Visiting professor and esteemed philosopher Kendall Walton will present “Thoughtwriting – in Poetry and Music” on Tuesday, May 15 at 12 p.m. in Leighton Hall Room 305 on the Carleton College campus. This presentation is free and open to the public.
It is said that nearly all works of literary fiction have narrators – characters who, within the fictional world, think or write the words of the text and thereby report the story to the reader. Walton, however, suggests an alternative way to understand literary works, an understanding applicable not only to poetry, but also to music. Walton argues that this alternative understanding, which he will elaborate upon in his presentation, explains several important aspects of listeners’ experiences, as well as bringing out an unnoticed respect in which poetry has more in common with music than with other forms of literature.
Currently serving as Carleton College’s Cowling Distinguished Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Kendall Walton is the Charles L. Stevenson Collegiate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. Much of his work explores theoretical questions about the arts and their connections to philosophies of mind, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language. He has written widely on the nature and importance of fiction, as well as on pictoral representation, the aesthetics of music, metaphor, empathy, and the relationship between aesthetic and moral values.
This event is sponsored by the Department of Philsophy. For more information or disability accommodations, contact ssaari@carleton.edu or call (507) 222-4232. Leighton Hall is located on the Carleton campus at the end of College Street.