Ep. 23 - Iain McGilchrist: The Coincidence of Opposites

The Ralston College Podcast

#Arts #Ralston College #Highereducation #Ralstoncollege #Podcasting Education

30:55

A secret field that summons lightning. A massive spiral that disappears into a salt lake. A celestial observatory carved into a volcano. Meet the wild—and sometimes explosive—world of land art, where artists craft masterpieces with dynamite and bulldozers. In our Season 2 premiere, guest Dylan Thuras, cofounder of Atlas Obscura, takes us off road and into the minds of the artists who literally reshaped parts of the Southwest. These works aren’t meant to be easy to reach—or to explain—but they just might change how you see the world. Land art you’ll visit in this episode: - Double Negative and City by Michael Heizer (Garden Valley, Nevada) - Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson (Great Salt Lake, Utah) - Sun Tunnels by Nancy Holt (Great Basin Desert, Utah) - Lightning Field by Walter De Maria (Catron County, New Mexico) - Roden Crater by James Turrell (Painted Desert, Arizona) Via Podcast is a production of AAA Mountain West Group.…

4 years ago 2:02:44

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Ralston College presents a lecture delivered on October 26th, 2021 by Dr Iain McGilchrist followed by a discussion with Dr Stephen Blackwood and questions from the audience. In his lecture Dr McGilchrist deals with certain themes that are treated at greater length in his recent book The Matter With Things. He focuses especially upon the coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum), which he explores (providing an extraordinary range of illustrative examples) in such a way as to make manifest both its universality and its particular relevance to our present historical moment.

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The Ralston College Podcast

Ep. 23 - Iain McGilchrist: The Coincidence of Opposites

The Ralston College Podcast

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published 4 years ago

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60 episodes

#Arts #Ralston College #Highereducation #Ralstoncollege #Podcasting Education

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The Ralston College Podcast

1
Douglas Murray: Reconstructing our Culture | Renewal and Renaissance: A Ralston Symposium 1:30:27

6 weeks ago1:30:27

1:30:27

Douglas Murray, revered cultural critic and author, delivers the highlight of Ralston College’s symposium of “ Renewal and Renaissance ,” a lecture exploring the theme of cultural reconstruction. Delivered from one of the beautiful, stately galleries of Savannah’s Telfair Academy, the audience is treated to an intimate address that is both deeply moving and inspiring of hope. Murray’s talk begins with the sober reflection that civilizations are mortal and share the fragility of life. He recounts how the loss of confidence experienced after the catastrophes of the World Wars led to the development of modernism, postmodernism and finally deconstructionism. The lecture then takes a more optimistic turn as Murray confidently asserts that after decades of deconstruction, especially in the field of higher education, we are now entering an era of reconstruction. He explains how this process of cultural renewal can come about through both the opportunities afforded by technology and the process of going back into the great literary treasures of the past, finding our place amongst these works and adding to them. Murray shares his love of books, describing himself as “not only a bibliophile but something of a bibliomaniac,” and expresses how literature, and especially poetry, can ground us in the world and make us feel that we are never alone for we will always have “friends on the shelves.” Traversing through Byron, Gnedich, Stoppard, Auden and Heaney, Murray recounts three powerful stories that reveal the lengths certain individuals will go to recover, preserve and transmit our cultural treasures. The talk was followed by a captivating Q&A session which ranged from the current status of poetry to the topics of writing, war and human nature. As part of the stirring introduction to the lecture from Stephen Blackwood, President of Ralston College, soprano Kristi Bryson performed Handel’s Lascia ch’io pianga, accompanied on the piano by Ralston alumna and fellow, Olivia Jensen . A splendid performance showcasing perfectly the ability of culture to transcend the difficulties of life through the power of beauty. A reminder for us all of exactly what it is that we are seeking to preserve and renew. Mr Murray's books, including his most recent, are available here: https://douglasmurray.net . To watch the first conversation of the day—the roundtable from the Ralston College Renewal and Renaissance Symposium, featuring multiple speakers discussing the future of education, culture, and human flourishing—click here .…

The Ralston College Podcast

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What does it take to spark a new Renaissance? 2:32:33

7 weeks ago2:32:33

2:32:33

In February 2025, Ralston College hosted a landmark symposium in Savannah, Georgia, bringing together leading thinkers, artists, educators, and students for a searching conversation about the renewal of our shared culture. Over the course of a wide-ranging roundtable, speakers explored the collapse of higher education, the need for sacred space, the conditions for reawakening beauty and truth, the integral importance of literature, music and architecture, and the crucial role of the young in rebuilding a meaningful culture that can inspire and endure. This conversation is not an academic exercise in abstraction. It is the practical work of preservation—of remembering what the world has forgotten, and of laying foundations for what must come next. The roster of speakers is as follows: Stephen Blackwood: Why we are on the verge of renaissance James Orr: Why America is ready for change David Butterfield: Why colleges are the institutions to build James Hankins: Why the Italian Renaissance emerged Joseph Conlon: Why learning languages is essential Gregg Hurwitz: Why literature must resonate outside academia Jonathan Pageau: Why renewal requires in-person, communal remembrance Samuel Andreyev: Why music needs to know its tradition to thrive Christian Sottile: Why we need beautiful architecture Mari Otsu: Why Ralston College was the place that changed my life Authors, Artists, and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Sir Isaac Newton Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Friedrich Hölderlin’s Patmos Martin Heidegger John of Patmos, a figure traditionally identified with John the Apostle or John the Evangelist Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam The Cambridge Five Sir Niall Ferguson Saint Benedict of Nursia Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Charlemagne Alcuin of York Walter de Merton Gaius Marius Marcus Tullius Cicero Paradiso – the third and final part of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy Francesco Petrarca Cola di Rienzo Richard Wagner’s opera Rienzi Livy (Titus Livius) Homer Plato Plutarch “JD Vance States the Obvious About Ordo Amoris” – in First Things , by James Orr Pythagoras Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus Charles Dickens Alfred Hitchcock William Shakespeare Metamorphoses by Publius Ovidius Naso (43 BCE – 17 CE), known as Ovid Albert Camus – The Stranger James M. Cain – The Postman Always Rings Twice Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment Edgar Allan Poe Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray Michelangelo Buonarroti Pope Julius II The Bible Ezra Pound, quote from ABC of Reading (1934) Professor Jeffrey Eley Mark C. McDonald The Medici Family Gian Giorgio Trissino Andrea Palladio Otto Wagner The Black Paintings (Las Pinturas Negras) by Francisco Goya Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Peter Paul Rubens…

The Ralston College Podcast

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Why We Tell Stories: Greg Hurwitz & Jonathan Pageau in Conversation 1:36:59

9 weeks ago1:36:59

1:36:59

“Why We Tell Stories” is a discussion between Greg Hurwitz & Jonathan Pageau which took place on January 31, 2025. In this exchange, two prominent professionals in creative fields discuss the place of passion, productivity, and integrity in the context of their careers, and offer insights which range from guiding, general principles to concrete, practical advice. Over the course of their discussion with each other and with the students, they field questions about the artistic process; about the public attention they’ve received for their work; about the lessons they’ve learned; and about their impression of Ralston College and its place in a broader context of cultural and educational renewal. This event was part of Ralston College’s Career and Life conversations, a series of informal Friday-afternoon discussions for students enrolled in the MA in the Humanities. To apply to this program, please visit our website: www.ralston.ac/apply. Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Aristotle Dante Alighieri DC Comics’ Batman series The Book of Genesis Jordan B. Peterson Stephen King William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929) Rashomon (1950; dir. Akira Kurosawa) Marcel Duchamp, “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2” (1912) Sigmund Freud Carl Rogers Jackson Pollock Pablo Picasso Lucile Ball Groucho Marx Sammy Davis Jr. James Patterson John Grisham Dr James Orr Dr Douglas Hedley Douglas Murray Ben Shapiro William Shakespeare Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code Hamilton: An American Musical Harry Potter series William Goldman…

The Ralston College Podcast

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The Enduring Consolation of Philosophy with Stephen Blackwood 53:36

13 weeks ago53:36

53:36

“The Enduring Consolation of Philosophy” is the keynote lecture delivered by Dr Stephen Blackwood at the 2024 Symposium of Medieval and Renaissance studies. In this talk, commemorating the 1500th anniversary of Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy, Dr Blackwood shows why this work is more relevant than ever. After takinging stock of the “meaning crisis” and our dire need for depth, Dr Blackwood meditates on the first great insight of the Consolation: that the remedies of the self must emerge from the self. The complex and intricate structures and patterns of Boethius’ work are powerful, beautiful, and therapeutic precisely because its harmonies reflect the reality of both the world and the world within. Both the order of the cosmos and the order of the self unfold, for the reader of the Consolation, by way of the book’s carefully calibrated pedagogical dimension. Its therapies for the soul consist of tenderness and tough love alike, because the sight, insight, and assent that it seeks to instill cannot be induced by any other means. Instead, the liberating power of consciousness to which this work so insistently points depends on the innate freedom that we all possess—the very freedom to which the example of Boethius endures, to this day, as a singular witness. Learn more at www.ralston.ac . Authors, Artists, and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius The Consolation of Philosophy, H. F. Stewart & E. K. Rand, trans. (Loeb, 1918) Alfred the Great, King of the Anglo-Saxons Geoffrey Chaucer Dante Alighieri Saint Thomas Aquinas Sir Thomas More Queen Elizabeth I C. S. Lewis Pope Benedict XVI Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning Peter Abelard Plato, Timaeus Gospel of John Saint Augustine of Hippo Robert Crouse Aristotle…

The Ralston College Podcast

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Dr Iain McGilchrist in Conversation with Ralston College’s Students 1:42:50

16 weeks ago1:42:50

1:42:50

In this intimate question and answer session, conducted in March 2024 with the students enrolled in Ralston College’s MA in the Humanities, the world-renowned psychiatrist, philosopher, and literary scholar Iain McGilchrist explores topics that animate the collective intellectual life of Ralston’s student body. Answering questions that range from the metaphysical heights of theology, liturgy, and religious life to the tangible depths of scientific inquiry and medical progress, Dr McGhilchrist challenges his interlocutors to think deeper about the relationship between mind and matter, science and religion, and, ultimately, humanity and the divine. Authors, Artists, and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things Albert Einstein Aristotle Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Meister Eckhart John Donne George Herbert Thomas Traherne Rumi Henry Moore Blaise Pascal St. Augustine William Shakespeare, King Lear; The Merchant of Venice; Hamlet; The Tempest Metrodorus of Lampsacus Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling G.W.F. Hegel Alwyn Lishman St. Francis of Assisi Plotinus Thomas Edison St. Gregory of Nyssa Carl Jung Glenn Gould…

The Ralston College Podcast

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The Sophia Lectures with Iain McGilchrist - Lecture 3: Finitude and the Infinite 1:47:42

20 weeks ago1:47:42

1:47:42

In his final Sophia Lecture , “Finitude and the Infinite,” Dr Iain McGilchrist grapples with the vital role that the imagination plays in the perception of reality, and what this power can disclose about reality itself. He shows that imagination has the capacity to make contact with an illimitable, irreducible, and inexhaustible world, one that presents itself to us under the aspects of finitude and infinitude. Beginning with the English Romantic poets, McGilchrist shows how these artists resisted the habits of perception that can be associated with the brain’s left hemisphere. This part of the brain is adept at rendering, representing, and modeling, but it does so at the cost of simplifying whatever it constructs. Poets like Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, and Blake strove to remove the film of familiarity from their vision. For them, imagination was the power that made intuitive connections and integrative “leaps,” giving access to a richer, unbounded reality not subject to the strictures of reductive categories. In dialogue with physicists, philosophers, and mathematicians, McGilchrist ultimately shows how the vision of the world offered by the Romantic poets lays claim to the infinite and the eternal. For these artists, eternity is “adverbial”: it is a way of being, a manner, and a modality. McGilchrist convincingly shows us that we, too, can decline to see the world through categories that are measurable, predictable, and countable—but finally lifeless; like the poets whom he takes as his main interlocutors in this lecture, we can, instead, open ourselves to reality’s boundless, vital, and infinite character. Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: William Wordsworth - Preface to the Lyrical Ballads Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Biographia Literaria Percy Bysshe Shelley - A Defence of Poetry Max Scheler William Blake Richard Feynman James A. Shapiro Denis Diderot Barbara McClintock William James Albert Einstein Leonhard Euler William Wilson Morgan Richard Feynman The Ancient of Days (William Blake, 1794, watercolor etching) Nicholas of Cusa - De Docta Ignorantia Jason Padgett Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Galileo Galilei David Hilbert Henri Bergson Richard Wagner Isaac Luria - Lurianic Kabbalah Edward Nelson Alfred North Whitehead Eugène Minkowski Heraclitus Jordan Peterson Zeno of Elea John Milton John Keats Jorge Luis Borges Martin Heidegger Tao-te Ching William Blake - “The Tyger” Emily Dickinson Marianne Moore Robert Browning - “Two in the Campagna” Bhagavad Gita Peter Cook John Polkinghorne Mary Midgley René Descartes Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling J. B. S. Haldane Lee Smolin Eugene Koonin Hildegard of Bingen - The Choirs of Angels Christ Pantocrator and Signs of the Zodiac C. S. Lewis Johannes Kepler Jesus…

The Ralston College Podcast

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The Sophia Lectures with Iain McGilchrist - Lecture 2: Symmetry and Asymmetry 1:35:03

21 weeks ago1:35:03

1:35:03

In his second Sophia Lecture, Dr Iain McGilchrist gives a bracing, counterintuitive account of the fundamental categories of our experience of the world. McGilchrist shows how fundamental binaries—such as stasis and motion, simplicity and complexity, order and randomness, and even straight lines and curves—do not occur in nature in ways that conform to our assumptions about an inert, independent, and predictable universe. Drawing from disciplines as disparate as physics, mathematics, biology and art, McGilchrist shows that asymmetry is not simply a principle of vitality, harmony, and beauty. McGilchrist argues that asymmetry is primary, a reality that is prior to symmetry and which forms the basis of the very symmetries in nature and the arts to which it gives rise. The dynamism which results from the drive to balance and to resist balance is at the root of the vigor of natural systems, the beauty that they embody, and which the arts then reflect. With examples ranging from the elegance of the golden ratio to the structure of the human brain, McGilchrist’s lecture offers a fresh perspective on the nature of patterns in complex systems and human creations. His work invites us to search for wholeness, harmony, and connection from a set of starting points which are as surprising as they are fruitful; as always, he challenges us to see our world in new—and newly unified—ways. Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Johann Sebastian Bach John Donne - “Holy Sonnet 7: At the round earth’s imagin’d corners” Gerard Manley Hopkins - “Carrion Comfort” Werner Heisenberg - Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations with Einstein, Planck, Dirac, Bohr, and Other Physicists of Our Time Alexander Pope - “The Rape of the Lock” Iain McGilchrist - The Master and his Emissary Pierre Curie Chien-Shiung Wu Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder Aesop Heraclitus Democritus Leonardo da Vinci Louis Pasteur Rong Li & Bruce Bowerman - “Symmetry breaking in biology” Arthur Koestler Aristotle Oliver Sacks Thomas Holstein Tim Crow Onur Güntürkün Jane Clark & Daniel Simons (Christopher Chabris) - Gorillas in Our Midst Jonathan Rowson Alastair McIntosh Richard Dawkins Nikolaj Nikolaenko Luciano Laurana Giorgio Martini - Ideal City Raphael - The School of Athens Andrea Palladio William Blake - “The Tyger” Theodosius II Christ Pantocrator Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel John P. McGovern William Osler William Alwyn Lishman William Shakespeare - King Lear John Cleese Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Sir Roger Scruton…

The Ralston College Podcast

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The Sophia Lectures with Iain McGilchrist - Lecture 1: Division and Union 1:35:13

22 weeks ago1:35:13

1:35:13

This lecture, like the very essence of Ralston College’s mission, explores the profound interplay between division and union—a relationship that illuminates the nature of wholeness itself. Dr Iain McGilchrist delves into the insight that the whole is far more than the sum of its parts; it is a dynamic synthesis, a living interplay that transcends reductionism. Drawing on analogies from music, nature, and the human brain, McGilchrist reveals the delicate harmony between separation and connection, a truth exemplified most vividly in the brain’s two hemispheres. Here, division and union are not adversaries but partners, each essential to the vitality of the other, enabling the brain to function as a unified and life-giving organ of thought and perception. Such a model reflects the very spirit of Ralston College’s aim to unify what modernity has fractured—the intellectual and the spiritual, the individual and the communal, the ancient and the urgent. The lecture also engages with the concept of emergence, a phenomenon where systems reveal qualities and capacities far beyond what their components alone could predict. Ultimately, McGilchrist’s argument aligns with the vision of this College: that division and union are not contradictory but complementary forces, driving the renewal of meaning and vitality. It is through this synthesis, through holding the tension between opposites, that true wholeness and innovation emerge—a principle as foundational to the functioning of the human brain as it is to the regeneration of our civilization. Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Pythagoras: 00:09:02:20 Heraclitus: 00:21:34:04 Goethe: 00:23:14:21 Whitehead: 00:24:36:18 Robert Rosen: 00:27:08:02 Rowan Williams: 00:28:44:05 Vesalius: 00:29:37:01 Camillo Golgi: 00:35:14:22 Santiago Ramon y Cajal: 00:35:47:05…

The Ralston College Podcast

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Dr Iain McGilchrist on the Cultivation of Wisdom 28:47

23 weeks ago28:47

28:47

A conversation between Dr Iain McGilchrist, neuropsychiatrist, philosopher, and literary critic, and Dr Stephen Blackwood, President of Ralston College, on the occasion of Dr McGilchrist’s March 2024 visit to Savannah to deliver Ralston College’s annual Sophia Lectures. Dr McGilchrist discusses his experience spending time with Ralston College students, his reasons for accepting the College’s invitation to deliver the Sophia lectures, and the necessity of leisure for deep thought. Applications for Ralston College’s MA in the Humanities program are now open. Apply now.…

The Ralston College Podcast

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The Education of Iain McGilchrist, Part II: Medical School and Beyond 1:30:13

24 weeks ago1:30:13

1:30:13

The second part of a conversation between the renowned literary scholar and psychiatrist Dr Iain McGilchrist and Ralston College president Dr Stephen Blackwood about Dr McGilchrist’s remarkable educational trajectory. In this episode, Dr Iain McGilchrist explains how he left his successful career as a literary scholar to pursue training as a psychiatrist and how his combined study of literature, philosophy, and neuroscience informed his later academic work, including his books The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale University Press, 2009) and The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World (Perspectiva, 2021). List of people referenced in this episode: Ted Hughes William Wordsworth Samuel Johnson John Boswell Laurence Sterne William Shakespeare Oliver Sacks John Cutting Louis Sass Jan Zwicky Robert Bringhurst Erwin Schrödinger Martin Heidegger Max Planck Niels Bohr Michael Levin…

The Ralston College Podcast

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The Education of Iain McGilchrist, Part I: From Winchester College to All Souls 1:39:15

25 weeks ago1:39:15

1:39:15

A conversation between Dr Iain McGilchrist, the renowned polymath, and Dr Stephen Blackwood, President of Ralston College, about Dr McGilchrist’s formative experiences at Winchester College, the prestigious British public school, and his subsequent training as a literary critic at Oxford University and his appointment as a Fellow at All Souls. Drs McGilchrist and Blackwood emphasize the vital role of freedom, friendship, and the expectation of excellence in providing students with an authentic education. This conversation was recorded during Dr McGilchrist’s visit to Ralston College in March 2024 to deliver The Sophia lectures for the 2023-24 academic year. List of People Mentioned in the Episode: Cicero George Herbert John Donne John Clare Guido d’Arezzo Alexander Pope Freeman Dyson Gerard Manley Hopkins Friedrich Schelling G.W.F. Hegel John Bayley Christopher Tolkien John Milton Edmund Spenser William Wordsworth Samuel Taylor Coleridge Georg Chritoph Lichtenberg Derek Parfit Thomas Hardy Oliver Sacks Roger Scruton…

The Ralston College Podcast

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We Live in the Flicker: T. S. Eliot and Dante on the Spaces Between 1:07:13

28 weeks ago1:07:13

1:07:13

Ralston College presents a talk by Christopher Snook, Lecturer in the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University, on the influence of Dante’s Purgatorio on two of T.S. Eliot’s most important works: The Waste Land and Four Quartets. Mr Snook attends, in particular, to how Eliot’s treatment of fragments represents at once both a departure from and a return to medieval understandings of the whole. This medieval understanding is evidenced in the “manifold articulation” of particulars within the architecture of the Gothic cathedral, the literary shape of the Divine Comedy, and the logical structure of the Summa Theologicae. Mr Snook’s lecture was given in the final term of the 2023-24 year of Ralston College’s MA in Humanities program, which focused on the concept of the Whole. Applications are now open for the upcoming year of the MA in the Humanities program, which will focus on the theme of Fellowship. Apply now. Authors, Artists, and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologicae René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life” T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men” T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot Dante, The Divine Comedy T. S. Eliot, The Family Reunion Ezra Pound William Shakespeare, Macbeth John Donne, “No Man is an Island” Charles Baudelaire, “À une passante” William Shakespeare, The Tempest George Herbert Nicene Creed Augustine, Confessions Charles Williams Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Franz Kafka, “Before the Law” (from The Trial) Freidrich Schlegel Pascal, Pensées Michel de Montaigne Plato, Republic…

The Ralston College Podcast

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The Other Side of Despair: The Search for Meaning in T.S Eliot’s “The Waste Land” 1:39:08

29 weeks ago1:39:08

1:39:08

Ralston College presents a talk by Christopher Snook, Lecturer in the Department of Classics at Dalhousie University, on T.S. Eliot’s modernist masterpiece The Waste Land. The lecture explores the personal, historical, and literary contexts of Eliot’s poem. Through an engagement with the Western tradition that is simultaneously rich and fragmented, The Waste Land confronts cultural and personal crises that have atrophied both memory and desire. Snook finds in Eliot’s work a mournful modernism that serves as a serious and searching rejoinder to the more frivolous and enervated responses present in some modernist schools, most notably Dadaism. This lecture was delivered on April 15th, 2024 at Ralston College’s Savannah campus, during the final term of the second year of the MA in the Humanities Program. Applications are now open for next year’s MA program. Full scholarships are available. https://www.ralston.ac/apply Mentioned in this episdoe: T. S. Eliot “The Waste Land”The DialKathleen RaineVirgil, AeneidEliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”Eliot, “Tradition and Individual Talent”Eliot, The Family Reunion Henri BergsonBertrand Russell Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s RoomLeonard WoolfEzra PoundJames Joyce, Ulysses Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Oswald Spengler, Decline and Fall of the West Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past Claude McCay, Harlem Shadows August Strindberg Neo-impressionism Cubism Dadaism Surrealism Futurism Taxi Driver (film) Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, War, the World’s Only Hygiene Hugo Ball, Dada Manifesto “That Shakespearian Rag” William Shakespeare, Hamlet World War I Henry James F. H. Varley Punic Wars Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy The Tempest Modernism Collage Pablo Picasso Georges BraqueMarcel Duchamp, Nude Descending Staircase; Fountain Montage F. H. BradleyHegel, Phenomenology of Spirit Plato The Matter of Britain Jessie Weston James Frazer Richard Wagner, Parsifal Augustine, Confessions Charles Dickens, Hard Times Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness Eliot, “The Hollow Men” Tower of Babel Petronius, The Satyricon Michelangelo, frescoes of Sistine Chapel Virgil, Eclogues Ovid, Metamorphoses Franz Kafka Chaucer, Canterbury Tales Thomas Middleton, Women Beware Women; A Game at Chess Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra Charles Baudelaire, “Au Lecteur” Fredrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals…

The Ralston College Podcast

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Jay Parini on Why Poetry Matters 56:27

31 weeks ago56:27

56:27

A conversation between Dr Jay Parini, a prolific author and the D.E. Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing at Middlebury College, and Dr Stephen Blackwood, the founding president of Ralston College, recorded on the occasion of the release of a Ralston College short course, “Robert Frost: The American Voice,” taught by Dr Parini. Dr Parini discusses the film adaptation of his most recent book Borges and Me (2020), shares stories of his friendships with literary figures including Jorge Luis Borges, W. H. Auden, and Iris Murdoch, explains why poetry matters, and shares the fruits of a life “lived in literature.” Applications are now open for next year’s MA program. Full scholarships are available. https://www.ralston.ac/apply Authors, Artists, and Works Mentioned in this Episode: Jay Parini, Borges and Me Alan Cumming Jorge Luis BorgesBeowulf Robert Burns Isaiah Berlin Homer Aeschylus Dante Michel de Montaigne William Wordsworth W. B. Yeats Brian Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa Robert Burns, “A Red, Red Rose” William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Iris Murdoch, The Bell W.H. Auden Boethius Jay Parini, Robert Frost: A Life Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice” Jay Parini, Robert Frost: 16 Poems to Learn by Heart Robert Frost, “The Road Less Traveled” Robert Frost, “After Apple-Picking” Robert Frost, “Birches” Robert Frost, “Directive” Robert Frost, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” Gerard Manley Hopkins Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets…

The Ralston College Podcast

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Polytheism and the Polis: The Drama of the Individual Before the Self with Paul Epstein | Ralston College 1:08:37

40 weeks ago1:08:37