 | Mary Douglas |
A literary form that has been used in religious writings throughout the world is the focus of this year's Dwight Terry Lectures.
Renowned cultural anthropologist Mary Douglas will present four lectures on the theme "Writing in Circles: Ring Composition as a Creative Stimulus."
The ring composition has been used in works ranging from books of the Pentateuch, Homer's "Iliad," Russian follklore, Persian mythology, Indonesian religious writings and medieval French histories. The highly structured form, "consists of a set of parallelisms," explains Douglas, "the last lines close the ring by returning to the theme of the beginning. ...
"If ring writing encounters various technical problems, so does reading like a ring," she adds. "Like unfolding a scroll from the two ends, the reader finds the message held in the very middle. The text radiates from the mid-turn in both directions; it has to be read synoptically, like a sonnet."
Douglas' four lectures will be: "How To Recognize a Ring Composition," on Tuesday, Oct. 21; "Structured in Alternating Bands of Light and Dark," on Wednesday, Oct. 22; "Straight Reading Makes Nonsense of Circular Writing," on Tuesday, Oct. 28; and "Speculations on the Idea of a Major Cultural Change," on Thursday, Oct. 30. All the lectures will take place at 4:30 p.m. in Rm. 102 of Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High St. Each will be followed by a question-and-answer period and a reception (questions may also be addressed to Douglas via the Terry Lectures website at www.yale.edu/terrylecture/).
The talks are open to the public free of charge.
Douglas is considered one of the most influential anthropologists of the 20th century. Her work has ranged from African societies to the classifications of biblical law, from sociology to religion, and from food to dirt. One of the major goals of her work has been unraveling the principles by which people order their world. Two of her books, "Purity and Danger" and "Natural Symbols," have become classics in the field of anthropology, and many of her ideas have influenced thought in other social sciences, including history, literature, religious studies and cultural studies. Still an active anthropologist, Douglas is a retired professor of social anthropology at London University, an honorary fellow at University College in London and professor emerita of humanities at Northwestern University.
The Dwight Terry Lectureship was established in 1905 by a gift from Dwight Harrington Terry of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The series focuses on religion and its application to human welfare in the light of scientific knowledge and philosophical insights. The lectures are published in book form by Yale University Press. Previous Terry Lecturers have included John Dewey, Margaret Mead, Erich Fromm, Paul Tillich and Rebecca West.
T H I S
'Writing in Circles' is theme of
this year's Dwight Terry Lectures
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