Prof. Alan Helms
Wednesday, April 19
Wednesday, April 26
Wednesday, May 10
Wednesday, May 17
6:00 – 7:30 pm
Frothingham Library
"Why are the first English Romantic poets so endlessly fascinating? For one thing, Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge all represent a radical break with the past and a headlong embrace of revolutionary ideas and ideals. In fact, speaking of the French Revolution, Wordsworth wrote that "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive" because of the new possibilities people felt for freedom and a liberation from the hidebound past. Blake struck a similar note in one of his "Proverbs of Hell" (a work that prefigures Freud by almost a century): "The road of excess leads to palace of wisdom." Join Professor Alan Helms, Rev. Kim, and the Ancient Mariner for an exploration into some of the seminal work of three of the greatest of English-language poets. It's true what Colerdige wrote:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.