Sermons, Prophecies and Dreams:
Religion and Literature in the Long Eighteenth Century
A symposium at Chawton House Library, Hampshire, Friday May 15 2015
Plenary speakers:
Jon Mee (University of York)
William Gibson (Oxford Brookes University)
Religion and literature in the long eighteenth century may nowadays be posed as opposites, the one dependent on faith, the other habitually sceptical, the one associated with secular enlightenment and progress, the other with institutionalisation and primitivism; yet the inadequacy of such an opposition becomes clear when we look at the tense interrelation of religion and literature within an enlightenment less often seen as atheistic than it once was, or a Romantic period in which a turn to religion could be progressive rather than retrograde. Recent work on dissent, evangelicalism, Methodism, secularisation, the social practices of religion, life-writing, and other topics has drawn on the critical assumptions and methods of work associated more with interrogating novels, poems and plays and has begun to ask new questions of so-called ‘religious texts’.
This symposium will encourage reflection on the issues listed above, perhaps through examining prophecy, or debates over miracles or dreams in texts of the long eighteenth century; it will also encourage papers that reflect on the adequacy or otherwise of the vocabulary currently available to those working in this area. We aim to stimulate discussion on issues of central literary significance as they emerge from the circumstances and contexts of religious writing and invite papers on topics such as the following:
• The ways in which particular faith groups may have read texts;
• The interrelations of and tensions between religion and literature in this period;
• The importance of gender in this relationship;
• Representations of faith or religious belief in poetry, drama and fiction;
• Uses of religious texts in different literary genres;
• The association of forms such as letters, diaries, essays, sermons with religion ;
• The relationship between religion and textual or cultural authority;
• The relationship between the sacred and the profane;
• The intersections of literature and religion within the regulatory discourses of science, medicine, business, economics, and the law.
Abstracts of 250 words should be sent to the organisers, Stephen Bygrave [log in to unmask] or Laura Davies [log in to unmask] by February 27 2015.
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