School of Arts and Humanities Seminar Series Continues at St Mary’s

The School of Arts and Humanities at St Mary’s University, Twickenham will continue its research seminar series on Tuesday 24^th March. The seminar, given by St Mary’s PhD student Kim Salmons, will be on the topic of The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Decline and Fall of the Corn King. The seminar will consider Thomas Hardy’s use of food and the occasion of eating as a means of delineating and exploring ‘character’ and ‘environment’ in The Mayor of Casterbridge. The novel is set at a moment in the nineteenth century when calls for the Repeal of the Corn Laws of 1846 threatened the foundations of a society steeped in superstition and rural folklore. The main discussion of the seminar will be occupied by Corn, furmity, and Wide-Oh’s stew, while occasions of eating, such as the Mayor’s dinner at the King’s Arms, will support the argument that food co-ordinates the thematic strands in the novel as well as linking critical approaches. Kim Salmons is a PhD student in the School of Arts and Humanities. The topic of her PhD is The Representation of Food in Modern Literature: Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad (pdf) and studies the degree to which food engages with history, politics, culture, gender, and race. All seminars in the series are free and open to all, taking place in room G1 on St Mary’s Strawberry Hill Campus at 5pm. For further information, or to give a paper in the series, please contact Dr Michelle Paull at michelle.paull@stmarys.ac.uk.