“What place is this, what land, what quarter of the globe?” : The Compass of Story in Dislocated Times

Professor Marina Warner (Birkbeck College London)

Wednesday 15 March 2017 @ 18.30, Grimond Lecture Theatre 1
(Followed by a reception in Grimond Foyer)

To attend this event please book online.

T. S. Eliot’s question, inspired by Shakespeare’s Pericles, arises from circumstances of utter loss, disorientation, shipwreck and near-death on arrival in a strange new place. But even when stripped of all outward possessions and even identity, every arrivant is still thebearer-being of culture, stories, and memories. To quote another poet, Cavafy, we all carry our Ithakas with us: walls and borders have very little power over our minds, and stories travel the world regardless of religion, race, or even language. Against the background of the current refugee crisis, Marina Warner will look at migrating stories, from myths of Troy to Eliot’s uses of Christian legend, and trace the compass bearings they offer.

Marina Warner is a writer of fiction and cultural history principally inspired by myth and fairy tale. Her books include Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (l976), Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (l982) and Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (l988). In l994 she gave the BBC Reith Lectures on the theme of Six Myths of Our Time.

Marina Warner is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, a Professorial Research Fellow, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, a Fellow of the British Academy, a Commendatore nellá Ordine della Stella di Solidareità , a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and DBE. She was given the Holberg Prize in the Arts and Humanities in 2015.

The event is co-sponsored by Eliot College and the Centre for Postcolonial Studies.