Graduate English Speaker Series
When and Where
Speakers
Description
Join us on October 6th at 4:15 PM in Jackman Humanities Building Room 616 for an exciting talk by Marion Turner, J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at University of Oxford.
A reception will follow the event. RSVP form is available here.
Talk title:
"Premodern Fictionality: Aristotle, Ibn Rushd, Chaucer”
Abstract:
What does fiction do? How does it act on readers? Why does it have such a unique power? In this talk, I explore the re-interpretation of Aristotle’s Poetics by Islamic thinkers in the later Middle Ages, tracing a line from their radical focus on the imagination (rather than mimesis), to Chaucer’s understanding of poetry. Taking Troilus and Criseyde as a key text, I discuss medieval depictions of how poetry makes us feel, its relationship to ethics and theology, and the importance of metre. I argue that bold (mis)translations of Aristotle reoriented European understandings of what literature does.
Speaker Bio:
Marion Turner is the J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford. Her prize-winning books include Chaucer: A European Life (Princeton, 2019), and The Wife of Bath: A Biography (Princeton, 2023). Last year she curated a major exhibition at the Bodleian Library, Chaucer: Here and Now, and edited an accompanying book. She is currently writing a book about fiction across time.
