The English Department, Faculty of Education, University of South Bohemia
is pleased to invite you to the conference
Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Charles University, Prague
“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you anywhere.”
Albert Einstein
“Imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself.”
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
According to both Kant and Einstein, there are strict limits to what human beings could know, nevertheless, there remains an intense human desire to surpass these limitations. Fantasy elements in literature draw on this desire to overcome the distance between the visible and the invisible, the physical and the spiritual, the familiar and the unknown, which is, according to Kant, a crucial element of the sublime. Fantasy and fairy tales attempt to span this gap through the sensuous presentation of the super sensuous, which can be, nevertheless, traced in the whole literary tradition from the medieval and Renaissance literature through the Gothic and Romantic imagery to postmodernism. In the words of Lyotard, the surprising, strange and shocking images can contribute not only to the development of perception, but also to the intensification of being.
In this respect, the papers are invited that cover not only the tradition of fantasy as a literary genre, but also the role of fantasy elements and imagination in selected work of English and American literature.
Download: 2nd Call for Papers (.pdf)
Download: Call for Papers (.pdf)