Forthcoming seminar by Dr Sheila Dickson – Fri 8 Dec @ 19:30 UK-time
Dear friends
For our next seminar I am delighted to welcome Dr Sheila Dickson to talk about ‘Rudolf Erich Raspe’s Marvellous Travels in Scotland: A survey in 1789 of the Duke of Argyll’s mineral resources by the geologist and author of ‘Baron Munchhausen’s Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia’.
Rudolf Erich Raspe (1736-1794) is known today – if at all – as the author of Baron Munchhausen’s Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia (1785), but during his life he made a name for himself in Germany through empirical investigations and publications in the fields of geology and mineralogy. From 1775 he worked in the British Isles as a prospector and consultant on behalf of landowners, and in 1789 he undertook an overview of the Duke of Argyll’s quarries and mines. Using letters from the Inveraray archive, the talk will present details of Raspe’s reports on the Duke’s properties which, in contrast to his Münchhausen reputation as an impostor, show the professional expertise behind his storytelling talent and colourful personality, and provide an example of the close links between Germany and Scotland during this period.
Sheila Dickson is Professor of German in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, College of Arts and Humanities, University of Glasgow. Her main research projects have focussed on the literature and culture of the Enlightenment and Romantic periods in German-speaking countries. She has edited one volume of a 40-volume critical edition of the complete works and letters of Achim von Arnim, a German Romantic writer, and is now a Main Editor of the project as a whole. She is co-editor of a digital critical edition of the first German journal of psychology – Magazine for Empirical Psychology, (1783-1793) – which consists of medical case histories submitted by lay observers, doctors, patients and creative writers (http://www.mze.gla.ac.uk/). She has translated into English a short story by Achim von Arnim that was set in Inveraray and Gretna Green, inspired by the writer’s visit to Scotland in the early 1800s
(https://www.wehrhahn-verlag.de/public/index.php?ID_Section=3&ID_Product=249).
Webpage: http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/mlc/staff/sheiladickson/.
The seminar will be given on Zoom.
Attendance at the seminar is free to members of the Friends. Non-members are asked to make a £5 donation to the Friends at Donate to Friends of the Argyll Papers (enthuse.com).
Please book your place for the seminar by emailing Alison at: friendsoftheargyllpapers@gmail.com