This conference sought to examine the prominent place of reason, or rational argumentation, in the literature of early modern France and Italy. Topics covered the aesthetics of polemical writing; reasoning and the formation of subjectivities; resistance to the rhetoric of persuasian; and the rationality of literary pleasure.

Sponsored by the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Service Culturel du Consulat Général de France à Chicago; and organized by Philippe Desan, University of Chicago; Ullrich Langer, University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Tilde Sankovitch, Northwestern University.

Friday, October 16

Welcome and introduction

Richard H. Brown, The Newberry Library

Session 1

Chair: Tilde Sankovitch, Northwestern University

Reasoning with the Senses
John O’Brien, University of Liverpool (now at Royal Holloway, University of London)

Le raisonnement naturel
Marie-Luce Demonet-Launay, Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand

Respondent: Marian Rothstein, Carthage College (now emerita)

Session 2

Chair: Philippe Desan, University of Chicago

En marge du vrai et du faux
André Tournon, Université de Provence Aix-Marseille

Respondent: Tom Conley, University of Minnesota (now at Harvard University)

Saturday, October 17

Session 3

Chair: Ullrich Langer, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Rhetoric and Reason of State: The Reception of Machiavelli
Victoria Kahn, Princeton University (now at University of California, Berkeley)

Reasoning Away Colonialism: Tasso and the Production of the Gerusalemme liberata
Jane Tylus, University of Wisconsin-Madison (now at New York University)

Aristotelian Hierarchy and the Simplicity of the World in Ambroise Paré’s Monstres et prodiges
George Hoffman, Boston University (now at University of Michigan)

Respondent: Janet Levarie Smarr, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (now at University of California, San Diego)

Session 4

Chair: Colette Winn, Washington University in Saint Louis

Dialogical Argument: Scripting Rhetoric
Jean-Claude Carron, University of California, Los Angeles

La règle de la non-contradiction et la literature française à la Renaissance
Jan Miernowski, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Respondent: Michael Murrin, University of Chicago

Learn more about Center for Renaissance Studies programs.