The 11th International Conference for the International Society for the
Study of European Ideas
University of Helsinki
28 July-2 August 2008
Section IV: Art, Theatre, Literature, Culture, Music
Workshop: Romantic Imagination and Scientific Method in Literature
Call for Papers
The aims of this workshop will be to reconsider the validity and value of
the various Romantic approaches to science by revisiting Romantic prose
narratives of the 18th and early 19th century, but also subsequent and
contemporary literary prose within and beyond the European continent in
which significant continuities or affinities with writings of the historical
period of Romanticism may be identified.
The effects of scientific discourse and method on literature were
already evident in the Enlightenment period. In this respect, Romanticism
continued and even intensified the interest in, and influence of,
developments in scientific work of their literary predecessors, just as they
continued the dialogue with philosophy already begun in the earlier part of
the 18th century. Representative figures of Romantic literature across the
continent tried to keep abreast of scientific discovery and the speculations
on further advancements of scientific knowledge; on how human life will be
affected by these discoveries; and, on the seemingly infinite possibilities
for knowledge of the entire natural cosmos, all of which stimulated the
Romantic imagination and fired with enthusiasm many Romantics. Scientific
language, philosophical language and literary language are merged in the
unfinished novel, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, by the German Romantic Novalis,
who himself is a consummate figure of the inclusiveness of the Romantic
attitude to the world in Early German Romantic writing.
Yet the scientific imagination also engendered scepticism and possible
nightmare scenarios in Romantic literature, especially concerning the
potential use made of such knowledge and its effect on the already tenuous
relation between man, natural environment and God. Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein attests to the sustaining power of the controversy over these
issues. If the beautiful, the sublime and the truth made palpable by
scientific method were initially in harmonious agreement, this relation is
eventually disturbed or/and questioned. Romantics also imagined the
catastrophic, the terrifying, the ugly and the oppressive as equally
possible scenarios contingent upon the scientific imagination; especially,
as it emancipated or unhinged itself from the aesthetic and ethical
discourses of the 18th century.
Please send 200 word abstracts to the following address: [log in to unmask]
by 2 May 2008.
For more information see http://issei2008.haifa.ac.il/Introduction.htm
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