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| Professor Dan Wylie giving his inaugural lecture titled, "Elephants, compassion and the largesse of literature.” |
Professor Dan Wylie presented his inaugural lecture, titled “Elephants, compassion and the largesse of literature” on Tuesday, 17 May, in Eden Grove Blue lecture theatre. Wylie, a lecturer in the English department, is fully absorbed in the field of eco-criticism – the study between literature and the physical environment. In 2008 he published the book, Elephant.
In his lecture, Wylie focussed on how literatures represent elephants and how our imagining of these creatures will affect our treatment of them. He started his lecture by questioning why we don’t raise a monument with the death of every elephant, as we do for humans – essentially highlighting the way that humans consider themselves as separate from the ecosystem. Wylie pointed out that literature can be used to cross the division between ‘human’ and ‘animal’ and to create compassion towards them. In this way we can address our dismal looking ecological future.
Wylie ended off by reading his own poem, which is narrated by an elephant.
Published in Grocott's Mail on 27 May 2011
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| A 'fan' gets her book signed after the lecture. |
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