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Release date: Sept. 8, 2004 Salman Rushdie to Deliver Emory's Ellmann Lectures, Give Reading Oct. 3-5
WHAT: Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature WHEN: Lectures: Sunday, Oct. 3 - Tuesday, Oct. 5; Reading and book signing Tuesday, Oct. 5 WHERE: Glenn Memorial Auditorium, 1652 N. Decatur Rd., Emory. Free parking in the Fishburne and Peavine decks. For directions, go to www.emory.edu/WWW/directions.html COST: Free and open to the public, but tickets required. 404-727-2223 Salman Rushdie, one of the foremost contemporary multicultural authors, will deliver the seventh series of Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature at Emory University Oct. 3-5. The three-lecture series will be followed by a reading and book signing, believed to be Rushdie's first public appearance in the Southeast. There is a two book per person limit for signatures. All events are free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Tickets will be available beginning Sept. 10 at the Dobbs Center ticket counter, 605 Asbury Circle, Emory, or can be reserved by calling 404-727-2223. The series is titled "The Other Great Tradition" in which Rushdie will outline an alternative pantheon of great storytellers in addition to the standard established by the influential and controversial literary critic F.R. Leavis in the middle of the 20th century. According to Leavis, only five novelists fell within the great tradition of English-language fiction: Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad and D.H. Lawrence. The lecture series is specifically intended for a general audience, not just serious scholars of literature. Rushdie is a versatile writer with credits that include novels, short stories, children's literature, travel narratives, stage adaptations, film documentaries, and non-fiction, including literary and cultural criticism. His novels "Midnight's Children" (1981), "The Satanic Verses" (1988), "The Moor's Last Sigh" (1995) and "Fury" (2001) have garnered an array of awards, including the Booker and Whitbread prizes among others. His non-fiction works include "Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991" and "Step Across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction 1992-2002." He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and current president of PEN American Center. Rushdie's seven novels blend extraordinary personal experience into a controversial mix of historical, religious and cultural issues. His additional novels include "Grimus" (1975), "Shame" (1983), "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" (1999) and "Fury" (2001). "Midnight's Children" was voted one of the England's 100 best-loved novels by the British public as part of the BBC's The Big Read, 2003. Rushdie was born into a prominent Muslim family in Bombay, India, in 1947. He was educated in Bombay and at Rugby School (U.K.) and Cambridge University before beginning a television career in Karachi, Pakistan, and then as a writer in England and now New York. The Ellmann Lectures were endowed in honor of the literary achievement of Richard Ellmann (1918-1987), who served Emory as the first Robert W. Woodruff Professor from 1980-87. For more than 40 years his writing set the highest standards of critical inquiry and humanistic scholarship. He was one of the most noted literary biographers of Oscar Wilde and James Joyce as well as an eminent scholar of W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens and other modern authors. Ellmann's public lectures were unparalleled in their appeal to a world-wide audience of readers for his use of language that invited the reader to share his personal engagement with serious literature. Past lecturers and invited readers are Seamus Heaney (1988), Denis Donoghue and Anthony Hecht (1990), Helen Vendler and Jorie Graham (1994), Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Wole Soyinka (1996), A.S. Byatt (1999), and David Lodge (2001). The series is published for Emory by Harvard University Press, which will publish Rushdie's "The Other Great Tradition" this year. The schedule for "The Other Great Tradition" is as follows. All events will take place in Glenn Memorial Auditorium, 1652 N. Decatur Rd., Emory. • "Proteus," 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 3., followed by a reception on the lawn. • "Heraclitus," 8:15 p.m. Monday, Oct. 4. • "Scheherazade," 4 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 5. • Rushdie will read selections from his works, followed by a book signing, 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 5. There is a two book limit per person for signature. For those who want books signed but cannot attend the reading, books may be purchased in advance at Druid Hills Bookstore, 1401 Oxford Rd., in Emory Village (404-727-2665), and picked up later. More on F.R. Leavis: "Leavis contended that literature is a powerful social and moral force in society, and that only true literature evokes a positive view of life and promotes humanism. From the beginning of his teaching career at Cambridge in the 1930s, Leavis encouraged his students to read such contemporary writers as James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and D. H. Lawrence, none of whom were considered academically acceptable. [Leavis' first major book,] "New Bearings in English Poetry" (1931) praised the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Butler Yeats, Eliot, and Ezra Pound, and argued that there are certain absolute standards of perfection against which we can measure works of art. It introduced many of the recurring themes of Leavis' later criticism. Not surprisingly, Leavis' views sparked heated debate in academic circles." ("Contemporary Authors," Gale Group.) ### Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. For more than a decade Emory has been named one of the country's top 25 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, a comprehensive metropolitan health care system. |
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