Imagined Worlds: On the Entanglements of History and Literature

• Department of History

The EUI Intellectual History Working Group hosts a two-hour seminar on the role of literature in history.

The history of literature presents a profound difficulty: How does one historicise a literary work? A work of literature is clearly shaped by its historical context; and yet, annexing a piece of literature to a historical situation risks mutilating it. After all, the power of literature seems to lie precisely in its openness to a plurality of readings underdetermined by the conditions of its making.

In their presentations, our speakers will demonstrate three very different ways of engaging with literature in history, from German Weltliteratur and Weltgeschichte, via August Strindberg’s literary occultism, to contemporary cyberlibertarian science fiction. In this way, we aim to explore how one can engage with literature both as an irreducibly personal form of expression and as a historically conditioned one.

Speakers: Isabelle Riepe (European University Institute), Lukas Lehner (University of Oslo) and Dennis Koelling (European University Institute).

Please register to get a seat or the ZOOM link.