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Origins: Order vs. Chaos | Aaron Hanlon
October 3, 2017, 7:00 PM
Free
When we think about the factors that led to the creation of the novel as a literary form in English, we might not think of the rise and institutionalization of experimental science. Yet the chartering of the Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge in 1662 had a profound impact on what novels and novelistic fiction would become in the 17th and 18th centuries, the formative years of the novel as we know it. This talk by Assistant Professor of English Aaron Hanlon will address two important origin stories in Enlightenment history: the origins of the Royal Society and the origins of the novel. But it will also explain how these two origin stories overlap in telling ways that would change the histories of science and literature forever.
Sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities.