By Joshua Landy (NHC Fellow, 2011–12) Why does Mark's Jesus speak in parables? Why does Plato's Socrates make bad arguments? Why are Beckett's novels so inscrutable? And why don't stage magicians even pretend to summon spirits anymore? In a series of captivating chapters on Mark, Plato, Beckett, Mallarmé, and Chaucer, Joshua Landy not only answers … Continued
By Jefferson Hunter (NHC Fellow, 1984–85) The complementarities and antipathies between photographs and literary texts allow the two arts to play off each other, denigrate or exalt each other, and sometimes reach a true collaboration that has more significance than either could achieve alone. Jefferson Hunter examines these symbiotic relationships in a highly original book that will … Continued
By David Ellis (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) Popular though biography is, it has as yet received very little critical attention. What nearly all biographies offer is an understanding of their subjects and an explanation of their behaviour. In this book David Ellis, author of the acclaimed third volume of the Cambridge biography of D H Lawrence, … Continued
By Nicholas Frankel (NHC Fellow, 2001–02)
By Heather Hyde Minor (NHC Fellow, 2013–14) Giovanni Battista Piranesi was one of the most important artists eighteenth-century Europe produced. But Piranesi was more than an artist; he was an engraver and printmaker, architect, antiquities dealer, archaeologist, draftsman, publisher, bookseller, and author. In Piranesi’s Lost Words, Heather Hyde Minor considers Piranesi the author and publisher, focusing … Continued
By Lewis Leary (NHC Fellow, 1978–79)
In this webinar, we’ll consider Orwell’s novel as an example of such political art. How do we understand 1984 as a deliberately crafted work of writing? How can we connect it to Orwell’s previous fifteen years as a prolific and experimental writer? What literary strategies and imaginative techniques underlie the tricky art of engaging politics … Continued
At first glance, a graphic novel is nothing more than a comic that can stand on a bookshelf; however, graphic novels have a history distinct from, and in fraught relationship to, both comics and novels. While graphic novels grew out of the countercultural underground comics scene of the 1960s and 1970s, the form also gave … Continued