The Enlightenment in Literature and Other Art Forms
A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2020) | Viewed by 4235
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The period of the Enlightenment – conventionally the long eighteenth century (c. 1685 – c. 1815) – is frequently referred to as ‘The Age of Reason’. This characterisation of the period reflects aspects of the age’s self-understanding, as well as intellectual historians constructions of the Enlightenment over recent decades as consisting, in essence, of the belief that the expansion of knowledge, the application of reason, and dedication to scientific method would result in the greater progress and happiness of humankind. Yet historians of imaginative literature and of other art forms such as opera have shown that it is a distortion to describe the Enlightenment exclusively as an ‘Age of Reason’– especially if such a description re-inscribes the commonly accepted dichotomy of thinking and feeling, ‘mind’ and ‘heart’.
This Special Issue on ‘The Enlightenment in Literature and Other Art Forms’ seeks to investigate the impact of key ideas of the Enlightenment, such as the concept of progress, on imaginative literature and other art forms, in Europe, the Atlantic world, and beyond. It will explore the extent to which authors, composers, librettists, painters and sculptors engaged with the intellectual movement of the Enlightenment; and the relationship of Enlightenment ideas to such developments in the arts as neoclassicism, the literature and drama of sentiment and sensibility, and Sturm und Drang. By focusing on imaginative literature and other art forms, the Special Issue will highlight the side of the Enlightenment often obscured in accounts of the period as ‘The Age of Reason’, the side which plumbed the whirlpools of subjectivity beneath the calm waters of reason, and that sometimes championed the potentially explosive sense imagery of the imagination over the coercive abstractions of reason.
Contributors are invited to reflect on the role of a wide range of forms and genres, including poetry, novels, plays, operas, instrumental music, paintings, and sculptures, in the cultures of Enlightenment; on the nature and function of the networks of the people who formulated the ideas and practices of the Enlightenment, and who gave them expression in philosophical and other texts; and on the impact and legacy of the Enlightenment as mediated in imaginative literature and other art forms. Comparative and transnational approaches are especially welcome.
Abstracts of 250 words to be submitted to <[email protected]> & <[email protected]> by 1 July 2019.
Final submissions to be received by 1 December 2019.
Dr. Catherine Jones
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- circulation of ideas
- drama
- Enlightenment
- fiction
- imagination
- literature
- music
- networks
- opera
- painting
- poetry
- progress
- reason
- sculpture
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