EDMUND BURKE AND THE BUSINESS OF AFFECTION
The English Faculty, University of Oxford
26-27 June 2007

2007 sees the 250th anniversary of the publication of Edmund Burke's
'Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime
and the Beautiful'. To mark the occasion there will be a two-day
academic conference on Burke at the English Faculty, Oxford
University. Accommodation will be available to delegates at St.
Catherine's College, Oxford. The conference is scheduled for the last
week of June 2007 (Tuesday and Wednesday 26th-27th).

The title for the event is 'Edmund Burke and the Business of
Affection'. Although we intend to celebrate the publication of the
'Philosophical Enquiry', all of Burke's oeuvre is open for
discussion. The bias of the conference, however, is towards Burke's
activities as a writer and speaker, and his place in
eighteenth-century literary history. Since the inception of the
Clarendon edition of Burke's 'Writings and Speeches' in 1981, the
most important developments of Burke scholarship have been in the
study of his high politics. The purpose of this conference is to turn
critical attention back to the texts that Burke wrote, and to
reconsider the cultural and intellectual environments in which he
wrote them.

Post-graduates and early-career researchers are invited to prepare
posters of the kind favoured at science conferences, and to present
them at a round-table seminar. Abstracts of papers will be circulated.

Proposals for posters on any topic within the above parameters are
welcomed, but there are three points of interest that we hope will
attract particular attention. First is the question of Burke's
involvement with eighteenth-century associational life. How
significant to his writings and thought was his membership of the
Blue-Stocking Circle of Elizabeth Montagu, his coterie friendships
with Johnson, Reynolds, Burney and Sheridan, or the conversations
that he enjoyed with the Scottish scientists of man during his
rectorship of Glasgow University? Second is the issue of originality
and form in Burke's writings. Did seventeenth-century Romance, or
Shakespeare, or the British Augustan poets hold sway over Burke's
literary imagination? Had Burke (like Cicero) written a rhetorical
treatise not only at the beginning of his career but also at its end,
what form might that second treatise have taken? Third is the problem
of influence and reception. When Burke played patron to men like
James Barry and George Crabbe, by what spirit of sympathy or
presumption was he motivated? Did Coleridge or Hazlitt overestimate
Burke's influence on their writings?

Please send proposals for posters to:
Dr. Paddy Bullard
St. Catherine's College,
Oxford. OX1 3UJ

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Received on Sat Jul 01 2006 - 07:14:32 EDT