The lecture series ran on the 1st, 3rd and 8th November, 2022 at the Levine Auditorium, Trinity College. The 2022 lectures were given by Professor William Marx. Professor Marx is a writer, researcher, and Professor of Comparative Literature at the Collège de France. He received the Montyon Prize of the Académie française in 2010 and was elected a member of the Academia Europaea in 2022. He is the author of The Hatred of Literature (2018) and The Tomb of Oedipus: Why Greek Tragedies Were not Tragic (2022).
The 2022 lecture series was on the subject of 'Libraries of the Mind': “Minds are libraries. We never read texts in a vacuum, but rather draw on other texts on our mental shelves, which contextualize, sort, and steer our understanding of the ones we hold in our hands. These mental shelves go by different names: the canon, heritage, patrimony, tradition.... These shelves might appear to be invisible, but they are in truth inseparable from the material and visible libraries which exist in our real world, and with which they share an intertwined history.”
The three lectures in the 2022 Princeton University Press Lecture Series in European Culture and History explored this concept of 'libraries of the mind', and the effect on our knowledge and enjoyment of literature.
Click here to watch the 2nd lecture
Click here to watch the 3rd lecture
