The Loyola University Chicago Victorian Society Presents Its Second Annual Day Conference
Aesthetics and Form in Victorian Art, Literature, and Culture
October 28, 2017
“It is not enough that it has the Form, if it have not also the power and life. It is not enough that it has the Power, if it have not the form. We must therefore inquire into each of these characters successively; and determine first, what is the Mental Expression, and secondly, what the Material Form.”
--John Ruskin, The Nature of Gothic IV.183.
From A.W.N. Pugin to William Morris, the Victorians were profoundly influenced by a shared aesthetic belief in the reciprocal relationship between the work of art and the society that produces it. If thinkers like Ruskin interpreted the work of art as a means of understanding society, how did the form of the work of art influence the nature and content of that work, and by extension society itself? How did Victorian artists, authors, and critics engage with questions of interpretation, as well as the nature and function of the work of art? What is the relationship between genre, form, and content in the 19th century? How did ideas of form change with the development of new forms and new kinds of media, as well as Victorian reinterpretations of older ones? Finally, how do our own understandings of and theorizations about the nature of the work of art and of interpretation affect our readings of Victorian art, media, and culture?
The Loyola University Chicago Victorian Society solicits paper proposals addressing these questions. The LUCVS welcomes the research of professors, academics, independent scholars, and graduate students. Possible CFP categories include, but are not limited to the following: Nineteenth century, Gothic and the Neo-Gothic, Realism, Aestheticism and the fin-de-siècle, Periodicals, Journalism, Ephemera, Aesthetics, Textual Studies, Queer theory, Women and Gender Studies, Art History, Marxist theory, Narrative theory, Post-colonialism, Religious studies, Theology.
Please send abstracts no longer than 300 words to lucvictoriansociety@gmail.com no later than June 1, 2017.