Life, Ideas, and Revelation: Lucy Beckett’s ‘A Postcard from the Volcano’
20th October: 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm BST
Lucy Beckett’s A Postcard from the Volcano: A Novel of Pre-War Germany (2009) is a great intellectual novel situated in a time of massive of geopolitical changes. Set in what was then Germany and is now Poland (mostly) between 1914 and 1939, young European intellectuals and artists—Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, some religious, some atheist, friends and sometimes lovers—wrestle with the great ideas in the light of real events which are impinging increasingly on their daily lives. In this online talk, Rev Dr Dominic White O.P., Blackfriars Hall, will be exploring how Lucy Beckett, former head of classics at Ampleforth College, brings together an intellectual feast with writing of profound compassion and humanity that unfolds the subtle and mysterious workings of divine grace. He will also look at how she positions the narrative voice as a kind of “revelator” and discuss the award-winning sequel, The Leaves Are Falling (2014), in which the creative possibilities of this “revelator” role are developed further. Professor Michael Scott will chair.
This event is sponsored by the Future of the Humanities Project and Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. It is part of the series, Cultural Encounters: Books that Have Made a Difference.
Online. Free and open to all. Registration is required.
Rev Dr Dominic White O.P. is a fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, prior of Blackfriars Priory, and a research fellow at the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge. A Dominican friar and Catholic priest, he received a Ph.D. at Imperial College London. His theological interests focus especially on theology of the arts and the implications of the arts for metaphysics, liturgy, and spirituality. Fr. White is the author of The Lost Knowledge of Christ: Christian Cosmology, Contemporary Spiritualities and the Arts (2015) and How Do I Look? Theology in the Age of the Selfie (2020), for which he was awarded a Ph.D. in theology by the University of Cambridge.
Michael Scott is senior dean, fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, college advisor for postgraduate students, and a member of the Las Casas Institute. He also serves as senior advisor to the president of Georgetown University. Scott previously served as the pro-vice-chancellor at De Montfort University and founding vice-chancellor of Wrexham Glyndwr University, where he is professor emeritus.
upcoming events in this series
Professor Kate Crosby
3pm, 27 Oct: ‘U Dhammaloka: the Irish Buddhist’
Professor Bonnie Lander Johnson, Cambridge
3 Nov: ‘Mary Beckett’s Give Them Stones’
Lindsay Kaplan, Georgetown
10 Nov: ‘The Massacre of the Innocents (Matt 2)’
Professor Michael J Collins,
17 Nov: ‘“Gotta Be Goin On” America’s Encounter with the Land’
Contact:
Las Casas Institute with Georgetown University
lascasas@bfriars.ox.ac.uk