Lecture: ‘Coleridge and the Historical School at Göttingen in 1799'

Lecture: ‘Coleridge and the Historical School at Göttingen in 1799'
Thursday 27 April, 5:30pm, Room 111, Foster Court, UCL, London

You are warmly invited to attend a lecture given by Dr. Maximiliaan van Woudenberg, who will be addressing the Science & Literature seminar organised in collaboration between the Reception of British Authors in Europe (RBAE) and UCL A&H with his paper entitled: ‘Coleridge and the Historical School at Göttingen in 1799'.

Dr. van Woudenberg's paper will be followed by questions and discussion, and the meeting will conclude with a glass of wine at 7:30 pm.

'What did Coleridge do in Göttingen?' This has been a persistent question ever since Coleridge returned to England from Germany in 1799. Over the past two hundred years, responses have varied significantly, interpreting the Göttingen period as spoiling Coleridge’s career as a poet; as a waste of time, or; as a significant influence on his thinking.

Founded by the Hanoverian rulers of Great Britain in the 1730s, the University of Göttingen was an innovative institution that anticipated the foundation of the modern von Humboldt research-university model. Drawing on hitherto unexamined primary records and documents, this talk explores Coleridge’s engagement with the innovations of a Reform university during his studies at the University of Göttingen in 1799. In particular, it was the methodology of the Historical School at Göttingen that had a profound impact on Coleridge’s intellectualism. An understanding of the influence of the Historical School at Göttingen characterizes Coleridge as a visionary whose cross-cultural importation of continental methods in England was ahead of its time.

Dr. Maximiliaan van Woudenberg: Maximilaan van Woudenberg is a College Professor of English and Communications in the Faculty of Humanities at the Sheridan Institute of Technology in Canada. He has published on book history, print and material culture, digital humanities, and such Romantic figures as Austen, Byron, Coleridge, and Mary Shelley. Along with Dr. Anthony Mandal, he is an editor of the online journal Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780-1840. He recently completed a monograph on Coleridge’s activities at the University of Göttingen, which will be published by Routledge this Summer.

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