Archives 1996–2012 de l’ancienne équipe REHSEIS
Laboratoire SPHERE – UMR 7219

In this workshop, scholars from different disciplines will work together to study the early modern imagination. In particular, we are interested in the relation between general conceptions of the imagination at the time and more specific and controversial ideas of a creative, active and forceful imagination.
This powerful imagination was dependent on ‘spirit’ in its different meanings in the early modern period (human spirit, demons, animal and other spirits, spirit of nature, etc.), resulting in a rich variety of opinions. These ideas of an active imagination and of powerful spirits, in their full complexity and diversity, were transmitted between philosophy, literature, medicine, the sciences, witchcraft, demonology as well as religion, and the workshop aims at unearthing the exchanges between these various fields.

PROGRAM


9.30 am
Welcome and Tea/Coffee

10.00 – 10.15 am
Martine Pécharman (MFO, CNRS) and Koen Vermeir (SPHERE, CNRS) :
introduction : Power of Spirit and Imagination in the 17th Century

Session 1, Chair : Ian MacLean (All Souls College, Oxford)


10.15 – 11.00 a.m
Frédérique Aït-Touati (St John’s College, Oxford)
Voir, imaginer, savoir : du bon usage de l’imagination en philosophie naturelle.

Tea/Coffee break


11.15 – 12.00 a.m
Frédéric De Buzon (UMR 5037-CNRS)

Du bon usage de l’imagination : physique et mathématique chez Descartes et Malebranche
12.00 – 12.45 p.m.
John O’Brien (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Montaigne imaginaire.

Lunchbreak


Session 2, Chair : Martine Pécharman (MFO-CNRS)

2.00 – 2.45 p.m.
Thibaut Maus de Rolly (Worcester College, Oxford)

Entre mauvais esprits et esprits animaux : les débats sur la force de l’imagination dans les traités démonologiques des 16e et 17e siècles.
2.45 – 3.30 p.m.
Robin Briggs (Oxford University)

Witches, demons and the early modern imagination.

Tea/Coffee break


Session 3, Chair : Koen Vermeir (SPHERE-CNRS)

4.00 – 4.45 p.m.
Anna Corrias (Warburg Institute, University of London)

Nebuchadnezzar among the oxen : the power of the imagination in Marsilio Ficino’s theory of the vehicles of the soul
4.45 – 5.30 p.m.
Angus Gowland (University College, London)

Theories of melancholic dreaming in the Renaissance

With the support
of the Maison Française d’Oxford
and
the Institut des Sciences de la Communication du CNRS