On the Road: Professor Wallace in Scotland

Professor Tara Wallace was recently in attendance at the Boswell Book Festival at the Dumfries House, Ayrshire, Scotland.  Described by organizers as "The World's Only Festival of Biography & Memoir," the event was held May 8-10, 2015.


Before the official events, Professor Wallace spent some delightful time in the company of Margaret Boswell Elliot (a direct descendant of James Boswell and chief of the clan Elliot).  Elliot arranged for Professor Wallace to have access to Richard, Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry's collection of Sir Walter Scott materials, as well as a private tour of Abbotsford, Scott's home.  This was a wonderful opportunity, as Professor Wallace is well known for her scholarship on Scott.

In the first photo on the right, Professor Wallace is pictured looking at an interleaved edition of a novel with Scott's writing notes.  In the other, she is carefully handling the manuscript of his Lay of the Last Minstrel, inspired by and inscribed to Harriet, wife of the 4th Duke.  The manuscript of the Lay connects well to some of Professor Wallace's thoughts on Scott's relationship with ideas of 'county'; the interleaved editions she was able to access provide good insight into Scott's methods of revision.

Watch this blog over Summer 2015 for more information on where the GW English community is traveling and reasearching!

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Politics, Sex, Sentiment! (And a fulfilled GPAC Oral Requirement)

Hogarth, Beggar's Opera

GW Students: another class to consider for Spring 2015.  This class now fulfills the GPAC Oral Requirement.

The Eighteenth Century:  The Theatre of Politics, Sex, and Sentiment

Professor Tara G. Wallace

CRN: 47695

Tuesday-Thursday 9:35-10:50 AM

In 1660, after two decades of Puritan rule, England regained its monarchy and its theatres, and both court and stage enthusiastically embraced the spirit of liberty enabled by the new regime under Charles II, the Merry Monarch.  Theatrical productions took advantage of technological innovations and the availability, for the first time, of actresses to play female roles … and the modern theatre was born.

This course looks at a selection of playtexts produced during the long 18^th century (1660-1800), considering both ‘literary’ elements and the cultural information the plays convey.  We will trace the movement from libertinism to sentimentalism, and discuss the culture wars enacted on the 18^th-century stage in plays such as Congreve’s The Way of the World, Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, and Shridan’s The Rivals.

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Professor Tara Wallace: This Weekend at the Jane Austen Society of North America

The Jane Austen Society of North America announces: Registration for our September 7 program ends Tuesday, September 2 [now extended to September 6]. Cost $20.  Click here to pay with Paypal or download a reservation form. Professor Tara Wallace Austen's Sea-Change: Re-Writing Sense and Sensibility with Tara Wallace, GWU Sunday, September 7 at 2:00 pm Classroom at Total Wine McLean Shopping Center 1451 Chain Bridge Road McLean, VA 22101 Tea and light refreshments will be served.  The list of works that re-write or extend Austen's work is long and varied, from the 19th-century novels of Thomas Lister to the current products of the Austen Project, from fantasies about the Darcys’ marriage to Austen in the world of vampires and zombies. In this talk, Dr. Wallace examines two examples of texts that re-work Sense and Sensibility:  Joanna Trollope's contribution to the Austen Project and Ben H. Winters's mash-up with sea-monsters. How do these authors re-present Austen's writing, and to what extent do these re-workings become novels in their own right?

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