Meet the new Dean of Arts and Science -- over lunch

You are invited to attend the first of 2007-08's
Nipissing University Research Lunches
Food For Thought

Next Wednesday, September 19^th Time: 12:30 – 1:30pm

Room: A222G (same room as last year)

Speaker: Dr. Doug Parker, Dean Arts & Science (Interim)

What might make you feel good, may not be good for you: Think twice before you click on 'send'

BY referring to Robert Barnes' two versions of "A Supplication vnto Henry VIII," the first published in 1531, the second in 1534, I discuss how the contexts of composition--in this case in particular the political and religious contexts--profoundly influence both the content and tone of discourse, especially polemical discourse. In addition, I show how Barnes' commitment to both Lutheran theology and his strident antipapalism--a commitment that teeters on the edge of zealotry--lead him in the first edition of "A`Supplication" to ignore context altogether, and how, in the second edition he attempts to temper his stridency by taking account of a complex political and religious world in which his writing is, perforce, embedded. Given the complexity and dangers of the world in which he lives--complexities and dangers that he chose to ignore in the first edition of "A` Supplication"--Barnes is "haunted" by the memory of his first version of this tract and attempts to mitigate its influence by publishing a much more politic version in 1534.

A Lunch is provided.