British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Romanticism and Science: A British Academy Symposium
In Association with the British Association for Romantic Studies
Convened by Dr Sharon Ruston, University of Wales, Bangor
Friday, 15 September 2006
The British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH
FULLY BOOKED
In the past, Romanticism has been seen as opposed to science, held as promoting the transcendental and otherworldly above the material and physical. This symposium seeks to interrogate this view, exploring a time before the sciences and the arts had been divided into ‘two cultures’. Science pervaded every aspect of Romantic life and literature, as the secondary object of exploration detailed in travel narratives, the emergence of new print technologies, the use of anatomy in religious arguments for evidence of Design in nature, or physiological accounts of the effects of an encounter with the sublime in aesthetic theories. The speakers in this symposium will challenge traditional notions of Romanticism, revealing that even the most canonical Romantic writers were aware of and interested in scientific knowledge and discoveries.
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