Can myths, legends, and stories provide alternative shelter, literary lieux de mémoire where a refugee, a migrant, or a wanderer might feel at home?
The 2015 Holberg Lecture by Marina Warner was held as a part of the Holberg Prize Symposium and the University of Bergen, June 9, 2015
‘We live in the country of words,’ wrote the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, in a poem that speaks to all people who are on the move, displaced from their homes for reasons of war, persecution, necessity. Can myths, legends, and stories provide alternative shelter, literary lieux de mémoire where a refugee, a migrant, or a wanderer might feel at home?
In her lecture, Marina Warner will look at two mythic lost cities— Troy and Carthage—and explore their transmigrations in contemporary poetry and fiction. She asks, with George Seferis: Can literature be ‘strong enough to help’?
Professor Dame Marina Warner, FBA, is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and Professorial Research Fellow at SOAS.
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