Grayson Lecturer Explores Art and Life in Shakespeare's Plays

KEENE, N.H. 4/17/06 -Does art imitate life, or is it the other way around? Professor Dympna Callaghan will address this question at Keene State College on Wednesday, April 26, in the 2006 Janet Grayson Lecture in Literary Studies “Art and Life in Hamlet and The Comedy of Errors.”

This event, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Mountain View Room of the Student Center at 4:30 p.m. A reception will follow the presentation.

Callaghan, a leading scholar in early modern British literature, is dean’s professor in the humanities at Syracuse University and the author of Shakespeare Without Women, The Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, and Feminist Readings in Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects. She will explore the relationship between art and life in the tragedy Hamlet and the slapstick Comedy of Errors, arguing that the source of the dynamism and originality of Shakespeare’s work is the imitation of life.

The annual Janet Grayson Lecture in Literary Studies is named in honor of Dr. Grayson, professor emerita of the KSC Department of English. For more information contact Mark C. Long, 603-358-2695, mlong@keene.edu.