The first annual conference of the newly formed Australasian Association for Literature
University of Western Sydney, Parramatta Campus
BUILDING EA
July 12-13, 2007

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Derek Attridge (York University, UK)
Brian Boyd (University of Auckland)

Since Plato developed his famous story of the cave in The Republic a distinction has been made between the light of truth, which is offered to us by reason, and the shadow realm of appearances offered to us by our sensations. Given their adherence to sensations (the worlds of feeling and immediate perception we commonly inhabit) poets were cast from Plato’s Republic, and ever since literature has been understood to primarily think with and through sensations.

The idea of thinking through sensations has not always been understood in a negative way (even in Plato), and many thinkers and artists in different periods have moved forward to defend this mode of thought. Most recently cognitive science has added weight to the importance of sensations to our cognitive processes.

Sensation has also been important to literature in other senses of the word: the ‘sensational’ or overtly dramatic, in whatever ways it manifests itself, is clearly important to the various dramatic forms available to literary practitioners.