Disasters and Catastrophes in the Enlightenment
Call for papers:
Enlightenment specialists and non-specialists alike are familiar with the disaster that engulfed Lisbon on November 1, 1755, and equally with Voltaire’s famous answer to the catastrophe in his Poem on the Lisbon Disaster and in the form of the novel Candide. But what was the larger climate of opinion during the Age of Enlightenment concerning the nature of providence, the meaning of disasters, and the appropriate human response to such events? This next meeting of the Enlightenment Group would like to consider a wide range of answers to such questions. We welcome proposals for papers (about 20 minutes in length) on any aspect of the Enlightenment’s thinking about disasters and providence, from historical, philosophical, literary, and artistic (or musical!) points of view.
Antoine Eche, Department of Languages and Cultures, Mount Royal University