Fintan O’Toole, one of Ireland’s leading public intellectuals, is a columnist for <i>The Irish Times</i> and Leonard L. Milberg ’53 visiting lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University. He also contributes to <i>The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Granta, The Guardian, The Observer</i>, and other international publications. His books on theater include works on William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Thomas Murphy. His books on politics include the bestsellers <i>We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland</i>; <i>Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain</i>; <i>Ship of Fools</i>; and <i>Enough is Enough</i>. In 2011, <i>The Observer</i> named O’Toole one of “Britain’s top 300 intellectuals.” He has received the A.T. Cross Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism, the Millennium Social Inclusion Award, th
Award-winning writer Louise Kennedy presents “Trespasses: Fact, Fiction and Memory,” a lecture and reading from her bestselling novel Trespasses (2022). Open to the public; no tickets required.
Princeton faculty members Linda Colley, Rafaela Dancygier, Judith Hamera, Ilya Kaminsky, Fintan O’Toole and Laurence Ralph, and two alumni have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Fintan O’Toole Columnist with The Irish Times and Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Visiting Professor of Irish Letters at Princeton University “Known and Strange Things: The Political Necessity of Art” (November 9) Lecture 1: Against Artfulness Democracy has become, not so much aestheticized, as artful. Reactionary politicians create collusive relationships with their audiences in which exaggeration and provocation are performed and consumed. Citizens become fans. This is less a form of democratic deliberation, more an ersatz replacement for the aesthetic experience. (November 10) Lecture 2: Negative Capability Democracy cannot sustain itself without what John Keats called “negative capability” – the capacity to live with doubts, uncertainties and mysteries without having to impose apparent resolutions. The current crisis of democracy is rooted in the loss of this capacity and the insistence that contradictions are inherently intolerable. How can artists seek to restore it? The Tan
Fintan O’Toole Columnist with The Irish Times and Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Visiting Professor of Irish Letters at Princeton University “Known and Strange Things: The Political Necessity of Art” (November 9) Lecture 1: Against Artfulness Democracy has become, not so much aestheticized, as artful. Reactionary politicians create collusive relationships with their audiences in which exaggeration and provocation are performed and consumed. Citizens become fans. This is less a form of democratic deliberation, more an ersatz replacement for the aesthetic experience. (November 10) Lecture 2: Negative Capability Democracy cannot sustain itself without what John Keats called “negative capability” – the capacity to live with doubts, uncertainties and mysteries without having to impose apparent resolutions. The current crisis of democracy is rooted in the loss of this capacity and the insistence that contradictions are inherently intolerable. How can artists seek to restore it? The Tan