults, with a particular interest in those disempowered by disabilities, social positioning or economic hardship. FSA commonly focuses on heritage education, and has a longstanding interest in 'Poly-Olbion', having recently been invited to resubmit a Heritage Lottery Fund ('HLF') application for a two-year project centred on the poem. After discussions with the PI and CI, and a meeting with HLF officers, it has been decided: a) that FSA will collaborate on the present AHRC project, contracted to the University of Exeter to deliver specific outputs; and b) that the University of Exeter will lead on a subsequent collaborative HLF application. Therefore, while the present application stands alone, it is also intended as a step towards longer-term collaboration.

FSA will deliver three outputs, working throughout in association with the core project team, and further with the Royal Geographical Society, which will provide support on a contractual and in-kind basis. The proposed outputs are as follows:
a) Text-based workshops. FSA will provide ten workshops at two SEN centres. Following FSA's methodology, which emphasises a gradual, multi-layered approach utilising art and music to access complex texts and ideas, workshops will create new art works and county maps, which will be both visual and aural in medium. These workshops will generate a high direct educational impact on the children involved, and indirect impact through the generation of methods and materials that may subsequently be reused.
b) Public Exhibition. FSA will convene a four-week exhibition at the RGS premises, showing the body of work created during the ten workshops alongside historic material relating to Drayton and 'Poly-Olbion'. This exhibition will generate cultural impact among the visitors, through their engagement both with Poly-Olbion and the work of the SEN children. The RGS estimates attendance at 10,000-12,000.
c) RGS Educational Workshops. These events, run by FSA in collaboration with the RGS, will bring the project's targeted SEN children to the RGS library during the exhibition.

We also propose that 'Poly-Olbion' as a poem of national description replete with place-names and historical narratives, holds wide potential to capture public attention and enrich individuals' engagement with British literary and cultural heritage. The project team is committed to facilitating such engagement, thereby generating cultural and educational impact across a wide spectrum of the population over a long period. Our specific commitments are as follows.
a) The project website will present extracts from the poem supported by a range of learning resources.
b) We will create a full free-access online text, supported by a linked index of places, and links to googlemaps. Though not supported by the scholarly apparatus proposed for the OUP edition, this will make the full text freely available, enabling readers to locate passages of particular interest.
c) The academic conference at the RGS will include a public lecture by the CI; and the PI will talk on 'Drayton's Devon' as part of the 'South-West in the Elizabethan Age' exhibition at Exeter's Royal Albert Memorial Museum in the winter of 2013-14. Members of the project team will welcome further invitations to address the public, and will seek to engage more widely with the media.