Bertinoro, 16/23 September 2007

SCANDAL

See the participants

The Structure of Scandal

In modern usages, scandal is little more than a lapse from the proper which can serve as food for gossip and the yellow press.But this idea of scandal or the scandalous obscures the importance of the idea of scandal prominent in antiquity and early Christianity. For since the time of St. Paul’s Epistles, scandal names both the cause of human failure and the possibility of human redemption. Ultimately, scandal raises the question of the proper and the law and brings under question the very desirability of a law-governed life.

Readings:
  • St. Paul, First Epistle to the Corinthians
  • Epistle to the Romans
  • Roland Barthes, S/Z
  • Franz Kafka, The Trial (Der Prozess)
  • Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger
  • Richard Sheridan, The School for Scandal
  • J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace
  • Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Ernest

 

Seminar in English
Held by
Hayden White
University of Stanford
Hayden White is University Professor of the History of Consciousness, Emeritus, University of California, and Professor of Comparative Literature, Stanford University.
Tutor
Giuliano Bacigalupo
Giuliano Bacigalupo is 29 years old and finished his PhD thesis last year in Comparative Literature at the University of Bologna. The topic of his thesis was the conception of the linguistic sign developed in Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations (1901-13) and its relation to perception and imagination. At present he is working on the Poetics of Aristotle, in particular on the two key concepts of probability and necessity as principles of the plot.