Arts and Entertainment

'Music of Utopia' event honors Shakespeare, Sir Thomas More anniversaries

Seth Lerer, distinguished professor of literature at the University of California at San Diego, is currently serving as the M.H. Abrams Distinguished Visiting Professor at Cornell. A Guggenheim Fellow, he was the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism for "Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter." Credit: James Carmody, UC San DiegoAll Rights Reserved.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The talk “Shakespeare’s Tempest and the Music of Utopia” will explore Shakespeare’s last play, “The Tempest,” with a focus on lyric and music at 7 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 10, in Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library, on the Penn State University Park campus. This event pairs Sir Thomas More’s “Utopia” and William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” in a significant anniversary year for both writers.

Seth Lerer, distinguished professor of literature at the University of California at San Diego, will offer the talk, which is sponsored by Penn State University Libraries’ Eberly Family Special Collections Library and by Penn State’s Department of Comparative Literature in the College of the Liberal Arts.

“Utopia,” the classic work presenting an orderly, reasonable society on a fictional, isolated island in the New World, celebrates the 500-year anniversary of its publication in 1516. Shakespeare’s character Gonzalo, the “honest old councilor” in “The Tempest,” imagines an ideal commonwealth, suggesting that Shakespeare had adapted contemporary ideas about utopian societies. This year also marks 400 years since Shakespeare’s death, commemorating his life and legacy.

Lerer’s teaching and research address medieval and Renaissance literature, the history of the English language, children’s literature and the history of the book. Currently serving as the M.H. Abrams Distinguished Visiting Professor at Cornell, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow and the recipient of the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism for "Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter." His most recent book is "Prospero’s Son: Life, Love, Books, and Theater."

The Eberly Family Special Collections Library possesses the finest and largest assemblage of English-language copies of “Utopia” in the world in the Arthur O. Lewis Utopia Collection. Penn State Libraries Open Publishing also recently launched the online publication of Lyman Tower Sargent’s "Utopian Literature in English: An Annotated Bibliography from 1516 to the Present."

Persons with disabilities who anticipate needing accommodations or who have questions about physical access may contact Sandra Stelts at 814-863-5388 or sks5@psu.edu in advance of the event.

Last Updated January 31, 2017

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