Representing ruins in English Renaissance literature: Empire, identity and the legacy of the English Reformation, c.1530-c.1660

Ruins - the material remains of decayed buildings, cities, and cultures - have been a recurrent theme in the art and literature of Western Europe since at least the fall of the Roman Empire, and in the early modern period Roman ruins inspired an outpouring of poems and paintings across France, Italy, and the Low Countries. Britain's experience of ruins in this period was highly distinctive, however, defined less by Roman ruins than by the Roman Catholic ruins of the 650 abbeys suppressed during the English Reformation in the 1530s. The Dissolution of the Monasteries was the defining event for representations of ruins in English literature, its significance reflected in the titles of later works like Austen's 'Northanger Abbey' (1798-9) and Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey' (1798). Yet while ruins are widely acknowledged as an important motif in Gothic and Romantic literatures, their significance for our understanding of English Renaissance literature has been largely overlooked. There has been some critical recognition of ruins in writing by Spenser and Shakespeare, but no book-length study charting their significance in literature across the early modern period.

This project offers an in-depth assessment of this underexplored topic, investigating how and why ruins were represented in English Renaissance literature within the long century following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s. While it acknowledges the influence on English literature of French and Italian models for representing Roman ruins, it also argues for the distinctiveness of England's experience of the protestant Reformation and its impact on English literary representations of ruins. Critics have argued that ruins in English Renaissance literature reflect the antiquarian interests of this period. But ruins were more than a window onto the past; they were also a mirror reflecting the future fate of the present, their fragility a reminder of the decline and fall of civilisations. It is as a comment on the vanity of early modern imperial endeavour that the French Renaissance poet Joachim Du Bellay read the ruins of Rome's past in the mid-sixteenth century, and in this project I trace the translation of this perspective to the particular context of protestant England and its own self-image as an empire in the early modern period. In ruins, the project reads a radical undercurrent in English Renaissance writing that questions and critiques the constructs of empire it appears to support. The project brings this approach to ruins into dialogue with current critical debates about the mechanics of British state-formation under the Tudors and Stuarts, arguing against a stream of recent criticism that sees English Renaissance literature as largely supportive of England's imperial ambitions over Britain and Ireland. Its findings will make a significant contribution to our knowledge and understanding of both English literature and English identity, its focus on ruins revealing sites of resistance in literature to England's imperial ideology in the early modern period.

The project will be based at the University of Hull, where the Andrew Marvell Centre offers an established framework for interdisciplinary research in the medieval and early modern periods, and where significant archival resources on Marvell are housed at the Hull History Centre. Marvell is a poet and politician with lifelong connections to Hull, and his relationship to the medieval monastic ruins of Hull and Yorkshire is a key focus for the project. Alongside the monograph 'Renaissance literatures of ruin: Spenser to Marvell', the project's findings will be disseminated through a journal article, conference paper and academic conference on Marvell, and through a school session, public lecture and the public exhibition 'Marvell and medieval Hull', produced in partnership with the Hull History Centre, and in collaboration with the leading Marvell expert, Professor Nigel Smith (Princeton).

Andrew Marvell is a major poet and political figure with particular connections to Hull. Working in partnership with the Hull History Centre, the project's impact activities will engage schools, media organisations and local, national and international publics with my research on Marvell and medieval ruins. The History Centre is a particularly appropriate partner for the proposed impact activities, as the new home for Hull's extensive archives on Marvell. The History Centre offers a calendar of local history events and exhibitions, and I plan to contribute the following in 2015:

1) A public exhibition at the History Centre entitled 'Marvell and medieval Hull', organised with the leading Marvell expert, Professor Nigel Smith (Princeton).
2) A public lecture on the research behind the exhibition, delivered within the History Centre's 'Lunchtime Club' series, which attracts audience figures of 50-100.
3) A session on 'Marvell's Hull' for schools studying Marvell in the Key Stage 4 (KS4) English curriculum, delivered within the History Centre's existing programme of 'Led Sessions for Schools'.

The 'Lunchtime Club' lecture and school session will complement the exhibition, tailoring its research findings to the needs of specific non-academic audiences. The three activities will engage the following beneficiaries:

1. The Hull History Centre, a third sector organisation with a mission to widen public accessibility to its archival resources. The three impact activities are expressly designed to engage wider publics with my own research and, through this, with the resources of the Centre.

2. Local communities. Housed in the History Centre's entrance arcade, the exhibition will be aimed at all visitors to the Centre, which attracts a footfall of schools, families, and wider publics with interests in regional history, as well as academics and university students. My 'Lunchtime Club' lecture forms part of a public forum for local history at the Centre, and those attending my talk will also be encouraged to visit the exhibition.

3. The media. The exhibition will be widely publicised online and on social media. I will be encouraging local media coverage by inviting journalists from BBC Radio Humberside, the Hull Daily Mail, and other media organisations to attend a launch event for the exhibition in October 2015. I also aim to maximise the exhibition's potential reach by seeking to attract national media interest in its unique focus on Marvell's medieval inheritance. I will be approaching my existing contacts with journalists at BBC Radio 4's 'The Long View' to propose ideas for an episode of the programme based around the project's research on Marvell. My collaborator, Professor Nigel Smith, will also be using his existing media contacts at BBC Radios 3 and 4 to help attract national media coverage of the exhibition.

4. Local schools. My school session on 'Marvell's Hull' will use documents in the History Centre archives to engage with and extend the study of Marvell at KS4, focusing on the medieval heritage of the city he grew up in. It will be publicised to schools in Hull and Humberside via the History Centre's marketing channels, and I will also be using the University Access Office's existing network of school contacts to discuss requirements for the session with school teachers directly.

5. National and international audiences. The exhibition will cast an important new light on a major poet, and I aim to attract visitors from outside the Hull region to the exhibition and/or its website through a campaign of marketing online and on social media, alongside efforts to attract national media coverage, as discussed above. I am also discussing the possibility with Professor Smith of displaying the exhibition in future at Princeton University. The exhibition's catalogue and display boards will thereafter be deposited in the History Centre's archives to form a permanent, public legacy for the exhibition.