Listen to the ‘Duke of Dark Corners’ by Sonja Fielitz (University of Marburg) here. While discussing the visual (and spatial) uncanny, she takes us on a journey from Nicholas Royle and Nicholas Owen, the builder of priest holes, to Shakespeare and Graham Holderness, stopping at the grand houses of Coughton Court, Harvington Hall, and Hindslip Hall.
Priest hole in a staircase at Harvington Hall
A trompe l’oeil picture by Pere Borrell del Caso called Escapando de la crítica (Escaping criticism) (1874)
Sonja Fielitz is Professor of English Literature at the University of Marburg (Germany).She received her PhD in 1992 with a study on Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. Her post-doctoral thesis, published in 2000, examines the status of Ovid’s Metamorphoses within the various theoretical and critical discourses in England between 1660 and 1800. She has published about 45 essays and has edited six collections of essays on various topics. Her main field of expertise in research and teaching is the early modern period with a focus on religious discourses such as the early Jesuit mission, as well as Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
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