Art et littérature
Online Conference: ROMANTICISM AND ITS AFTERLIVES - Registration
In P. B. Shelley’s words, this conference wishes to explore “the many-voiced echoes” of Romanticisms and the multitudinous reanimations that highlight their continued relevance in contemporary (counter-)cultures. Although primarily interested in literature, there will be contributions in other disciplines such as music, film studies, architecture, visual and performance art.
This conference builds on the recognition that, for a movement that resists easy definitions, Romanticism and its aesthetics have enjoyed a remarkably long life. Indeed, speaking of afterlives may raise the question whether Romanticism has in fact passed away. As Matthew Sangster has recently pointed out, the period retrospectively and hazily called Romanticism is not “over, done with, and transcended.” Cross-temporality seems to be inscribed in the history of the word, when translator and reviewer William Taylor, possibly the first to add “ism” to romantic, wrote in the Annual Review (1803) of the “romanticisms of speculative philosophy”, thus ushering into English a new concept marked from its birth by plurality and imaginative verve. The novelty was not lost on Lady Sidney Morgan who, in her 1821 study on Italy and contemporaneous aesthetics, embedded it in an animated European debate, by assuring readers that “The vehemence with which the question of Romanticism has been debated, will have a favourable influence upon the Italians” (Italy 2: 140). Writing of romanticisms in 1803 is echoed by twentieth-century scholars’ advancing of plural Romanticisms. As a modifier, “ism” endows Romanticism with a movement from the past, through the present and into the future via echoes, influences, revisions, and innovations in contemporary (counter-)cultures. In P. B. Shelley’s words, this conference wishes to explore “the many-voiced echoes” of Romanticisms and the multitudinous reanimations that highlight their continued relevance in contemporary (counter-)cultures. Although primarily interested in literature, there will be contributions in other disciplines such as music, film studies, architecture, visual and performance art.
Some confirmed panels for this conference are:
- “Evolving Pedagogies” organised by Simon Bainbridge and Michael Kramp
- “Jane Austen’s Afterlives” organised by Annika Bautz
- “Romantic Legacies: Victorian Activism and Reform” organised by Dewey Hall
- “Romantic Worlds” organised by Michael Falk
- “Romanticism and Modern Music” organised by Matthew Sangster
- “Romanticism, Animism and Indigeneity” organised by Philip Dickinson
- “Science and ethics” organised by Tim Fulford
Please register by sending an email to enit.steiner@unil.ch to receive the Zoom link(s) for this online conference.