Religion in the Shelley Circle

42nd Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 7-10, 2011
New Brunswick, NY – Hyatt New Brunswick
Host Institution: Rutgers University

As we approach the 200th anniversary of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s expulsion from Oxford in the aftermath of his publication of “The Necessity of Atheism,” it is fitting to examine the place of religion in the thought and work of the members of the Shelley circle. Certainly, the importance of atheism to the development of Percy Shelley’s reputation both during and after his life is significant. His dramatization of the differences in philosophical and theological beliefs between himself and Lord Byron in “Julian and Maddalo,” for instance, has provided an important subject for critical consideration in this area, but is matched in significance by several of his other poems and essays.

To be sure, though, Percy Shelley is only one of the more celebrated figures associated with the issue of religion during the Romantic period. In fact, religion was a primary concern in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially after the commencement of the French Revolution and throughout the time leading up to the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 and the passage of the Roman Catholic Relief Act in 1829. Consequently, the connections between religion and politics represented a powerful influence not only on Percy Shelley, but also on most of the other writers among the second generation of Romantics.

This panel invites participants to examine the works of the younger Romantics in terms of their treatment of religion. Papers specifically on the writers of the Shelley circle are especially encouraged, but those focusing on other writers of the time or which consider connections to writers of the previous generation of Romantics will also be considered.

500-word abstracts should be emailed as MS Word (.doc or .docx) attachments to L. Adam Mekler, adam.mekler@morgan.edu.

Deadline: September 30, 2010

Please include with your abstract:

Name and Affiliation
Email address
Postal address
Telephone number
A/V requirements (if any; $10 handling fee with registration)

The 42nd Annual Convention will feature approximately 360 sessions, as well as dynamic speakers and cultural events. Details and the complete Call for Papers for the 2011 Convention will be posted in June: www.nemla.org.

Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable. Do not accept a slot if you may cancel to present on another session.

Selected panelists must be NeMLA members and registered for the conference by 30 November 2010.