The Coleridge Lectures 2015: Andrew Kelly

The Coleridge Lectures 2015: Andrew Kelly
Animals ‘in the Fraternity of universal Nature’
Reception Room, Wills Memorial Building, University of Bristol
Thu 26 March 2015, 18.00-19.30

Free, but booking required - booking opens 12 February 2015

The Romantics took great interest in science, the natural world and animals. In his utopian community the Pantisocracy (the all-governing society – where labour would be minimised and time devoted to study, liberal discussions and educating children) Coleridge said animals were to be brothers and sisters ‘in the Fraternity of universal Nature’. His poem ‘To a Young Ass’ hailed the animal he had befriended in Jesus College as ‘Brother’. Though mocked at the time for these views, animal rights and animal welfare were debated widely amongst the Romantics and remain controversial issues today. Andrew Kelly looks at the views of the Romantics and current campaigns for animals.

Andrew Kelly is director of Bristol Cultural Development Partnership and Bristol Festival of Ideas, and is a visiting professor at the University of the West of England. His projects include Brunel 200, Bristol 800 and the annual Bristol Great Reading Adventure. He is the author of All Quiet on the Western Front, the Story of a Film (1998) and Cinema and the Great War (1997) among 12 other books. In 2014 he directed Bristol’s programme marking 100 years since the start of the First World War, the largest UK programme commemorating the centenary. He has campaigned on animal welfare and other social and environmental issues for 30 years. He speaks in a personal capacity.

This lecture is part of a new annual series inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s radical lectures in Bristol in 1795. The 2015 series is run in association with the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol and Bristol 2015. It is part of The Romantic Poets and Bristol programme, which celebrates the life of Thomas Chatterton, Hannah More, William Wordsworth, Coleridge and others in the city, and Bristol as the place where Romanticism was born with the first publication of the Lyrical Ballads. The programme focuses especially on nature and the emotions, place and the environment, and also looks at Bristol as a city for science, philosophy, ideas and political debate at the time of Coleridge and today. The 2015 theme is Radical Green. Future themes are: Utopias (2016); Revolution (2017) and Peace (2018).

Please be ready to take your place by 17.50.

We have restricted the number of tickets that can be booked to one per transaction. This has been introduced in an effort to stop people automatically booking multiple tickets without confirming if they have guests to go with them. We hope this will help to limit the number of 'no shows' at the events, which currently run at around 35% of bookings. We will monitor the situation. If you need more than one ticket, you can click on the booking link again. The little extra effort involved will hopefully put off those who don’t really need more than one, but not those who do.

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