Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
The Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard University was established in 1925 as an annual lectureship in "poetry in the broadest sense" and named for the university's former professor of fine arts. Distinguished creative figures and scholars in the arts, including painting, architecture, and music deliver customarily six lectures. The lectures are usually dated by the academic year in which they are given, though sometimes by just the calendar year.
Many but not all of the Norton Lectures have subsequently been published by the Harvard University Press. The following table lists all the published lecture series, with academic year given and year of publication, together with unpublished lectures as are known. Titles under which the lectures were published is not necessarily titles under which they were given.
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
Years | Lecturer | Title | Published |
---|---|---|---|
1926–1927 | Gilbert Murray | The Classical Tradition in Poetry | 1927 |
1927–1928 | Eric Maclagan | Italian Sculpture of the Renaissance | 1935 |
1929–1930 | H. W. Garrod | Poetry and the Criticism of Life | 1931 |
1930–1931 | Arthur M. Hind | Rembrandt | 1932 |
1931–1932 | Sigurður Nordal | ||
1932–1933 | T. S. Eliot | The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism:
Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England |
1933 |
1933–1934 | Laurence Binyon | The Spirit of Man in Asian Art | 1935 |
1935–1936 | Robert Frost | ||
1936–1937 | Johnny Roosval | The Poetry of Chiaroscuro | |
1937–1938 | Chauncey Brewster Tinker | Painter and Poet: Studies in the Literary Relations of English Painting | 1938 |
1938–1939 | Sigfried Giedion | Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition | 1941 |
1939–1940 | Igor Stravinsky | Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons | 1942 |
1940–1941 | Pedro Henriquez-Ureña | Literary Currents in Hispanic America | 1945 |
1947–1948 | Erwin Panofsky | Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character | 1953 |
1948–1949 | C. M. Bowra | The Romantic Imagination | 1949 |
1949–1950 | Paul Hindemith | A Composer's World: Horizons and Limitations | 1952 |
1950–1951 | Thornton Wilder | ||
1951–1952 | Aaron Copland | Music and Imagination | 1952 |
1952–1953 | E. E. Cummings | i: six nonlectures | 1953 |
1953–1954 | Herbert Read | Icon and Idea: The Function of Art in the Development of Human Consciousness | 1955 |
1955–1956 | Edwin Muir | The Estate of Poetry | 1962 |
1956–1957 | Ben Shahn | The Shape of Content | 1957 |
1957–1958 | Jorge Guillén | Language and Poetry: Some Poets of Spain | 1961 |
1958–1959 | Carlos Chávez | Musical Thought | 1961 |
1960–1961 | Eric Bentley | ||
1961–1962 | Pier Luigi Nervi | Aesthetics and Technology in Building | 1965 |
1962–1963 | Leo Schrade | Tragedy in the Art of Music | 1964 |
1964–1965 | Cecil Day-Lewis | The Lyric Impulse | 1965 |
1966–1967 | Meyer Schapiro | Romanesque Architectural Sculpture | 2006 |
1967–1968 | Jorge Luis Borges | This Craft of Verse | 2000 |
1968–1969 | Roger Sessions | Questions about Music | 1970 |
1969–1970 | Lionel Trilling | Sincerity and Authenticity | 1972 |
1970–1971 | Charles Eames | Problems Relating to Visual Communication and the Visual Environment | |
1971–1972 | Octavio Paz | Children of the Mire: Modern Poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde | 1974 |
1973–1974 | Leonard Bernstein | The Unanswered Question | 1976 |
1974–1975 | Northrop Frye | The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance | 1976 |
1977–1978 | Frank Kermode | The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative | 1979 |
1978–1979 | James Cahill | The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting | 1982 |
1979–1980 | Helen Gardner | In Defence of the Imagination | 1982 |
1980–1981 | Charles Rosen | The Romantic Generation | 1995 |
1981–1982 | Czesław Miłosz | The Witness of Poetry | 1983 |
1983–1984 | Frank Stella | Working Space | 1986 |
1985–1986 | Italo Calvino | Six Memos for the Next Millennium | 1988 |
1987–1988 | Harold Bloom | Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present | 1989 |
1988–1989 | John Cage | I-VI | 1990 |
1989–1990 | John Ashbery | Other Traditions | 2000 |
1992–1993 | Umberto Eco | Six Walks in the Fictional Woods | 1994 |
1993–1994 | Luciano Berio | Remembering the Future | 2006 |
1994–1995 | Nadine Gordimer | Writing and Being | 1995 |
1995–1996 | Leo Steinberg | "The Mute Image and the Meddling Text" | |
1997–1998 | Joseph Kerman | Concerto Conversations | 1999 |
2001–2002 | George Steiner | Lessons of the Masters | 2003 |
2003–2004 | Linda Nochlin | Bathers, Bodies, Beauty: The Visceral Eye | 2006 |
2006–2007 | Daniel Barenboim | Music Quickens Time | 2008 |
2009–2010 | Orhan Pamuk | The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist | 2010 |
2011–2012 | William Kentridge | Six Drawing Lessons | 2012 |
2013–2014 | Herbie Hancock | The Ethics of Jazz | |
2015–2016 | Toni Morrison | The Origin of Others - The Literature of Belonging |
The post had no incumbent in years omitted.
External links
- Article from Harvard Gazette naming 2006 lecturer (date later changed to fall 2006) and giving history of series
- List of incumbents, 1926–2002, as reported by Harvard University's English Department