“Whose Revolution? Ursula K. Le Guin in Conversation with John Milton”
FRI Lecture Series
What does Ursula K. Le Guin, the renowned contemporary American author of speculative fiction and regional poetry, have to do with John Milton, the (in)famous seventeenth-century English defender of regicide and Christian epic poet? For one thing both thought seriously about revolution: what defines it, how it may be achieved, and by whom. In this presentation Dr. MarissaGreenberg (Associate Professor, English) examines what these very different writers tell us about women as revolutionary readers and writers of early modern literature. Drawing on archival research that she conducted with the support of a FRI Faculty Seed Grant, Dr. Greenberg traces Le Guin’s agonistic relationship with Milton throughout her career. Even as the archives reveal Le Guin’s active silencing of Milton’s influence, they amplify these writers’ conversations across embodied distance and ideological difference. Listening for these conversations, in turn, may inform how we understand feminist and intersectional literary criticism as revolutionary acts.
Light Fare Provided.