Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-18

Epistemic intersections in early modern England: the place of literature

Objective

This project uncovers the interface between imaginative literature and epistemology in its wider sense in early modern England (1500-1700). This period of intense literary production also saw the cultural forces of humanism and the Reformation collide; crucial shifts in the law; scientific advancement; and dramatic expansion in trade and travel. At stake across the board was knowledge: its theories and technologies, its excitements and anxieties. We examine intersections between literary forms and apparently disparate areas of thinking about ways of knowing:
• theology
• natural philosophy
• economic thinking
• law
Subsequent disciplinary segregation has obscured the understood relations among these disciplines: epistemic transactions vital to the experiences of knowledge and belief which so deeply vexed and shaped the period’s thought.

Our quarry is the specific intervention of literary texts in this conversation. What does literature know, or tell us, that other discourses cannot, or do not, because of their disciplinary investments? What aspirations to objectivity or assurance will it not share with science, religion or the law? How does it complicate economic ideas of insurance by translating them to affective notions of risk and surety? And how do these cognate practices engage with literary constitutions of knowledge? To recover the multiple frame against which this culture articulates its conceptions of knowledge, we read these fields as coeval but distinct. Across the five years, we use two thematic foci to explore and institutionalise the blind spots of knowledge, thereby rewriting the story of early modern epistemology:
i) knowing and knowingness;
ii) doubt and unknowing

To grasp the dialogic relations, we must harness specialist expertise in each discipline. Research will be organised along the four disciplinary strands in the first four years, with literary engagement as a constant, the final year consolidating the project with specific events.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

ERC-2013-CoG
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-CG - ERC Consolidator Grants

Host institution

THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
EU contribution
€ 1 996 743,00
Address
TRINITY LANE THE OLD SCHOOLS
CB2 1TN CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom

See on map

Region
East of England East Anglia Cambridgeshire CC
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Beneficiaries (1)

My booklet 0 0