CFP: Forms of Freedom: Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Liberal Thought (3/15/2013; 1/9-12/2014)

MLA 2014, Chicago, 

9-12th January 2014

Special Session

Forms of Freedom: Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Liberal Thought

This session will explore the ways that poetry responds to the rise of liberalism during the long nineteenth century. The past decade has seen a revival of interest in liberal philosophy and culture as contexts for the nineteenth-century novel. This panel aims to expand this conversation via a consideration of liberalism’s poetics, addressing the influence of European liberal thinkers on the poetry of the nineteenth century.

Papers might address:

• Poets as readers and/or practitioners of liberal philosophy
• The poetics of the liberal subject
• Liberal ‘form’
• Mill’s poetic education
• Liberalism’s discontents: the poetry of radicalism and communitarianism
• Poetry and the state

Abstracts of 250 words should be sent to a.j.barton@sheffield.ac.uk by 15th March 2013.