Call for Papers: Philosophy and Poetics
All Souls College, Oxford
Tuesday, 26 November 2024
This is an interdisciplinary conference concerned with the relationship between poetry and philosophy. The conference will host several 25-minute presentations divided into three themes, followed by extended group discussion time.
Themes
1. The philosophy of poetry
- What is the relationship between the poet’s thought, image, and word? How and why does poetry work as a mode of communicating thoughts, feelings, and ideas?
- Is there a ‘poetical’ method of philosophising? If so, what is it, how is it deployed, and how is it different from other methods? For example, how does the mythopoeic mode function in Plato’s dialogues in comparison to the dialectic?
- How should we understand works of philosophy that are in poetic form? For example, how do the poetic qualities of Lucretius’ De rerum natura shape the meaning of the philosophical text?
2. Poets as philosophers
- What philosophical themes consistently appear among poetic works? For example, how do poets represent the transcendent, the numinous, the sublime, the mystical, or the absolute?
- To what extent is the poet a philosopher? To what extent does the poet see himself as an agent, prophet, or conduit of the truth? To what extent does his task overlap with that of the philosopher?
3. The art of poetics
- How did the ‘Ars Poetica’ treatises—Classical, Renaissance, humanist, Romantic, and beyond—function as works of philosophy?
We welcome submissions from all researchers in Philosophy or English literature to submit 150–200-word abstracts by 12 October 2024.
Please email your submissions to
victoria.gross@oriel.ox.ac.uk
and
jane.cooper@all-souls.ox.ac.uk.
For those who would like to register to attend the conference, please email expressing your interest by 4 November 2024.
