The public is invited to the following lecture. A 1,000 yen donation from non-members would be appreciated, but is not required.
Place: OAG House auditorium (the German Cultural Center), behind Sogetsu Kaikan on Aoyama-dori near Aoyama-ichome.
Information: TEL (03)3586-1548
Was Coleridge's Ancient Mariner enlightened or crippled by his
experiences in the Pacific? Was Kubla Khan a despotic tyrant
or a philosopher-king? Did Europe despise or admire Eastern
civilizations during the Romantic period? Dr. Stephen Prickett
address these questions in a lecture which examines how Europe
was both patronizing and self-congratulatory in its depictions
of the Orient, while at the same time it made Asian cultures the
locus of European myths, hopes and ideals. This polarity was already
present in European thought at the end of the eighteenth century,
the great age of Pacific exploration. Dr. Prickett finds
that both positions were potent sources of new ideas for European
culture, as he examines the influence of the Orient--those lands
represented by the fanciful pictures on the margins of old maps-
on European Romantic culture.
Dr. Stephen Prickett is Regius Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow. He has published more than fifty articles and ten books on Romanticism, Victorian Studies and related topics. Two of his books, Words and the Word, and the Landmarks Bible, have been translated into Japanese. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1968.
Edited from material submitted by Dr. Joshua Dale.
Return to the ASJ 1999 lecture schedule