CPCT and the Walter Benjamin London Research Network cordially invite you to

Philology of Life: Walter Benjamin’s Literary Critical Program

A talk by Kevin McLaughlin (Brown)

Monday, 10 June 2019
6:00 – 8:00pm
Richard Hoggart Building 137a, Goldsmiths
** followed by a wine reception

Kevin McLaughlin will present material from a work in progress on Benjamin’s literary criticism, focusing on the significance of a peculiar mode of philology in Benjamin’s early work with emphasis on his 1914 essay on Friedrich Hölderlin.

Kevin McLaughlin has been the Dean of the Faculty at Brown University since 2011.  He is the George Hazard Crooker University Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and German Studies at Brown and is the author of three books, Writing in Parts:  Imitation and Exchange in 19th-Century Literature (Stanford UP, 1995); Paperwork:  Literature and Mass Mediacy in the Age of Paper (U of Penn P, 2005); and Poetic Force: Poetry after Kant (Stanford UP, 2014). McLaughlin is also the co-translator with Howard Eiland of Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project (Harvard UP, 1999).    

Recommended reading:

McLaughlin, Kevin. “Biophilology: Walter Benjamin’s Literary Critical Legacy.” Modern Language Notes 133.3 (2018, German Issue), pp. 562-584.

Benjamin, Walter. “Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin.” (With particular attention to Gesammelte Schriften 2.1: 105-11; Selected Writings 1: 18-24.)

[Link to PDFs]

Contact: j.ng [at] gold.ac.uk