Franco Moretti, professor of English and director of the Center for the Study of the Novel at Stanford University, will be presenting a lecture titled "On Bourgeois Seriousness" at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 11, in the Welles-Brown Room of Rush Rhees Library on the University of Rochester River Campus. The Department of Modern Languages and Cultures is sponsoring this event.
Moretti's talk emerges out of his recent work and discusses the new "seriousness" of 19th century novels, moving between narrative morphology and social history. His interests include cultural geography, the novel and narrative theory, as well as interdisciplinary models for the study of literature. Moretti is a frequent contributor to New Left Review. His publications include Signs Taken for Wonders (1983), Modern Epic (1995), and Atlas of the European World (1998).
Moretti has taught English and comparative literature in several Italian universities and at Columbia University. He has given the Gauss seminars at Princeton University and has been a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
For more information, contact the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures at (585) 275-4251.