̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Jennifer Wallace

Live performance

gm349 — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 06:02:50 +0000

Hay is a curious combination of glamour and grunge. It’s my first time here, and I’m struck by how different it feels from the Edinburgh Book Festival, my usual hangout, in the formal confines of Charlotte Square. Hay is more glitzy than Edinburgh, with theatrical stage lighting, huge bouquets in classical urns, and the giant single white rose presented to the speaker at the end of each event. But it’s much muddier too, with the cross-country tramp from the car park a sharp reminder that this is just a bunch of tents in a faraway field. A sort of Glastonbury, then, for writers. ̽��ֱ��seasoned festivalistas walk around in wellies; the rest of us slide around in city shoes.

Writers are the rock stars here . I join a thousand others to hear the pearls of wisdom from the lips of Mario Vargas Llosa, inspired to be in the presence of somebody who can speak so eloquently and authoritatively about the capacity of literature to generate freedom and political change in the world. “Literature should be without borders”, he says, his frequent pause to choose his words carefully actually lending them additional gravitas. “Literature makes us sensible to injustice. It heightens our awareness of the fraternity that should exist among human beings’. It’s heady stuff.

But later, I’m in a similarly packed auditorium to hear Andrew Miller, author of Ingenious Pain and the recent Pure, and Andrew Robinson, who’s written a new book on Champollion and the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone. They are two good writers but hardly conventional rock-star figures. So why do people go to literary festivals in greater and greater numbers? And why do writers turn up for the festival season, which is getting longer and longer? “I like to meet my readers”, Andrew Miller says when asked this question by a brave member of the audience. “And I like chatting with my fellow writers in the Green Room [the artists-only common room]. It’s a social thing”.

Hay certainly is a social scene. In my two days here, I’ve bumped into many old friends and caught the book launch (arresting poetry on Scott’s doomed Antarctic expedition) of my old college roommate Samantha Wynne Rhydderch. I’ve also run into a large number of former students, some of whom are performing in debates, glamorously welly-booted, multiple times and another who is playing in a swing band for the alternative philosophy and music festival How the Light Gets In and camping out at night. (Yes, Hay, like Edinburgh, has its fringe festivals too).

But I think the attraction is more than simply rubbing shoulders with the Slebs and catching up on old times. In this age of the internet and instant access to news, views and e-books, there is conversely an allure inherent in the live performance. This becomes the main focus of discussion at the event that I was invited to Hay to participate in, a panel discussion on “Is Tragedy the Perfect Form for the Modern World”? Reporters of disasters now still shape their narrative of terrible events in ways that echo the age-old dramatic traditions of the ancient Greeks or Shakespeare. And even if we can read about or look at pictures of disasters in isolation, on TV or on computer screens, we still want to come together to mourn, to feel compassion for individuals picked out for particular attention or to try, as a community, to seek explanations for suffering and to stage rituals to mark loss.

As the debate opens up to the audience, my fellow panelist Adrian Poole warms to the theme: “This is the attraction of live performance, this is why we are all here. You never know, with live performance, what might happen”. There is time for one more question. A man rises to his feet out of the theatre darkness. “I’d like each of you three panelists to tell me in turn what is the most tragic experience of your life”. My mind reels. What is the most tragic experience of my life? And am I going to confess it publicly to 200 strangers whom I can hardly see with the spotlights shining in my eyes? Adrian is similarly filibustering beside me. Does live performance mean that you have to reveal everything to your audience, that they can demand that kind of intimacy? Careful what you wish for, the Greeks might have said. Call no man happy until the show is safely over. But the TV monitor, which lets speakers know when their allotted hour is up, is now steadily counting down the seconds. “I’m afraid that’s all, folks”, we say with the question unanswered, and Gemma, our festival minder, is coming on stage with white roses, while the Bee Gees’ song “Tragedy” strikes up to play the audience out.

Dr Jennifer Wallace is the author of ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy.

Jennifer Wallace took part in the Cambridge series at this year's Hay Festival and spoke on a panel on whether tragedy is the perfect form for the modern world. She gives her impressions of the event and of the Festival itself.

Even if we can read about or look at pictures of disasters in isolation, on TV or on computer screens, we still want to come together to mourn, to feel compassion for individuals picked out for particular attention or to try, as a community, to seek explanations for suffering and to stage rituals to mark loss.

Kevin Greenaway

Hay Festival

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Yes

Cambridge academics head for Hay

bjb42 — Thu, 31 May 2012 15:00:16 +0000

A series of talks and debates by Cambridge academics on pressing contemporary issues kicks off this week at the Hay Festival.

This year is the 25^th anniversary of the Festival and the fourth year running that the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has run a series of talks there as part of its commitment to public engagement.

This year's line-up includes Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, who will be participating in three of the 10 sessions on in the Classics series on Herodotus, the “Father of History”, on Plato and on the aspirations and concepts of civilisation, democracy, drama, virtue, victory, liberty and xenia and what the study of Classics has meant in the wider world.

For the first time, Cambridge academics will take part in a series of debates about contemporary political and social issues, including Europe, democracy and urban violence. Among those taking part in the Europe debate is Professor Robert Tombs who has written a blog on the implications for France and Europe of the election of Francois Hollande as president of France.

Another debate covers the broader cultural implications of current events, with Professor Adrian Poole, Professor Alison Sinclair and Jennifer Wallace discussing the modern meaning of tragedy and literary representation of current events. Other speakers include Professor Susan Golombok on alternative family structures, Professor Martin Jones on the archaeology of food, Carolin Crawford on the birth and death of stars, Dame Patricia Hodgson on media regulation in the shadow of the Leveson Inquiry, Professor David Spiegelhalter on our risk society and Professor Stefan Collini on what universities are for.

Professor Lawrence Sherman will talk about how science is transforming policing in a session entitled “ ̽��ֱ��new police knowledge”. ̽��ֱ��session will be introduced by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Denis O’Connor.

Brendan Burchell, senior lecturer in the Sociology Department, will be in conversation with Julia Hobsbawm, honorary visiting professor in networking at Cass Business School, about the future of work.

Other Cambridge academics speaking at Hay are Professor John Thompson, Professor Robert Macfarlane, Professor Martin Rees, Professor John Barrow, Dr Julian Allwood and Professor David MacKay.

Nicola Buckley, head of public engagement at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “ ̽��ֱ��Cambridge series is a wonderful way to get the fascinating research being done at the ̽��ֱ�� out to the public. ̽��ֱ��Hay Festival draws an international cross-section of people, from policy makers to prospective university students. It is a fantastic platform for our research and this year’s debates aim to highlight the broad range of what we do at the ̽��ֱ�� and its relevance to the key issues we face today.”

Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival, said: “What’s thrilling about this year’s series is how exacting it is about society. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge experts cut through the political and media spin on big issues and look at them with real attention and intellectual rigour - from policing to European integration and 21st century family structure and risk. It’s a timely reminder about the value of authority; an aspiration that ‘policy’ might be formed by the best ideas and analysis rather than doctrinaire inclination or what’s easiest to sell. What else would you want from the world’s greatest ̽��ֱ�� but the best thinking on subjects that matter?”

Cambridge is fielding a series of talks and debates by leading academics on a range of global challenges at this year's Hay literary Festival.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge experts cut through the political and media spin on big issues and look at them with real attention and intellectual rigour.

Peter Florence

Hay Festival.

̽��ֱ��main site at the Hay Festival.

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Yes

Reinventing tragedy in the modern age

bjb42 — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:00:47 +0000

This year's Cambridge series at the Hay Festival will include a debate about how we make “good tragedy” today.

Taking part are Professor Adrian Poole, Professor Alison Sinclair and Jennifer Wallace. ̽��ֱ��debate is just one of five panel discussions organised by the ̽��ֱ�� for the Festival, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary. ̽��ֱ��series also includes a number of stand-alone talks by Cambridge academics, including Professor Susan Golombok and Professor Lawrence Sherman.

It is the fourth year for the Cambridge series at Hay, which takes place from 31st May to 10th June, and the first time it has included panel discussions on a range of contemporary issues. Professor Poole, who has taught an undergraduate course on tragedy for many years and is author of Tragedy: a Very Short Introduction, says Aristotle set out to answer the question of what makes good tragedy when he composed his influential handbook, ̽��ֱ��Poetics. He says: “For Aristotle, 'tragedy' mainly meant a form of drama, though it also connoted a kind of story, of which Homer's Iliad was exemplary. ̽��ֱ��answers to this question are bound to look very different in 2012.

“We have many more ways of telling stories in words, sounds and visual images than were available to the ancient Greeks, Shakespeare and Racine, and of disseminating them to audiences around the world, now at the press of a button – all of which will have some impact on our ability to make - and respond to - 'good tragedy'.”

Jennifer Wallace, author of ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy, says that the media and the public still tend to respond to tragic events in ways that echo the age-old traditions which go back to Greek tragedy, for instance, turning horror into narrative and seeking an explanation for events by telling individuals' stories. However, she says Aristotle's notion of catharsis is much more problematic now and can be hard to justify.

She says: “Aristotle implies that through witnessing tragedy, we purge ourselves or gain relief. This suggests tragedy has some moral or therapeutic function in society. But is there such a phenomenon now as "compassion fatigue" or "tragedy porn"? Is it still possible to consider witnessing others' suffering morally improving or enriching?”

For Alison Sinclair, professor of modern Spanish literature and intellectual history, our continuing fascination with the tragedies of others and the popular media's obsession with offering up disaster for consumption opens up interesting questions about the fine line we often tread between thrill and horror. “I am intrigued by why we are moved to consume such stories. While they may not qualify as cathartic our consumption of them raises interesting issues about our experience, and our experience of our experience, that it might be difficult to confront.”

She says 20th century Spanish writers like Federico Garcia Lorca and Ramon del Valle- Inclán grappled with the need to reinvent tragedy for a modern audience. Lorca sought to meld elements of Greek tragedy with contemporary social realities in plays such as Blood Wedding, she says, but arguably either avoided catharsis or undercut it. By contrast, Valle-Inclán theorised in 1920 that a new form was needed to replace tragedy. “ ̽��ֱ��aim,” she says, “was to interrupt the processes of identification and/or catharsis, the point of this being to free the spectator, or indeed to force the spectator, not to feel, but to think, both about what is on the stage, but also about the implications for him or herself.”

Jennifer Wallace adds: "In an era of 24/7 news and constant potential exposure to tragedies around the globe through the internet, it may be paradoxically difficult to focus the kind of active, sympathetic attention on suffering which dramatists could do in the past. Does that matter? Is the capacity to make what might be termed a 'good tragedy' the hallmark of human civilisation, or an indication of a humane society?"

For more information on the Cambridge series at the Hay Festival and to find out about booking, click here.

Is tragedy the perfect dramatic form for our current predicament? Or has the classic idea of catharsis through viewing the suffering of others become much more problematic in an age of 24/7 news and the internet? An event at this year's Hay Festival will investigate.

Is there such a phenomenon now as "compassion fatigue" or "tragedy porn"? Is it still possible to consider witnessing others' suffering morally improving or enriching?

Jennifer Wallace

Jeff Rozwadowski, Creative Commons

Tragedy.

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Yes