Thursday 3 May at 5.30pm in the Godwin Room, D Staircase, Old Court, Clare College

ELIZABETH SANDIS (Merton College, Oxford): 'Waiting in the wings: St John's College, Oxford presents Tres Sibyllae (1605)'

On Tuesday 27th August 1605, King James rode into the city of Oxford for the first time. His route along St Giles' took him past the gates of St John's College, where he was greeted by a dramatic spectacle, Tres Sibyllae. This little pageant, performed in Latin and then also in English, has made its mark in the history books as a possible source for Shakespeare's Macbeth. Any further significance of the work, however, has long been forgotten: Tres Sibyllae's application of the modes of pageantry to the university setting, St John's interest in theatre as a means to establish its identity within the University, and the College's dramatisation of its relationship with another Oxford college, Christ Church, its richer sibling enjoying the lion's share of limelight during James' visit. The rise of St John's importance over the next thirty years, however, would bring a new dynamic to the balance of power between the two colleges, and Tres Sibyllae (1605) offers us insights into one stage along the way. It is also of interest as an illustration of the diversity of neo-Latin drama in institutional contexts.

Thursday 17 May at 5.30pm in the Godwin Room, D Staircase, Old Court, Clare College
MAYA FEILE TOMES (Cambridge): 'Neo-Latin America: José Antonio de Villerías y Roelas' Guadalupe (Mexico, 1724)'

Fate has not been kind to Latin American Latinists. Extraordinary industry and enthusiasm for Latin composition in C16th-18th Spanish America - and particularly in Mexico, one of the first territories to be settled by the Spanish - have been rewarded with an equal number of years of neglect and oblivion. One (near-)casualty was Mexican author José Antonio de Villerías y Roelas, whose mini epic Guadalupe languished in manuscript in the Biblioteca Nacional de México until it was re-discovered by a Mexican bibliographer in the 1980s. The Guadalupe slots itself seamlessly into the post-Virgilian epic tradition, and yet, in addition to the usual historical remove with which Neolatinists are familiar, we must also factor in a vast geographical one. This is further complicated by the fact that Villerías' poem narrates the advent of the Virgin Mary - believed to have appeared in her guise as the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico in 1531 - thus adding an all-important religious dimension to the poetic melting-pot. I will introduce Villerías' Guadalupeand explore some of the cultural, conceptual and linguistic issues at stake in writing a Latin poem in eighteenth-century Mexico.