Concepts of creativity in 17th-century England
6-7 September 2008
School of Arts, Histories and Cultures, University of Manchester, UK
The early modern period witnessed the flowering of what, today, we would call the creative arts in England, and in recent years the social and cultural significance of such activities has come to be appreciated increasingly by scholars across a broad range of disciplines. But what exactly did it mean to form something, ‘as it were, out of nothing’ in the seventeenth century? While our modern understanding of creativity is firmly based around ideas of imagination and originality, it is far from clear that such concepts were always relevant to the production of visual art, music, plays, poetry and literature in the seventeenth century; moreover, basic tenets that we tend to take for granted – such as the primacy of the author – have been shown to be inappropriate in a number of significant studies. The aim of this interdisciplinary symposium is to explore ways in which we can seek to understand what it meant to be creative in the early modern period. Suggested themes include the following:
* Ideas of authorship and intellectual property
* Imitatio and originality
* Literacy and the function of memory
* Performance and text in music and drama; issues of improvisation
* Print and manuscript cultures; the impact of printing on creativity
* Contemporary terminology for ‘creative’ activities; ‘art’ and ’science’
* Evidence for creative processes
* Women and creativity
* The professional and the amateur…
Proposals are invited for:
1. Individual papers of 20 minutes’ duration (10 minutes to be allowed for discussion after each paper).
2. Sessions involving three or four papers on a specified area commensurate with the theme of the conference, given by different individuals and lasting not more than one-and-a-half hours, including discussion.
Deadline: 31 January 2008
