Roundtable on La Boétie and textual mobility

This roundtable will comprise a discussion of John O’Brien’s new book, De manuscrit en bibliothèque: Actualité historique et mouvement chez La Boétie (Classiques Garnier, 2024). Besides offering abundant information about the circulation of Étienne de La Boétie’s Servitude volontaire, it represents an important case study in textual mobility in the early modern period. After an introduction by John O’Brien (Durham, Emeritus), there will be short responses to the book by Wes Williams (St. Edmund Hall, Oxford) and Sophie Nicholls (St. Anne’s and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford), followed by general discussion. Chair: Warren Boutcher (Queen Mary).

The event is a collaboration between the Early Modern French Seminar of the University of Oxford and the ‘Colloquium on Textuality and Diversity’ of the ERC Advanced Grant project ‘TextDiveGlobal’ (‘Textuality and Diversity: A Literary History of Europe and its Global Connections, 1529-1683’), based at Queen Mary University of London (PI: Warren Boutcher).

TextDiveGlobal brings together scholars from around the world to write Europe in the World: A Literary History, 1529–1683 (Oxford University Press), the first literary history of early modern Europe and its global connections. It investigates the diversity of texts and forms in regions across Europe and globally connected territories in Asia, Africa and the Americas from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries. This five-year research project is funded by the European Research Council Advanced Grants scheme. Grant no.: 101021262.