ANZAMEMS 2022 Conference CFP – Panel on Aesthetics in Medieval and Early Modern Poetry

The panel(s) will examine the influence of aesthetic styles, movements, rhetorical and aesthetic techniques and theories on the development of poetry, or the work of specified poet(s) at any time during the relevant periods in Europe and Britain. Papers should be set within the broader topic of the overall conference, and deal with questions of reception and/or emotion. Topics of discussion will include of themes such as:

· The role of emotions in medieval or early modern aesthetic theories;

· Models of embodiment in aesthetic theories during the period;

· Theories of affect, affectus and/or feelings;

· The impact of theological and biblical sources (for example, by Augustine and Aquinas);

· The impact of philosophy of mind/body, metaphysics and ethics (such as the Platonic and Aristotelian);

· Formal theories of poetics and rhetoric, including the role of style in rhetorical figures and tropes;

· The impact of artistic movements (such as Neoplatonist, Neoclassical, Baroque) and the reciprocal influence of visual arts on poetry (eg ut pictura poiesis);

· Public and private models of ‘taste’, audience and reception;

· The role of pleasure, the imagination and sensuous and vivid imagery;

· Techniques for the aestheticization of the sacred (such as the poetics of enigma);

· Theories of the sublime and the beautiful;

· Participatory versus objectivist aesthetics;

· Materialist, or transcendental and idealist models;

· Poststructural or psychoanalytic approaches; or

· The role and value of historicist and/or modern theory.

The panel(s) will be held as part of the biennial conference of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, at the School of Humanities, The University of Western Australia, Perth, 27 June to 1 July, 2022.