This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts and Humanities: East and West.

As part of the series of events at the American Academy in Rome exploring East and West, and in particular the misunderstandings and exchanges between the West and the Islamic World, this conference organized in collaboration with the Keats-Shelley House revisits Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem The Revolt of Islam, first published in 1817 as Laon and Cythna. On the afternoon of December 15, 1817, the publisher Charles Ollier met with Thomas Love Peacock, Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont, and Shelley himself to discuss the potentially controversial and contentious nature of Shelley’s poem. Marking the bicentenary of that meeting, papers in English and in Italian will focus on historical and contextual issues, as well as the contemporary resonances of Shelley’s poem.

The keynote address (at 6:00pm) will be given by the celebrated author Don DeLillo, whose novel Falling Man (2007) explores the aftermath of 9/11 through the experience of a survivor of the attacks on New York. A postcard sent from Rome, a reproduction of the cover of Shelley’s poem purchased at the Keats-Shelley House in Piazza di Spagna, makes an important cameo appearance in the novel. DeLillo is the American Academy in Rome Writer in Residence in December 2017.

The conference is organized by Giuseppe Albano, curator and director of the Keats-Shelley House, and Maria Valentini, professor of English literature at the Università di Cassino e del Lazio Meridionale. This event is supported in part by the Embassy of the United States of America to Italy and in part by the Keats-Shelley House.

Both the conference and the keynote address will be held in English. You can watch the event at https://livestream.com/aarome. The keynote address will not be livestreamed.