Auerbach’s Augustinianism:
Figural Reading and Political Pessimism
A Conversation With Columcille Dever

12.00-1.30pm | Friday, February 28
Elm Library, 31 Whitney Avenue

Erich Auerbach is perhaps best known as the founding father of the modern study of comparative literature, a field still in its infancy when he published his groundbreaking Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature in 1946. Trained as a classical philologist, Auerbach’s writings range across disciplinary boundaries and address enduring questions of human concern: Does history have meaning? Are the seeds of the “de-Christianization” of Europe already present in the doctrine of the Incarnation? What should our politics look like if the triumph of evil is nigh inevitable? Drawing upon thinkers from Augustine of Hippo to Dante and Blaise Pascal, Auerbach attempted to answer these questions with courage and insight in the midst of the traumatic unfolding of the twentieth century.

J. Columcille Dever is Assistant Professor of Theology, Providence College.

This event is open to all members of the Yale community. Lunch will be served.

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The way in which we view human life and society is the same whether we are concerned with things of the past or things of the present.

—Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature