British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
The Contest between Poet and Priest
Speaker:
Geoffrey Hartman, FBA, Yale University
Chair: Elinor Shaffer, FBA, Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies,
School of Advanced Study, University of London
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
7pm to 8.30pm, followed by a drinks reception
to be held a the British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace,
London SW1
Geoffrey Hartman, one of the British Academy's Corresponding Fellows, has led the refiguring of our conceptions of Romanticism since his ground-breaking book Wordsworth's Poetry (1964). Professor Hartman will give a lecture reconsidering the contest between religion and poetry in the eighteenth century and Romanticism, especially as represented by Addison, Blake, and Coleridge. At issue is the poet's vocation as it asserts itself in a freer visionary poetry and seeks to displace 'the primeval Priest's assumed power' (Blake) by reappropriating, forging, or forging anew, an ancient, logos-powered voice.
Geoffrey Hartman is Sterling Professor of English and Comparative Literature (Emeritus) and Senior Research Scholar at Yale. He has held distinguished visiting appointments at many universities in the U.S. and abroad, and is a Chevalier, Ordre des Arts et Lettres of the French Ministry of Culture. Among his other awards are the Christian Gauss Prize for Wordsworth's Poetry, the René Wellek Prize for The Fateful Question of Culture, and the 2006 Truman Capote Prize for The Geoffrey Hartman Reader. He is also a Co-founder of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies and continues as its Project Director.
Geoffrey Hartman will also be speaking at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, University of Cambridge. Further details are available from
http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2007-8/hartman.html
Please note our registration and seating policy:
- Please register using the online booking form
- No tickets will be issued for this event
- The first 100 audience members arriving at the Academy will be offered a seat in our Lecture Room where this event will take place. The next 50 people to arrive will be offered a seat in our Overflow Room which has a video and audio link to the Lecture Room.