Recent scholarship on the history of early modern political thought has focused on understanding the anthropological basis on which early modern interpretations of politics were built. It has been pointed out that especially the humanist tradition was keenly interested in analyzing how political virtues were interiorized and actualized through rhetoric that often addressed the imagination of the audience. The mirror-for-prince genre created an image of a perfect monarch that was thought provoke self-reflection and, ideally, self-transformation and the political rhetoric of the time could harness a highly pictorial rhetoric to describe enemies or consequences of actions in pamphlets, sermons, courtly rhetoric, and published treatises. This workshop explores the ways in which imagination, rhetoric, and politics were connected to one another in the early modern period from a variety of angles. What role did the imagination play in the political discourse of the time? How exactly was the connection between political rhetoric and imagination thought to work?
The event takes place at the University of Helsinki, Main Building, 4th floor, U4062.
Everybody is welcome, no registration is required!
Thursday, 24.8.
9.15. Session 1 (Chair Johannes Huhtinen)
Imagination, rhetoric, and politics in Early Modern rhetorical manuals
Kaarlo Havu (University of Helsinki)
10.15-11.45 Session 2 (Chair Markku Peltonen)
Uses of enargeia in Classical Athenian political trials
Ruth Webb (Université de Lille)
Imagining Hell and Heaven in the Middle Ages
Ritva Palmén (University of Helsinki)
13.15-14.45. Session 3 (Chair Cesare Cuttica)
Imagining the Prince: Johann Damgaard’s Alithia (1597) and the Art of Persuasion
Brian Kjaer Olesen (Madrid)
The making of the “great puritan”: John Foxe’s evolving reputation in the early modern historical imagination
Johannes Huhtinen (Åbo Akademi)
15-15.45 Session 4 (Chair Kaarlo Havu)
Aphorism in Francis Bacon's (1561-1626) civil science
Melike Çakan (University of Helsinki)
Friday, 25.8
9.30-11.15 Session 5 (Chair Ritva Palmén)
Ignorance, imagination, and knowledge of the mind
Sandrine Parageau (Université de Sorbonne)
Imagination and Estro Creativo in Early-Modern Neapolitan Political Philosophy
Adriana Luna-Fabritius (University of Helsinki)
11.30-12.15 Session 6 (Chair Kari Saastamoinen)
“One has to present those deeds in pictures”: imagination in J. G. Zimmermann’s Vom Nationalstolze
Laura Tarkka (University of Turku)