Philosophy + Literature: Esther Yu (English, Stanford), Discussion on "The Novel as Practice of Consciousness"

The Research Workshop in Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts is proud to host a discussion with Esther Yu (Department of English, Stanford University) on "The Novel as Practice of Consciousness" Locke and Defoe, Revisited

RSVP

Professor Yu is an Assistant Professor of English at Stanford University. Her field of study ranges across the poetry and prose of the early modern period through the eighteenth century, focusing particularly on the history of the emotions, popular politics, and traditions of religious dissent. An early publication of hers dealt with John Milton’s formative influence on fundamental principles of literary criticism. A more recent article in Representations illuminates a neglected early modern conception of the “tender conscience,” from which she derives a new account of the English Civil War and Milton’s career as a whole. Her current project, Experiencing the Novel: The Genre of Tender Conscience, builds on this work, arguing that a seismic shift in perceptions of sensitivity reshaped the political realm and gave to literary history the modern aesthetic form.