The Vaughan Association

Scintilla: A journal of literary criticism, prose and new poetry in the metaphysical tradition
 
Skip to content
  • About Scintilla
  • Scintilla Issues
    • Searchable Scintilla: Tables of Contents
    • Scintilla 23
    • Scintilla 22
    • Scintilla 21
    • Scintilla 20
    • Scintilla 19
    • Scintilla 18
    • Scintilla 17
    • Scintilla 16
    • Scintilla 15
    • Scintilla 14
    • Scintilla 13
    • Scintilla 12
    • Scintilla 11
    • Scintilla 10
    • Scintilla 9
    • Scintilla 8
    • Scintilla 7
    • Scintilla 6
    • Scintilla 5
    • Scintilla 4
    • Scintilla 3
    • Scintilla 2
    • Scintilla 1
  • Submissions to Scintilla
  • 2021 Vaughan 400th Birthday Conference
  • Poets in Conversation
  • Join Mailing List
  • Friends

About the association

The Vaughan Association began in the wake of a successful first Colloquium held in 1995 to mark the tercentenary of Henry Vaughan’s death on 23 April 1695. Organised and guided by Peter Thomas and Anne Cluysenaar, the Colloquium has gone on as an annual event where critical scholarship and creative writing meet and converse, exploring the work and related themes of Henry Vaughan and his priest-alchemist brother Thomas (1621-66). These seventeenth-century identical twins were shaped by their Breconshire birthplace, its hills and groves, creatures, herbs, stones, history and myths, the magical landscape of the Usk river valley that imprinted itself so firmly upon their work and imaginations. Like their childhood home and landscape, the Vaughan brothers’ experience of the civil wars, regicide and republican revolution, equally shaped their lives and perspectives. Both brothers fought in that war and experienced the loss of institutions of both church and state that resulted. The discontinuity and alienation that followed were traumatic. Defeated, the twins reinvented themselves, Henry as ‘Silurist’ and Thomas as ‘Eugenius Philalethes’. Their writings reveal the connections between identity, adversity and the creative process.

Scintilla, our journal first published in 1997 has become the premier site not only for Vaughan scholarship but for wider discussions about poetry and prose in the traditions of metaphysical poets such as Vaughan, Herbert, and Trahern. Rooted in the Welsh countryside that Vaughan loved so well, the Association is dedicated to furthering this critical discussion and to promoting the best new writing that celebrates the themes and interests of this tradition.

News & events

Deadline Extended for Submissions to the 2021 Vaughan Conference

The deadline for paper proposals for the 2021 Vaughan 400th Birthday Conference is extended until 30th November. We are planning …

Read

Scintilla 23 Available Now

  Scintilla 23 is now available on Amazon: UK and US. In this new edition Peter Pike explores the legacy …

Read

Announcement of the 2021 Vaughan 400th Birthday Conference and Call for Papers

We are happy to announce that the 2021 Vaughan 400th Birthday Conference will take place on 6-9th May 2021 and …

Read

Facebook
Powered by Tempera & WordPress.