DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
LEIDEN UNIVERSITY
THIRTEENTH LEIDEN OCTOBER CONFERENCE
THURSDAY AND FRIDAY, 21 AND 22 OCTOBER 1999
A CALL FOR PAPERS
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
Even before the Renaissance provoked a new appetite for scientific
investigation, such characters
as wizards and alchemists stirred the imaginations of poets and
romancers. However, from the
beginning of the seventeenth century onwards the notion of organized
scientific experimentation
gathered support and strength and this stimulated sympathy as well as
reaction amongst writers. At
the beginning of the century, John Dryden was one of the early members
of the Royal Society. But
Dryden's satirical Augustan successors, Pope and Swift, were deeply
critical of the role that science
was beginning increasingly to play, despite the influence of Newtonian
ideas on poets and essayists,
theologians and philosophers throughout the eighteenth century. This
culminated in such
associations of manufacturers and scientists, preachers and poets as the
Lunar Society. Indeed it
could be argued that the early stages of Romanticism were inspired both
by current science and
earlier literature. Ever since that period, science and literature have
been regarded at different times
as deadly rivals or as creative collaborators. This conference will
attempt to deal with as many
aspects of this relationship as possible from the Middle Ages to the
present day. Contributors are
invited to deal with any of these issues either in a general theoretical
way or with very specific
instances in mind: ideally papers will combine the general with the
particular in illuminating ways,
focusing on specific case histories, perhaps, and on the relationship of
individual writers to science
and of certain scientists to literary figures of their day. Large issues
and small should be put under
the microscope; and literary history and scientific history jointly
surveyed.
Papers should have a maximum length of thirty minutes; and the
proceedings of the Conference
will be published. Prospective speakers are invited to submit proposals
for papers (a topic and a
title at least, and, if possible, a 100-150 word summary) to the
Conference Organizers, Dr Valeria
Tinkler-Villani and Drs Annemarie Estor, English Department, Leiden
University, PO Box 9515,
2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands by 31 March 1999. You can also make
contact per e-mail:
tinkler@rullet.leidenuniv.nl or amestor@hotmail.com.
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