Prof%20Peter%20Davidson: List of publications

Homecoming, haunting, nostalgia, desire: these are some of the themes evoked by the beguiling motif of the lighted window in literature and art.

This article revisits a locus classicus of British Catholic History, the interpretation of the coin-hoard found in 1611 by the Lancashire squire William Blundell of Little Crosby. 1 This article offers new information, approaching the Harkirk silver from several perspectives: Mark Blundell offers a memoir of his ancestor William Blundell, as well as lending his voice to the account of the subsequent fate of the Harkirk silver; Professor Jane Stevenson and Professor Peter Davidson reconsider the sources for William Blundell’s historiography as well as considering wider questions of memory and the recusant community; Dr Dora Thornton analyses the silver pyx made from the Harkirk coins in detail, and surveys analogous silverwork in depth.

In early-modern Europe, it was not uncommon to use the symbolic languages of the late Renaissance and Baroque to create temporary or permanent decorated environments, either designed as places of meditation and withdrawal, or else as statements of the religious, philosophical or political position of an individual or community. Amongst these, there is a particularly interesting group made for and by early modern women in England, which demonstrate the degree to which women, sometimes as executants, sometimes as patrons or ‘devisers’, could create or commission complex adornments of spaces, cogent within current symbolic conventions and legible as verbal and visual texts.

Any initiative to write about Scottish early modern literary culture from the point of view of the primary witnesses of manuscripts is to be commended, particularly a study which explores what can be gleaned from them about their use and circulation. This is not an over- studied field: many earlier studies require to be revised, there are clearly discoveries still to be made. Early modern Scotland offers immense scope for research: it is far from certain that the canon of Scottish renaissance literature in the vernacular has been fully explored or established; it is certain that the canon of Scottish renaissance Latin has not. Early modern Scottish Literary culture is wholly worthy of study in itself and as part of the Europe-wide comparative study of renaissance and renaissances. In some respects it is still much easier to identify a Scottish renaissance on a European model, than it is to pinpoint a cogent renaissance in England. The fascination of that comparison alone would be a reason to welcome Sebastiaan Verweij’s new book.

<p>Northern identities in different regions, cultures and communities – particularly when constructed as foils to 'The South' – have been the focus of considerable attention among cultural historians, literary scholars and commentators, several of whom are represented in this collection. Yet despite its prominence in the discourse of north-south relations, the role of music in producing and articulating notions of northernness has not been discussed in detail. Rugged yet fragile, communal yet solitary, conservative yet radical, the real and imaginary spaces of the north have inspired many different musical responses, perhaps the most enigmatic coming from pianist Glenn Gould in his radio documentary The Idea of North (CBC, 1967): 'I've read about it, written about it, and even pulled up my parka once and gone there. Yet like all but a very few Canadians I've had no real experience of the North. I've remained, of necessity, an outsider. And the North has remained for me, a convenient place to dream about, spin tall tales about, and, in the end, avoid.' This collection represents the first extended dedicated exploration of music and ideas of north, drawing on northern English, Scottish, Canadian, Scandinavian and Finnish identities, as well as north-south dynamics in a European context, to uncover connections and contradictions in the musical experience and expression of northernness across the globe..</p>

He reflects on the sense of longing, decay and loss that motivates so many of these works as well as the particular luminosity and brilliance generated by shadow, penumbra and half-light.