What Happens to Literature if People are Artworks?

if people were artworks


The Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation programme is co-hosting a seminar with Ertegun House on 'What Happens to Literature if People are Artworks?' with Eric Hayot (Penn State), and chaired by Ben Morgan (University of Oxford). Hayot's talk begins with the proposition that the way literary critics describe how to read literature does not resemble how they actually read it. Why? Because, Hayot will suggest, critics have mostly adopted a Romantic theory of what literature is that borrows from elements in the work of Immanuel Kant's Third Critique. Hayot proposes a redescription of what literature would be, if it were the thing that critics treated it as. This has the interesting consequence of producing a redescription, also, of the nature of human beings.

A free sandwich lunch will be provided.

OCCT is a Divisional research programme supported by TORCH and St Anne's College. Convenors Prof. Matthew Reynolds, Prof. Mohamed-Salah Omri, Prof. Ben Morgan, Dr Sowon Park, Prof. Adriana X. Jacobs, Prof. Patrick McGuinness, Prof. Jane Hiddleston, Dr Xiaofan Amy Li, Dr Valentina Gosetti. Co-ordinator: Dr Eleni Philippou.

www.occt.ox.ac.uk; http://www.facebook.com/CompCritOxford; @OxfordCCT

 

Comparative Criticism and Translation

Contact name: Dr Eleni Philippou
Contact email: comparative.criticism@st-annes.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Open to all