On Literary Taste

UCL School of European Languages Culture & Society

What pleasure do we get from reading literature? Does our taste in literature provide us with useful knowledge?

Wilkins Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, UCL

About this inaugural lectureLiterary studies, and the academy more generally, has been wary about discussing beauty or taste in reading. And yet the pleasure we take in reading informs what books we choose and how we talk about them.Looking at literature and philosophy in France in the early 19th century, this talk shows that the political stakes of literary taste have been obscured by recent trends in scholarship.Reading Stendhal, in particular, reveals how literature provides a democratic account of taste and politics that is very much needed in today’s debates about populism and disinformation.Prof Jane Gilbert, Director of French at UCL, will be doing the introduction, and Prof Nikolaj Lübecker, St John's College, Oxford University, will be the respondent.About the speakerOriginally from California, Professor Patrick Bray studied French and medicine at Cornell and earned a PhD from Harvard. Before coming to UCL, he held academic positions in the US, most recently at Ohio State. Author of three books on 19th and 20th-Century French literature, from 2018 to 2023 he was Editor-in-Chief of the journal H-France Salon. Professor Patrick Bray is the founding director of the Centre for French and Francophone Research.

Agenda

Registration

Lecture

Drinks Reception

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