Crime and Punishment Lecture

The three scenes I want us to look at during the course of my talk this morning are: Raskolnikov’s confession to Sonya; Svidrigailov’s last night alive; and the Epilogue– Raskolnikov in Siberia

Louise Cowan Believes

Louise Cowan believes 1. There is a body of “classic texts” that constitute a necessary knowledge for members of Western civilization. 2. These texts interact with--and welcome--sufficiently qualified new texts. 3. Underlying these texts is an oral tradition that sustains the unconscious life of a people. 4. A culture is formed by all the public virtues—both written and oral--cohering to form a cosmos and a code. 5. Poetry is the foundation of this conscious and unconscious cosmos in which people live. 6. Two kinds of learning exist: the first with the purpose of transmitting a sense of this unconstitute cosmos in which one’s world exists; the purpose of the second is to constitute a self. The two make up a liberal education. 7. All young people should be given a liberal education

The Idiot

Many people can, and do, of course, get through their entire lives without feeling that they must confront and try to understand Dostoevsky\u27s novel ”The Idiot.• But when one does confront it, one must perforce attempt to understand it or be a harmed a great deal by the refusal. (Dante lets us know in our reading of ”The Divine Comedy• that we are likely to be made much the worse for embarking on the journey unless we keep on once we have begun. Pensa lettor, he warns; the Medusa, that hardening of heart that shuts us up in our own confines, can turn us to stone if we do not engage ourselves with the spiritual meaning of his allegory and not remain content with the letter