From Professor Brooks: In my work on "identity", part of a new book entitled "Enigmas of Identity", I came upon the intriguing issue of ageing writers, thinkers and artists whose work seems to leap in their final years into something radically new, creating a new phase or period in their oeuvre. Examples include (among others) Beethoven, Yeats, Cezanne, Matisse, and Freud. After brief attention to Yeats and Cezanne, most of my talk will be about Freud's later work, especially Moses and Monotheism, Analysis Terminable and Interminable, and Constructions in Analysis, set in relation to more traditional conceptions of historicism, narrative, repetition and renewal.

This lecture is co-sponsored by Comparative Literature Program, Leslie Center for the Humanities, the Departments of Art, Art History, French & Italian, and German. A reception will follow the lecture.
Comparative Literature Program