GSA-Panel 2023: Romantic Realisms, Montréal (10.03.2023)

CFP: Romantic Realisms

German Studies Association Conference

October 5-8, 2023

Montreal, Canada

In 1809, F. W. J. Schelling wrote “Die ganz neu-europäische Philosophie seit ihrem Beginn... hat diesen gemeinschaftlichen Mangel, daß die Natur für sie nicht vorhanden ist.” Schelling’s appraisal might explain why nature is commonly presented as antithesis to creative imagination. Literature is tasked with transcending mundane reality, cataloguing its misdemeanours, or alienating it into something unrecognisable. But now that Iain Hamilton Grant has portrayed Schelling as “contemporary philosopher,” it seems pressing to determine whether theories of literature, too, have been complicit in eliding nature; especially given Schelling’s proximity to Goethezeit literary authors.

In the preface to “Lyrical Ballads” (1800), S. T. Coleridge presented the “suspension of disbelief” as precursor to aesthetic experience. This phrase has since become a venerated if controversial touchstone for literary historiography, wherein “suspension” provides an illusory departure from reality. But in light of recent work on Schelling – who Coleridge greatly admired – the remark could also bear more literal interpretation. It is arguable that Cartesian doubt was precisely what Coleridge wished to “suspend.” Such a literature would no longer seek validation but would rather encourage us to create nature such that art could “exist” within it (A. W. Schlegel).

This panel frames Romanticism via the speculative-realist turn. It solicits papers that address, but are by no means limited to, alternative configurations of Romanticism that incorporate figures like Karoline von Günderrode, François Hemsterhuis, and Sophie Tieck or new interpretations of canonical texts or well-known authors based on

1) synthetic Romanticisms (after critique has “run out of stem,” Bruno Latour)

2) Future-oriented Romanticisms (a future that has since “disappeared,” Mark Fisher)

3) Romantic Naturphilosophie (as “natural science of its day,” Frederick Beiser) via K. A. Eschenmayer, C. F. Kielmeyer, Henrik Steffens, and J. W. Ritter et al

4) critical responses via Marxism (Adrian Johnston), deconstruction, discourse theory or alternative ecologies (Amanda Jo Goldstein, Tim Morton)

5) modern literary repercussions of an estranged Romanticism

Please send a brief abstract (250-500 words) to both Steven Lydon (steven.lydon@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk) and Gabriel Trop (gtrop@email.unc.edu) by March 15, 2023.