CFP: Reading the Practical in Early Modern Literature

‘Verse with wings of skill': Reading the Practical in Early Modern Literature

16-17th April 2026
The Diamond, University of Sheffield

KEY DATES

Submission Deadline: 24 November, 2025
Decisions By: 30 December, 2025
Event Date: 16-17 April, 2026

This two-day interdisciplinary symposium will invite scholars to re-consider practical texts written between c. 1558 and 1642 as productive sources for literary criticism. In a period best known today for its poetry and drama, practical texts such as Gervase Markham’s The English Husbandman were ‘almost literally read to pieces’, Thomas Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry ‘led the market’ as ‘a Tudor best-seller’, and cookery books enjoyed a staggering 70% reprint rate (1). That these texts occupied such a prominent position in the publishing industry is testament to their importance in early modern life. Yet despite this, literary criticism has been slow to embrace such texts as more than merely contextual sources for canonical texts by poets and dramatists such as Shakespeare and Spenser. Critics continue to frame Tusser’s work as an agricultural manual or almanack rather than a book of poetry, for example, while literary scholars tend to note his significance in the same breath as they denigrate the quality of his verse: an ‘agrarian book of jingles’ or ‘collection of doggerel’ (2). Other practical texts such as receipt books and surveying texts have been interrogated primarily as a means of understanding early modern culture and society. Less common are studies of practical texts as works of literature, studies that centre the practical text rather than positioning it as context for the work of more canonical writers. This symposium seeks to address this gap, and invites contributors to consider how studying non-traditionally canonical texts can help scholars to reassess established positions. It is designed to lead to an edited collection, provisionally aimed at Routledge’s Studies in Renaissance and Early Modern Worlds of Knowledge series, so speakers are encouraged to propose papers suitable for extension into a 6000-8000 word chapter. 

Recent scholarship by Katarzyna Lecky, Jessica Rosenberg, and Kyla Tompkins has begun to demonstrate the fruitfulness of considering practical and instructional texts as sources for and influences on early modern dramatic and poetic texts. This symposium, however, recentres the practical text. It encourages readings of this underrepresented and understudied corpus of literature as more than texts that inform our understanding of the period or more canonical Renaissance writers. It aims to demonstrate the value of reading practical and instructional texts as legitimate objects, worthy of literary analysis in their own right.

The keynote speakers will be Natalya Din-Kariuki (Warwick) and Laurence Publicover (Bristol). 

CFP

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers (in English) or 60-minute panels (composed of three 20-minute papers each) that discuss any practical texts produced in print or in manuscript between c. 1558 and 1642.  

Papers might focus on, but are not limited to:

• Applying the tools of poetic analysis to practical texts

• The interactions between practical texts

• Early modern readership of and/or engagement with practical texts

• Classical antecedents for practical texts (eg. Cato, Xenophon)

• The class and/or gender dynamics at play in the writing of practical texts

• Practical texts in manuscript form, ie. household books, receipt books

• Publishing trends for practical texts

The symposium will prioritise papers that focus exclusively on practical texts. Comparative work that places practical texts in conversation with the canon is permitted; however, greater or equal attention should be given to the practical text. New perspectives on the topic are encouraged, which may mean applying a different theoretical framework to a familiar text, or perhaps shining a light on a text previously unexplored. The organisers are keen to broaden the geographical scope of this burgeoning field of research, and encourage contributions that give attention to sources from outside the English centre, looking to the outskirts of the Atlantic archipelago and beyond. In a similar vein, we encourage submissions from scholars of underrepresented backgrounds, particularly those working outwith Europe and North America. We especially welcome papers from graduate students and ECRs, and the conference will include a career roundtable which will offer them the chance to connect with established academics working in their fields.

Submission

To submit an abstract (no longer than 250 words for an individual paper or 500 words for a three-person panel), please fill out the form here by 24 November, 2025. Please contact Emily Naish (ejnaish1@sheffield.ac.uk) and Chloe Fairbanks (chloe.fairbanks@warwick.ac.uk) if you have any issues accessing the form. 

Registration

This conference is generously funded by the support of the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA). We are able to waive registration fees for self-funded PGR students and/or non-waged ECRs. We are also able to offer six self-funded student and/or non-waged ECR travel bursaries of £75 each. Please indicate if you would like to be considered for one of these at the time of application. 

References

(1) E.N.L Poynton, A Bibliography of Gervase Markham, 1568?-1637 (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1962), p. 2; Andrew McRae, God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500-1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 146; Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, ed. by Geoffrey Grigson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. xviii.

(2) Wendy Wall, ‘Just a Spoonful of Sugar: Syrup and Domesticity in Early Modern England’, Modern Philology 104.2 (2006), p. 160; McRae, p. 146.