Modern Languages Inaugural lectures

Professor Karen Leeder delivers the inaugural Schwarz-Taylor Lecture The Allied aerial bombing of Dresden in February 1945 is one of the most controversial acts of the Second Word War. Even today, the memories are among the most acute in Germany; with the annual reconciliation ceremonies on 13th February accompanied by right-wing demonstrations that arguably deny ordinary people the right to mourn. Among artists and historians, too, this is a raw spot that has inspired repeated reflection and controversy. Taking its cue from a recent contribution to these debates, by prominent German writer Durs Grünbein, this lecture explores that legacy, but also asks how art might help find a language for trauma; how we might think about modern elegy; and how translation, in its broadest sense, might ultimately aid the path to reconciliation. Speaker bio: Professor Leeder’s main research interests are in modern and contemporary German-language literature, art and film, especially poetry. She has written widely on many key German poets but also on spectres, angels, lateness and elegy. She is also a translator, especially of German poetry, and her translation of Durs Grünbein’s Porcelain Poem on the Downfall of my City (Seagull Books 2020) won the Schlegel-Tieck prize for translation in 2021

During his inaugural lecture, Professor Gilson will show how ideas about vision and cognate faculties such as the wits and the imagination are central to Dante’s masterpiece, the Commedia. Understanding these concerns helps us to appreciate not only how his narrative is structured and enlivened but also raises fundamental questions about the poem’s status, ultimate themes and messages. Simon Gilson Agnelli-Serena Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Magdalen College. He works on Dante and Renaissance Italian literary, cultural and intellectual history. He has published widely on Dante, literary criticism in Renaissance Italy, and the relations between science, philosophy and literary culture in medieval and Renaissance Italy.

Round Table on the occasion of the Inaugural Lecture of Henrike Lähnemann Discussion, held on Friday 22 January 2016 in the Taylor Institution. With contributions by Prof. Dr. Hans-Jochen Schiewer (University of Freiburg), Dr Wilhelm Krull (VolkswagenStiftung), Dr Dorothea Rüland (DAAD), Prof. Katrin Kohl (Oxford German Network), Dr Carsten Dose (FRIAS), Chair: Prof. Ritchie Robertson (Taylor Chair of German Studies).

Henrike Lähnemann’s Inaugural Lecture for the Chair in German Medieval Literature and Linguistics. Lecture delivered on Thursday 21 January 2016 in the Taylorian Institute. The subject of the lecture is a new acquisition by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, a psalter written ca. 1500 by the nun Margaret Hopes in the Cistercian convent of Medingen near Lüneburg, MS. Don. e. 248. The hypothesis advanced is that the nuns use the materiality of their prayer-book as the embodiment of their devotion.