Passions and emotions in eighteenth century English literature

The eighteenth century is considered the age of reason. In the course of the century, philosophers,  and  intellectuals strove to release man from the "condition of minority which must blame himself," as goes the well-known definition of Kant. Overall, the eighteenth century recorded an irrepressible interest in passion and emotions that, as he wrote the British newspaper ‘The Spectator’, are "the light of the soul: without passion you are but a blind man". The philosopher David Hume came to say that the same reason is the slave of passions. Therefore, the eighteenth century was in charge of studying passions and emotions: no longer, as in previous centuries, trying to be harnessed within a moral schematism, but to understand the way in which they affect and direct our knowledge and our beliefs. The passions thus became a cognitive tool, useful in understanding and improving the human condition.
A group of scholars will gather on November 30th and December 1st in Venice, at Ca’ Foscari University, to discuss the role of passions and emotions in thought and in eighteenth century English literature at an international conference. Standing out amongst the proceedings is the anticipated keynote lectures by Michael McKeon (Rutgers University) and Margaret A. Doody (Notre Dame University), internationally reputed scholars in the field of eighteenth-century studies. The conference will be held in English.

Programme:
November 30th (3pm)
Michael McKeon (Rutgers University): Aesthetic cognition: Feeling the passions of others
Judith Hawley (Royal Holloway, University of London): Scriblerian cognition: Pope, Arbuthnot and self knowledge
Regina Dal Santo (Ca’ Foscari University):The rhetoric of passions in John Tillotson's Sermons
December 1st at 9:30am
Riccardo Capoferro (Sapienza – University of Rome): Fears, apprehensions, and conjectures in "Robinson Crusoe"
Flavio Gregori (Ca’ Foscari University): The ebbs and flows of passions in "Tristram Shandy"
Isabelle Bour (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III): Cognition and feeling in Maria Edgeworth's "Early Lessons"
Margaret A. Doody (University of Notre Dame): The actor, the mirror, the soul and the sylph: Finding the passions