In 1755, Samuel Johnson devoted a considerable amount of space in the
first edition of his Dictionary to the contemplation of anxiety. Drawing
upon the authorship of Alexander Pope and John Dryden, Johnson described
anxiety as the anticipation of a future event.
Anxiety is a state of mind and authorship that can be traced throughout
the critical writings of literature, language and linguistics. While for
Johnson himself in 1755, one can trace anxiety to ‘the contamination of
the English language’ by its French neighbour, the francophobia
exhibited in his Preface further anticipated the outbreak of the Seven
Years War in the following year. Anxiety about forms of social change
(imperialism, war, revolution and treason trials) can be registered
either through literary and linguistic transformations, or else through
a desire to retrench against impending changes, to preserve indigenous
grammars, literary traditions and political constitution.
The School of English at the University of Sheffield is hosting a
one-day cross-cutting theme workshop upon the topic of Anxiety in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It will feature plenary papers by
Professor Jon Mee (University of Warwick) and Professor Lynda
Mugglestone (University of Oxford), and a variety of shorter papers by
members of the School of English at Sheffield. There will be a small
registration fee for the event (£10 for salaried delegates; £5 for
non-waged delegates). We warmly welcome external delegates to attend
this workshop. Besides the papers, there will also be a poetry reading
to round off the day by award-winning Hungarian poet Agi Lehoczky, and
Sheffield University's Special Collections will be displaying the
original edition of Johnson's Dictionary, and a range of engravings by
James Gillray.
Registration deadline is the 31st May, 2013. To register, lease visit
our jobshop:
http://onlineshop.shef.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&prodid=174&deptid=5&searchresults=1
For further details about the event, please visit our website:
http://anxiety2013.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/9/
Workshop organisers: Joe Bray, Maddy Callaghan and Angela Wright
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