Literatures of Dissent: TCD School of English Evening Lectures 2025

Summary

This lecture series will investigate diverse instances of literary dissent throughout British, Irish, and US-American history.

About this Event

Since antiquity, literary works have often tried to produce a unified collective memory and, on that basis, a community that shares a specific attitude toward the world. But on the other hand, literature also always has been a refuge of openly or secretly diverging opinions: poems, dramas and novels can break with a supposed general consensus and express disapproval of the status quo. In such cases, authors and the characters they create articulate what they consider condemnable about the world they live in, and they state their (more or less vehement and violent) disapproval and disengagement. This has given rise to some well-established character types that one encounters in many narrative texts: the revolutionary agitator, the sharp-tongued satirist, the idealistic dissident, the eccentric dropout, the rebellious delinquent, and many others. Dissenting actions and statements often arise from social exclusion, but in some cases they manage to create new social communities and alternative cultural traditions. Dissent and its attendant ruptures and enmities have repercussions in society that are sometimes negative, sometimes positive, and sometimes hard to evaluate. This series of evening lectures will investigate diverse instances of literary dissent throughout British, Irish, and US-American history.

Fee

€50 for the entire series. Individual lectures are €5 each. Concessionary rates for the full series will be €40 or individual lecture €4 each. The concessionary rate applies to: students, OAPs, unemployed, groups of 20+; TCD staff and Graduates.

Date, Time and Place

Dates: Tuesdays: Jan 21 to 1 April
Time: 19:00-20:00,
Venue: Jonathan Swift Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin.
Tickets: This will be a hybrid event and also available online. Tickets available via Eventbrite (guaranteed) and at the door (if available).

Online/Video Recordings of Lectures

The lectures are happening live in the Jonathan Swift Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin. However they will also be recorded. If you purchased a ticket to a particular lecture, to several lectures, or to the entire series, you will be emailed a link to the video recording of the lecture or lectures as soon as these are available (usually the very next day).

The recordings will be available and watchable at any time until the end of the Evening Lecture series in April.

We regret that it has not been possible to livestream the lectures as they happen.

Schedule

There will be ten weekly lectures beginning on Tuesday 21 January, 2024. Online Registration for individual lectures will close at 6pm on the relevant day. Lecture recordings will be uploaded shortly after the live event.

21 Jan: Dr Brendan O’Connell: The Art of Complaint: From Chaucer to Sara Ahmed

28 Jan: Dr Mark Sweetnam: Irish Dissenting Hymnody: Edward Denny's Millennial Hymns

4 Feb: Dr Ema Vyroubalová: Shakespeare as a Tool of Dissent in Totalitarian and Post Totalitarian Europe

11 Feb: Prof Darryl Jones: Anarchy in the UK: Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent

18 Feb: Prof Stephen Matterson: “He says ‘No!’ in thunder”/“I’d prefer not to": Passivity, Dissent and Acquiescence in Herman Melville’s Bartleby

25 Feb: Prof Andrew Murphy: Interrogating the Rising: Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars

11 Mar: Prof Bernice Murphy: Shirley Jackson’s Resistance to Post-war Domesticity

18 Mar: Prof Nicholas Grene: “An Insult to the Mass”: Tom Murphy’s The Sanctuary Lamp

25 Mar: Dr Björn Quiring: “Many Horrid Blasphemies and Damnable Opinions”: Abiezer Coppe’s A Fiery Flying Roll

1 Apr: Dr Stephen O'Neill: “All the Joans of Arc and Cassandras”: The Phenomenon of Bernadette Devlin and The Price of My Soul

Tickets from Eventbrite:

Please book tickets online via Eventbrite

Contact Details:

Ms Sophia Ni Sheoin
E-mail: wilde@tcd.ie