AUR President, Dr. Scott Sprenger, and Dr. Patrick Bray, Director of the Centre for French and Francophone Research at University College London (UCL), will host a 1-day colloquium focused on Taste and Democracy in the 19th Century (Le goût et la démocratie au XIXe siècle). 

At this event, Dr. Sprenger will present a paper on one of his particular subjects of expertise, the French novelist Honoré de Balzac, entitled Balzac et le goût: Une critique de Kant (Balzac and Taste: A Critique of Kant).

Speakers include faculty experts on the topic from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Italy. The schedule is as follows:

10:00 am - Ouverture (Opening)

Jusqu’où mène le mauvais goût? Décalages du goût, décalages temporels dans Le Rouge et le Noir 
(How far does bad taste lead? : Shifts in taste, temporal shifts in Le Rouge et le Noir)
Patrick BRAY (UCL)

10:45 - 12:00  

Balzac et Stendhal (Balzac and Stendhal)
Moderator: Lia BROZGAL (UCLA)

Balzac et le goût: Une critique de Kant (Balzac and Taste: A Critique of Kant)
Scott SPRENGER (AUR)

Stendhal, Balzac ou les ambivalences de l’argent niveleur (Stendhal, Balzac or the ambivalences of leveling money) 
Francesco SPANDRI (Roma 3)

12:00 - 2:00 pm - Lunch

2:00 - 3:15 pm

Philosophies du goût (Philosophies of taste) 
Moderator: Annalisa IZZO (Pepperdine University)

La critica di Guyau al trivialismo. L’emergere di un nuovo gusto letterario nell’estetica francese di fine Ottocento
(Guyau's critique of trivialism. The emergence of a new literary taste in late nineteenth-century English aesthetics)
Annamaria CONTINI (Modena e Reggio Emilia)

Marques, signes, signaux : pour une esthétique stendhalienne (Marks, signs, signals: for a Stendhalian aesthetic)
Alessandra ALOISI (Oxford).

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