“The Language of Divinity: Modernity and the Deep Past” Lecture Series: “The Voice of Prayer/ The Media of Prayer” with Niklaus Largier
The Program in Scripture and the Arts is proud to present the second speaker in its 2014-2015 speaker series, the Sidney and Margaret Ancker Chair in the Humanities and Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of California-Berkeley, Niklaus Largier. Professor Largier is currently working on a book on imagination, practices of figuration, aesthetic experience, and notions of possibility, tentatively entitled “Figures of Possibility.” His talk, entitled “The Voice of Prayer/The Media of Prayer,” will focus on the modern fascination with medieval mystical texts and discuss the ways in which so-called mystical experience takes shape aesthetically, sensually, and emotionally. At the center of his interest lies the medieval understanding of prayer as the medium through which mystical experience is produced, a medium that shapes sensation and affect and anticipates what nowadays is called aesthetic experience.
Co-Sponsored by the Boston University Center for the Humanities
Free and Open to the Public
When: Thursday, February 19 2015 at 6 pm lecture with reception to follow
Location: Boston University George Sherman Union (775 Commonwealth Ave), room 320-21. Reception to Follow in the GSU Terrace Lounge.
Transportation: Closest T stop is the B Line on the Green Line at BU Central; closest public parking lot is at 665 Commonwealth Ave, at the corner of Granby St. and Commonwealth.
About Niklaus Largier:
Niklaus Largier is Sidney and Margaret Ancker Chair in the Humanities and Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of California-Berkeley, where he is also affiliated with the Programs in Medieval Studies and Religious Studies. His research deals with German literature and philosophy, especially questions of the relations among literature, philosophy, theology, and other fields of knowledge. He is an expert on mystical traditions in German literature and thought, in particular Meister Eckhart and his influence from the Middle Ages to postmodern discourses. His most recent books explore the relation between bodily ascetic practices (in particular flagellation), eroticism, and the literary imagination (Lob der Peitsche: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Erregung. Beck, Munich, 2001 / In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal. ZONE Books, 2007) and the fascination of decadent literature with such religious practices (Die Kunst des Begehrens: Dekadenz, Sinnlichkeit und Askese. Beck, Munich, 2007). His other books include a study on time and temporality in late medieval philosophy and literature (1989), a bibliography of literature on Meister Eckhart (1989), a translation and commentary of a medieval treatise on spiritual poverty (1989), a two-volume edition of Meister Eckhart’s works with extensive commentaries in the Deutscher Klassiker Verlag (1993), and a study of the significance of exemplum and exemplarity in medieval literature, philosophy, and historiography (1997). Largier has published essays on Eckhart, Tauler, Seuse, Mechthild of Magdburg, Hadewijch, Rudolf of Biberach, Czepko, and others; and, more recently, a series of articles on the interaction of images and texts in medieval manuscripts, questions of visual culture, and the significance of exemplarity in various discursive contexts.