Our fifth event saw Dr Bijan Omrani speak about one of classical Greece’s best-known and most significant playwrights, Euripides (c. 480 – c. 406 BC).
In Bijan’s own words:
"Euripides was one of the great tragedians of classical Athens. Although wildly popular in his lifetime, his work has troubled and confused audiences both ancient and modern. Aristotle said of him that he was the most tragic of poets, but Nietzsche that he, along with Socrates, caused the very extinction of the genre.
He has variously been hailed as a feminist and excoriated as a hater of women. Some have claimed him an anti-war ironist who corroded the moral fabric of Athenian life, whilst others insist that he was a staunch upholder of traditional values. Whilst Sophocles is claimed to have said that Euripides drew his characters as true to life, ‘not as they ought to be, but as they are,’ and Goethe asked ‘Have any of the nations of the world since his time produced one dramatist who was worthy to hand him his slippers,’ this has not held back some modern critics from claiming that his plays are stuffed full of ‘self-indulgent digression for the sake of rhetorical display.’
His treatment of the gods has caused the most perplexity. Many have agreed with the Victorian critic, Arthur Verrall, that he was ‘Euripides the Rationalist’, the philosopher of the stage, an early proponent of atheism, whose plays made a mockery of the gods. Others insist that he was a pious defender of the gods and received religious values. For me, regardless of his mastery of poetry and drama, and whatever might be made of his treatment of politics or gender, his grappling with the idea of the divine is the most significant and compelling part of Euripides’ legacy. With particular reference to one play, The Bacchae, (currently running at the National Theatre), I shall explore Euripides’ struggle with the idea of the gods and the holy, and why his work and thought in this field still matters."
Bijan Omrani’s doctoral research was on Euripides and early philosophy. He is the author of various books on cultural and religious history, most recently God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England.
For our fourth event we invited Dr Alexander Lee to speak about the sixteenth-century Italian architect Andrea Palladio. In Alex's own words:"Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) is one of the most influential and widely imitated architects in history. Working amidst the ferment of late Renaissance Italy, he created a style which combined classical authority, calm, and convenience – and which placed harmony above all else. Such acclaim did it enjoy that, before long, his work was being emulated, not just throughout Europe, but around the world. Its influence can be felt in Bernini’s design for St. Peter’s Square in Rome; in Inigo Jones’ Banqueting House in London; in Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello – and in countless others besides.But who was Palladio? How did a provincial miller’s son rise to become an architect of such outstanding qualities? What was ‘new’ about his style? And why did it have such a lasting impact? Retracing his journey from humble stonemason to de facto architect of the Venetian Republic (and beyond), this talk will discuss how Palladio was, above all, a man rooted in his times. It will explore how his style was shaped by Roman and Renaissance models; by the tastes and interests of a small group of humanists; and by the shifting currents of Venetian politics and society."A specialist in the cultural and political history of the Renaissance in Italy, Alex’s current research into Palladio’s life and work follows several important books on the Italian Renaissance, including a biography of Machiavelli which was described by The Sunday Times as the ‘definitive’ account of the political thinker. Alex's ongoing research into Palladio promises to be just as significant for our understanding of the sixteenth century and the afterlives of Palladio’s work in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.You can find Alex’s full academic profile here.
This is the recording of our second event, where Paul Pay spoke on Richard Wagner. Paul Lay is Senior Editor of Engelsberg Ideas, and the author of Providence Lost: the Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate (Head of Zeus). The musical accompaniment Paul selected for the talk is Brünnhilde’s Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung.
The inaugural Canon Club event took place in London at the Sekforde on Wednesday 11th October, where Jaspreet Singh Boparai spoke on Paradise Lost and Dr Johnson's "Life of Milton". The talk transcript is here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eK1pUNKFY7-SHSRZqVUGZLTVrvdGJtyV/edit Jaspreet trained as a classicist and historian of art, and specialises in the culture of Renaissance Italy, and the influence of ancient Roman sculpture and classical Greek poetry on artists and writers in fifteenth-century Florence. He studied Classics so that he wouldn't need footnotes to understand the Latin and Greek references in Paradise Lost. His doctorate focussed on the work of the Renaissance polymath Politian (1454-1494), who was a hero both to John Milton and Dr Samuel Johnson. He is one of the founders of the Antigone Journal, a new and open forum for Classics in the twenty-first century. By way of an introduction, he writes: "Why is Paradise Lost the greatest poem in our language? And how is this, the work of a Puritan regicide, our national epic? English writers and thinkers have been arguing about this for over three hundred and fifty years. Sometimes these arguments get in the way of enjoying Milton's work, which is one of the richest sources of pleasure in English literature. Our best guide to Milton's poem remains Dr Samuel Johnson's "Life of Milton", from Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779-1781). Dr Johnson's exploration of Paradise Lost and its author has itself become a monument of English literature. But was Dr Johnson right about Milton?" Music Thomas Tallis - Mass for Four Voices: 3. Sanctus
This is the recording of our third event: Professor Douglas Hedley speaking on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet, literary critic, philosopher, theologian and one of the founders of the Romantic Movement. Douglas Hedley is Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Fellow of Clare College at the University of Cambridge.
