English Literature Seminar
Professor William Sharpe (Barnard College), currently a Fulbright Visiting Professor at Edinburgh:
https://barnard.edu/profiles/william-sharpe
Project Room, 4.30-6.30pm
Chair: Andrew Taylor
The event will be followed by a wine reception.
Walk in Progress: Keeping Pace with Ambulatory Art
People have walked since time immemorial, but the notion of taking a walk as a rewarding activity in itself is relatively new, dating to the later eighteenth century. Writers of the Romantic era transformed walking from a practical necessity into a highly visible form of self-discovery. They revelled in the glories of nature, but the mental journey was as important as the physical one. A body of walking literature emerged, including now-classic works by Rousseau, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Dickens, Thoreau, and Stevenson, as well as more recent books by W. G. Sebald, Bill Bryson, and Robert Macfarlane. During the 1960s, however, artistic interest in walking took a decisive turn in a new direction. The walk no longer served as the starting point for creative action; the walk became a work of art in itself. This talk will look at that moment of transition, consider some of its most important “art-walks,” and conclude with a brief look at some artwalking activity in contemporary Scotland.