amimetobios

Last lecture of the course, concluding with The Winter's Tale.  Narrative memory and forgetting.  Resurrection.  Winter's Tale compared and contrasted with King Lear, specifically with respect to the Fool and Cordelia.  Men of stone vs. stone coming to life in the last scene.

Introduction to The Winter's Tale: why is Leontes jealous? of whom? what does Mammilius remind him of? Doubling of Mammilius and Perdita. Time frames: 23 years, 16 years, 7 years. Things dying, things new born. Paulina. Hermione.

We conclude our study of Antony and Cleopatra, paying more attention to Cleopatra, and the two of them together: the'r love, their rages, their suicides.  Cleopatra compared to both Ophelia and Gertrude.  Female sexuality.  Dido and Aeneas.  Love, death, and immanence.

Mainly on Antony: Fulvia; his men's loyalty; the departure of Herucles, and of Enorbarbus; the quickness with which Eros sees what he'll want to do; the quickness with which Enobarbus sees he's done it; Dolabella as Enorbarbus's double; Cleopatra's dream; instances of "an Antony;" his preternatural generosity.

Antony and Cleopatra a new departure: not about public vs private but about two modes of publicity: present and future.  O'erflowing the measure, again.  Enobarbus as a new experiment in the series of window characters starting with Aumerle and including Horatio, Kent, the Fool, Edgar, and Banquo.  Hamlet loves Horatio who is dispassionate in judgment; Kent is like Horatio but Edgar and the Fool go much farther in focusing on the window; Macbeth kills Banquo; Enobarbus betrays Antony.

Introduction to Antony and Cleopatra as a new kind of tragedy: one which doesn't seek the freedom of complete loss or amor fati.  Contrasted with Macbeth, written simultaneously.  Macbeth is about the maximum of loneliness in a tragic figure; Antony and Cleopatra is about what having a friend till the end offers by way of a relationship to time and loss.  Lady Macbeth compared to Lear.  Antony and Cleopatra compared to A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Talk on the anonymity of the narrator and narratee in Proust, and their relation to the losses that occur in the book but not in the narrative. Illustration of idea that Proust presents the converse of Cavell: uncountable external worlds but only one other mind. How narrator turns into his mother watching his mother turn into his grandmother. Roger Caillois and vision as mimesis. Discussion session (poorer audio) for all the papers.

Nicolas de Warren's talk on "Aspects of the Imagination in Proust," in the way faces are perceived and make one feel perceived; the recognition of the other; and their relation to love and to death.

Richard Moran's talk on four kinds of relationships between the voluntary and the involuntary in Proust, and their relation to eros and to aesthetic response.

April Vacation Bonus: Proust and Philosophy Conference at Wellesley College. Part 1: Short Intro (audio sketchy). Laura Quinney convenes seminar and everyone introduces her- or himself.