This talk by Kevin Killeen, Professor of English and Related Literature at the University of York, will focus on three pieces of scientific poetry, and the way in which early modern gush – that quintessential way of speaking amongst radicals and enthusiasts – had its epistemological cousin, a way of thinking about multiple sciences, kaleidoscopically imagined. It will focus on works by two largely unknown poets, Anne Southwell (c. 1620) and Mary Chudleigh (1703), and the ways in which they incorporate natural philosophy into their poems, pivoting between these with attention to Samuel Pordage (1661) whose quasi-epic poem produced a surging, angelic, mystico-philosophical version of Jacob Boehme's alles-in-allem poetics of the universe.

The event is organised by Cluster Co-Director Anne Eusterschulte, Cecilia Muratori (University of Pavia) and Antje Wittstock (Freie Universität Berlin), and takes place as part of the research colloquium run by Anne Eusterschulte and Cluster member Sebastian Tränkle.

  

Date and Time:

Wednesday, 19 November 2025, 6–8 p.m. (c.t.)

Address:

Freie Universität Berlin
Institute of Philosophy
Room SIR 2
Habelschwerdter Allee 30
14195 Berlin