We invite proposals for a series of panels that stems from an ongoing AHRC and DFG-funded project, ‘Scientific Poetry and Poetics in Britain and Germany, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment’ (https://scientificpoetry.org/). The project explores a mass of largely-unknown scientific poetry – and a corresponding poetics of science – that reveals a vibrant facet of Renaissance, Restoration, and Enlightenment culture: the production not only of ideas, but of new, technical vocabularies, all forged in the particular demands of poetic form. The project’s reformulation of the era’s poetic ideas - its cosmopoetics, its theopoetics and its physico-theology - bears on how we understand emergent aesthetics in this most tumultuous period for the vernaculars of both England and Germany. It also reveals the compositional and referential density of both scientific knowledge and poetic forms, writing that came to be valued precisely because of its discursive volatility and its kaleidoscopic capacity. Moreover, we seek to unearth and analyze a body of work by women, much of it in manuscript, that deploys scientific ideas to dazzling effect, as well as neo-Latin verse on topics ranging from blood transfusion to flight theory.
We welcome paper proposals on any aspect of the intersections between poetry, poetics and natural philosophy in early modern vernacular and neo-Latin writings, including (but not limited to) the following:
- early modern poetry/poetics that engages with geology and sea-science, botany and natural history, astronomy and cosmology,
- atomic thought and a range of emergent sciences,
- relations in scientific-poetic writing between early modern vernaculars and neo-Latin
- how scientific ideas filter into other frameworks of poetic writing, such as the
theological, political and domestic,
- the impact of different poetic forms on the creation and communication of scientific ideas,
- the poetics of scientific practice and theory and the contribution of scientific thought to poetics,
- scientific poetry within the European early Enlightenment.
Please send a 200-300 word abstract of your paper and your contact information (name; affiliation; email address) to cassie.gorman@aru.ac.uk. Your submission should include a paper title (15-word maximum), relevant keywords, and a short CV.
The deadline for proposals is July 26; the selection will be made by August 9, 2024.
Unfortunately, it will not be possible to cover travel and conference costs.
Please feel free to circulate -- thank you!