September 27, 2011 at 4:59 pm
“Think of the Bible as Woody Allen’s recipe for chicken salad.” “The drama of this epic is that at every moment God gives them what they need, and the next moment, they fuck up again.” “Law is the emotional center of Exodus. The stories exist as the frame FOR the law.” “Aaron should be like […]
September 27, 2011 at 4:15 pm
All works of art are built from the works that have preceded them, in a series of creative reinterpretations that allow artists to explore new possibilities. As Core scholars, we are familiar with this flow of creation, but this week it took on a more literal meaning when the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam found a new […]
September 26, 2011 at 12:27 pm
LECTURES THIS WEEK CC101: David Damrosch (Harvard) on Exodus (9/27) CC105, Tuesday: Scott Whitaker on waves (9/27) CC105, Thursday: Scott Whitaker on light (9/29) CC201: Barbara Diefendorf on Montaigne (9/27) CC203: Richard Tuck (Harvard) on Hobbes’ Leviathan (9/29) A reminder to alumni — if you will be in Boston during a scheduled course lecture, and […]
September 26, 2011 at 11:57 am
The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mind and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the […]
September 23, 2011 at 11:24 am
From scrolls, to the codex, to e-books, like the Amazon Kindle, the format of the book is changing in our new technological age. A recent New York Times article describes this ever-changing phenomenon and what we should expect to sacrifice in giving up the good-ole paperback. In the classical world, the scroll was the book […]
September 23, 2011 at 9:00 am
La vieille dit à Cunégonde : « Mademoiselle, vous avez soixante et douze quartiers, et pas une obole ; il ne tient qu’à vous d’être la femme du plus grand seigneur de l’Amérique méridionale, qui a une très belle moustache ; est-ce à vous de vous piquer d’une fidélité à toute épreuve ? Vous avez […]
September 22, 2011 at 5:23 pm
“We can think of Genesis, not as a book with a beginning and an end, but rather as an archive.” “God’s covenant with Noah is one-sided. God does not ask for anything in return but he makes a rule that no one is to kill each other but the covenant is not dependent on the […]
September 22, 2011 at 9:00 am
Après le tremblement de terre qui avait détruit les trois quarts de Lisbonne, les sages du pays n’avaient pas trouvé un moyen plus efficace pour prévenir une ruine totale que de donner au peuple un bel auto-da-fé ; il était décidé par l’université de Coïmbre que le spectacle de quelques personnes brûlées à petit feu, […]
September 21, 2011 at 10:30 am
Last Tuesday, Prof. Michael Corgan delivered a lecture to the students of CC201: The Renaissance, on the topic of The Prince by Machiavelli. To provide context for his lecture in the intellectual arc of the course, Prof. Jennifer Formichelli introduced Prof. Corgan with the following remarks. Last week Professor Ricks made a salient distinction between […]
September 21, 2011 at 9:00 am
« Je voudrais savoir lequel est le pire, ou d’être violée cent fois par des pirates nègres, d’avoir une fesse coupée, de passer par les baguettes chez les Bulgares, d’être fouetté et pendu dans un auto-da-fé, d’être disséqué, de ramer en galère, d’éprouver enfin toutes les misères par lesquelles nous avons tous passé, ou bien […]
