The Long Eighteenth

Hello, everybody:

Just sent this CFP reminder to C18-L, so posting it here may be redundant, but I haven’t stopped by the blogsite in a long time and if this prompts any discussion or queries, let’s have a go at it.

“Tracing the Line of Shaftesbury in Eighteenth-Century Studies” * William Levine, English Dept., P.O. Box 70, Middle Tennessee State U., Murfreesboro, TN, 37132; Tel: (615) 494-8846; Fax: (615) 898-5098; E-mail: wlevine@mtsu.edu

The panel will reconsider the place of Shaftesbury’s Characteristics, as well as its reception by later “moral sense” philosophers (Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith), in recent critical discourse. Papers that re-examine Shaftesburyan lines of thought in the long eighteenth-century and in current scholarship in order to discuss the convergence of moral and aesthetic sense, the regulation of public and private modes of feeling and imagination, and the relationship between the cultivation of manners or sensibility and the body politic are welcome, particularly if they explore the ramifications of the Characteristics in such disciplines as art, social, and political history; the history and theory of literary criticism and aesthetics; and political science and philosophy. Douglas Den Uyl, the most recent editor of the Characteristics, has agreed to speak in this proposed seminar.

A paper that were to trace a selective genealogy of Shaftesburyan deployment in critical discourse from Bob Markley’s essay in the New C18 to the work of David Solkin and Lawrence Klein (among others) would be welcome. Or I could incorporate this overview into my remarks as a potential respondent if someone else would like to serve as session convener at the meeting.