Joshua Landy: Narrative Form and the Meaning of a Life

Though they often appeal to literary fictions as examples, narrative theorists typically have little or nothing to say about the role of the aesthetic. Landy's talk seeks to rectify this omission by offering reasons to take novelistic form seriously, as a way of introducing power -- not intelligibility -- into a life. Further, it raises the question of whether narrativity is even the best way of imparting unity to a life or whether, under certain circumstances, lyric poetry may be a more appropriate (and effective) model.

Joshua Landy is an Associate Professor of French at Stanford University, where he co-directs Stanford's Initiative in Philosophy and Literature. He is the author of "Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust" (Oxford, 2004); editor, with Claude Bremondand Thomas Pavel, of "Thematics: New Approaches" (SUNY, 1995); and editor, with Michael Saler, of "The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age" (Stanford, 2009). He is currently completing a second book, "How to Do Things with Fictions."

This lecture has been sponsored in part by the kind contribution of The Boston University Humanities Foundation.

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