Charles Williams Society Conference

To being to an end this series of readings from and about Charles Williams, a note reminding readers of an event this weekend.

On Saturday 23rd October from 10:45am there will be a Day Conference of the Charles Williams Society. Held in the 'Concord Room' or St. Matthew's Church, Great Peter Street in Westminster, the programme will include a paper from Dr. Josh Bradbury on his recently completed doctoral dissertation on Williams. If you are in London this weekend, you will receive a very warm welcome at this event.

5 comments:

Bruce Charlton said...

Would you like to post a report on this conference? I am interested to know the current direction of C.W. studies.

Arborfield said...

Day Conference Report

During the morning session Dr. Josh Bradbury spoke on 'Voyages Through Strange Seas of Thought', a 'Study of Mythic and Sacramental Vision in Charles Williams's Taliessin Through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars'.


This was the title of Josh's PhD Thesis of 2009 - which was 'an investigation of the use of myth as an informing principle in Charles Williams's most significant poetry'.

A copy of the thesis was kindly donated by him to the society at our Spring 2010 meeting in Oxford University earlier this year and has been put into the reference library.

A stimulating and fresh investigation into the 'Taliessin' corpus.

After lunch, members enjoyed an interesting session; each member bringing a reading from 'All Hallows Eve' to the table for discussion.

As always in such discussions we learned much from each-other's unique point of view of the work, and I, for one, were surprised by the erudition of exposition.

Bruce Charlton said...

Thanks for this.

Of Williams various main categories of work (theology, poetry, novels plays) - which do you think is continuing to create *the most* interest among serious C.W. followers?

(My own interest is mainly in the theology, then the novels).

Arborfield said...

Difficult to say... very few seem to think much of his plays these days, but judging by the Society and the Williams Yahoo Group, I think his theology is of most intrest.

Are you a member of the Society and the Yahoo Group?

My own interest is, like you novels and theology... but I am very interested in his poetry too.

Bruce Charlton said...

No - I'm not a member of anything.

I'm currently grappling with (yet again, off and on for twenty something years) the Way of Affirmation etc.