230. Using Literature to Know Ourselves feat. Leonard Barkan

When we read fiction, our brains are able to suspend our awareness of the fiction so we can fully immerse ourselves in the story we’re reading. When this happens, we are able to think about our own lives and personal beliefs in the context of the story. That’s the power of great art- the themes of a text should transcend the particulars of that story, its setting, or those characters. 

Leonard Barkan, professor of literature and classics at Princeton, has had this experience over and over in his life when it comes to the work of Shakespeare. His new book, Reading Shakespeare Reading Me, details the different personal revelations he’s had throughout the course of his life through reading or watching Shakespeare’s play. Leonard and Greg discuss the role of art in modern society, how we should all approach our personal reading practices to get the most out of it and the power of seeing Shakespeare’s plays performed on stage. 

Barkan is also the author of The Hungry Eye: Eating, Drinking, and European culture from Rome to the Renaissance, which explores the role of food in European culture and art through the years. He teaches comparative literature at Princeton. 

Episode Quotes:

How arts & literature shape who you become as a person

43:19: My choice is great art. I can't make it, but I need to embrace it and figure out how it reads me. What is there in me that has some chance of growth, of development of responsiveness, beyond what my ordinary experience gives me? These are fields of experience that I am allowed to have, say Shakespeare. Not only as good as a real experience but better, more complicated, more troubling, more thrilling. That makes me more complicated, troubled, and thrilled than all those other things.

38:59: Aesthetics is about the validity of beauty and the study of what makes something beautiful, how to produce the beautiful, how to recognize the beautiful, and how to take pleasure in the beautiful.

What's the difference between watching a play versus simply reading it?

24:26: What happens in a theater, of course, the text is narrowed down. Let's not forget that it's narrowed down to a particular trajectory that the director and the actors chose, but ideally, that trajectory is life itself. It is happening for real. The actors look like certain things. Their expressions are saying something. The way they listen is important. Novels don't have that. Their bodies on a stage- beautiful, ugly, fat, thin, whatever, and their voices are a certain way.

Show Links:Recommended Resources:

• King Lear 
• Winter’s Tale
• Aby Warburg

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Princeton University
• Professional Profile at The American Academy in Berlin
• Leonard Barkan’s Website
• Leornard Barkan on LinkedIn
• Leonard Barkan on Twitter

His Work:

• Reading Shakespeare Reading Me
• The Hungry Eye: Eating, Drinking, and European culture from Rome to the Renaissance
• Berlin for Jews: A Twenty-First-Century Companion
• Michelangelo: A Life on Paper
• Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures (Essays in the Arts)
• Satyr Square: A Year, a Life in Rome