Closure in the 18th Century
Saturday, May 5, 2001
For many philosophers, political theorists, literary critics, and historians, the French Revolution of 1789 marks the end of the Ancien Régime, or the classical episteme and the beginning of modernity. Others understand this moment as a divide between the end of the classical age and the birth of the romantic age. Much of the writing
about the 18th century is concerned with closure. However, this necessity for seeing and demarcating closure -- philosophically, historically, and otherwise -- which many of the writings on the 18th century also inhabits and is problematized in the very texts, buildings, works of art, etc., that were written, constructed, and created in the 18th century.
Marivaux's, Diderot's, and Sterne's novels all provoke questions or problems of closure in the narrative form with their abandoned conclusions and "unfinished" endings. Various forms of enclosures (from previously public land, to the building, to the codex), also play a dramatic role in transforming identity, subjectivity, art forms, science, etc. New prisons, new theaters, Sadian torture rooms, and even the human body create enclosed spaces that dictate and articulate new forms of knowledge, new economies, and new forms of communication.
The Princeton Eighteenth Century Society (P.E.C.S.) invites papers that explore closure in any of its manifestations in the 18th Century.We welcome contributors from all disciplines.General categories for investigation are listed but not limited to the following:
Conclusion(s)
Enclosure (public space, architectural, codex, textual)
Death
Framing (art, tables, text)
Narrative closure
Historical and philosophical closure
Periodization
Repetition
Revolution