Guest lecture - Thomas Austenfeld – "Between Lyric and Epic: The Challenge of Walt Whitman"

The DFG – Centre for Advanced Studies “Russian-Language Poetry in Transition” (FOR 2603) cordially invites you to a guest lecture with Prof. Dr. Thomas Austenfeld (University of Fribourg, Switzerland): “Between Lyric and Epic: The Challenge of Walt Whitman”.

Is Walt Whitman a lyric or an epic poet, and how does answering this question help us understand him? In the year of Whitman’s 200^th birthday, this talk reexamines the controversial poet’s position in his own historical moment as well as in ours. Considerations of genre and questions of national identity will help elucidate how Whitman is memorialized and whether his work is amenable to more recent analyses such as Jonathan Culler’s Theory of the Lyric.

Guests are very welcome!