«I want you to join me in investigating a multiple murder. There are, it seems, three victims - criticism, reviewing, and the reading public. These murders have been quite widely reported; some of you may have seen, for example, the series of articles in the press not long ago on ‘the death of criticism’, and there have been other recent pieces both in Britain and elsewhere on how reviewing met its end. In the case of each murder, the victim was old, and was said not to have been in good health for some time. Suspicions were aroused when neighbours reported them as missing. One said: ‘I used to see reviewing every week in my local paper, but it hasn’t been there for some time now’. Another said the reading public used to get together to decide which books were any good, ‘but alas, you don’t see anybody except those marketing people now’.» Stefan Collini, «Criticism and the reading public».

In this conversation British literary critic and academic Stefan Collini will meet the Norwegian literary critic, writer and translator Margunn Vikingstad to discuss literary criticism in universities and in media targeted to the larger public. Is literary criticism dead?

Stefan Collini, Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History and English Literature at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of the British Academy.
His work revolves around the place of literary criticism and literary studies in present and past cultures of knowledge. Relevant publications include Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain (2006, on the history and current state of 'public intellectuals), Speaking of Universities (2017) and What are Universities For? (2012), as well as Common Writing: Literary Culture and Public Debate (2017). He also publishes regularly in the Times Literary Supplement.

Margunn Vikingstad is a Norwegian literary critic, writer and literary translator. She writes regularly for Morgenbladet and recently published Reports from the Margins, a book of literary essays about literature. She is also an acclaimed literary translator and her translation of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary was nominated for the Norwegian Critic’s Award in 2017.

Moderator:
Karin Kukkonen, Professor in Comparative Literature and Convenor of LCE (UiO)

The doors open at 19.00 and the event starts at 19.30.
The conversation will be held in English.

CC: 50 kr.

The event is a collaboration between Litteratur på Blå and the research group Literature, Cognition and Emotions