Literature
Live and Let Die - in Greek Epic
Almut Fries explores the iconography of the black-figured wine jug in this TORCH Bite-Size talk at the Ashmolean Museum LiveFriday The Attic black-figured wine jug illustrates a crucial scene from The Illiad, a tale in which heroism and villainy merge. This talk will explain the iconography of the vase painting (including the symbolism of the animal skins Dolon and Diomedes are wearing) and locate it in Greek mythical history – Homer and beyond
Indian Arrivals, 1870-1915: Networks of British Empire
Elleke Boehmer discusses her new book with Megan Robb, Faisal Devji and Santanu Das Elleke Boehmer (Professor of World Literature in English, University of Oxford) discusses her new book with Megan Robb (Lecturer of Hindi and Urdu, Oriental Institute, and Junior Research Fellow at New College, University of Oxford), Faisal Devji (University Reader in Modern South Asian History, University of Oxford) and Santanu Das (Reader of English Literature, Kings College London). The discussion is introduced and chaired by Professor James Belich (Beit Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth History, University of Oxford).
Elleke Boehmer's book "Indian Arrivals 1870-1915: Networks of British Empire" explores the rich and complicated landscape of intercultural contact between Indians and Britons on British soil at the height of empire, as reflected in a range of literary writing, including poetry and life-writing. The book's four decade-based case studies, leading from 1870 and the opening of the Suez Canal, to the first years of the Great War, investigate from several different textual and cultural angles the central place of India in the British metropolitan imagination at this relatively early stage for Indian migration. Focusing on a range of remarkable Indian 'arrivants' -- scholars, poets, religious seekers, and political activists including Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu, Mohandas Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore -- "Indian Arrivals" examines the take-up in the metropolis of the influences and ideas that accompanied their transcontinental movement, including concepts of the west and of cultural decadence, of urban modernity and of cosmopolitan exchange.
Comparative Encounters between Artaud, Michaux and the Zhuangzi
Part of "Book at Lunchtime", a fortnightly series of bite size book discussions, with commentators from a range of disciplines. Xiaofan Amy Li discusses her new book "Comparative Encounters Between Artaud, Michaux and the Zhuangzi." Xiaofan Amy Li (Randall MacIver Junior Research Fellow in Comparative Literature and Translation, University of Oxford), with Marina Warner (Fellow, All Souls College, University of Oxford), Wang Xing (DPhil student in Oriental Studies, University of Oxford), read a review by Prof Lloyd and Matthew Reynolds (Times Lecturer in English, University of Oxford)
The encounter between different minds and perspectives across time and space has always haunted the literary and philosophical imagination. Just such an encounter is staged and played out in this comparative study, which connects the twentieth-century Francophone writers Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) and Henri Michaux (1899-1984) with the ancient Chinese text Zhuangzi (c. 4th-3rd century BCE). These disparate texts are bridged by questions that draw them into close dialogue: how can Artaud and Michaux, who read about and admired ancient Chinese literature and culture, be rethought through certain philosophical concerns that the Zhuangzi raises? If the points of conceptual intersection focus on rationality, cosmology and ethics, what can they tell us about these important issues? By imagining, constructing and developing this thought-encounter, Li re-envisages Artaud, Michaux and the Zhuangzi through the kaleidoscope of comparative interpretation, juxtaposing and recombining ideas and contexts to form new patterns and meanings.
Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life
Jonathan Bate, Anne Farrar Donovan, Seamus Perry and Oliver Taplin discuss life-writing, poetry and the poet To celebrate the publication of Jonathan Bate's new biography Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life we were joined by a distinguished panel to discuss life-writing, poetry and the poet.
Seamus Perry (Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford) explores Hughes's seductive personality and poetry, and his 'genius for mythologisation', and describes how Jonathan Bate's new biography humanises Ted Hughes.
Oliver Taplin (Former Fellow and Tutor of Classics at Magdalen College, University of Oxford) discusses Hughes's fertile and unapologetic engagement with the literature of Ancient Greece and Rome, and his direct and fruitful engagement with the theatre.
Anne Farrar Donovan (cousin of Ted Hughes) shares her memories of Ted Hughes and the Farrar family and of Hughes's time in Heptonstall.
In response to audience questions, Jonathan Bate (Provost of Worcester College and Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford) describes how his opinion of Hughes has changed since embarking on the project and the ethics of biography.
Callaloo Literary Lecture and Reading by Fred d'Aguiar
Fred reads fiction and poems about his childhood in Guyana, remembering his father, and slavery
Light in Germany: Scenes from an Unknown Enlightenment
A discussion of Jim Reed's book Jim Reed (Taylor Professor of German, University of Oxford) discusses his book Light in Germany: Scenes from an Unknown Enlightenment with Joachim Whaley (Professor of German History and Thought, University of Cambridge) and Kevin Hilliard (Lecturer in German, University of Oxford). The event is chaired by Ritchie Robertson (Taylor Professor of German, University of Oxford)
About the book: Germany’s political and cultural past from ancient times through World War II has dimmed the legacy of its Enlightenment, which these days is far outshone by those of France and Scotland. In this book, T. J. Reed clears the dust away from eighteenth-century Germany, bringing the likes of Kant, Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Gotthold Lessing into a coherent and focused beam that shines within European intellectual history and reasserts the important role of Germany’s Enlightenment.
Reed looks closely at the arguments, achievements, conflicts, and controversies of these major thinkers and how their development of a lucid and active liberal thinking matured in the late eighteenth century into an imaginative branching that ran through philosophy, theology, literature, historiography, science, and politics. He traces the various pathways of their thought and how one engendered another, from the principle of thinking for oneself to the development of a critical epistemology; from literature’s assessment of the past to the formulation of a poetic ideal of human development. Ultimately, Reed shows how the ideas of the German Enlightenment have proven their value in modern secular democracies and are still of great relevance—despite their frequent dismissal—to us in the twenty-first century.