Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski tackles the first half of Tolstoy's aesthetic masterwork (?) What is Art? to isolate and examine (1) Tolstoy's grievances with art in the late nineteenth century (and (1b) how much of that applies to contemporary artistic criticism), (2) the failings in other aesthetic systems at the time, (3) Tolstoy's own (admittedly-ambiguous and problematic) principles of artistic merit, and (4) how Tolstoy's targets (including Baudelaire, Impressionism, Shakespeare, and Beethoven's 9th Symphony) fare under his criticism.  There's a lot to unpack and a lot to talk about, so strap in and get ready for another convoluted discussion about art! Suggested supplementary readings include: Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Mallarme (translations included in Tolstoy's Appendices) Wagner's Ring Cycle (we'll talk about it more next week) Turgenev's The Hunting Sketches (for an example of peasant-oriented Russian literature) Genesis from the Bible (one of the few artworks Tolstoy frequently holds up as exemplary) Revisit some 19th century art movements like Romanticism, Realism, and Impressionism. To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/ And please consider contributing to Professor Kozlowski's Patreon at:    https://www.patreon.com/ProfessorKozlowski - where you'll also be  able to vote for and suggest new topics for future lectures.

Professor Kozlowski reads a wide variety of Tolstoy's essays on art, including his "Schoolboys and Art," "Introduction to Semyonov's Peasant Stories," "Introduction to the Works of Guy de Maupassant," "On Art (NOT the same as What is Art?)," and "Afterword to Chekov's 'Darling'".  Through these writings, we'll track the development of Tolstoy's thoughts on art, including his normative definition of art, the three criteria Tolstoy employs to discuss art, and how he applies these aesthetic principles to the work of Maupassant and Chekov. Suggested supplementary readings include: Anna Karenina - we'll be returning to this one often Tolstoy's "Master and Man" Semyonov's "The Servant" Three stories by Guy de Maupassant: "Boule de suif", "A Piece of String," and "Solitude" Chekov's "Darling" Dickens' Oliver Twist - for baseline knowledge of Dickens' preoccupations Numbers 23-24 (The story of Balaam and Balak is Tolstoy's favorite metaphor for misguided artists) To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/ And please consider contributing to Professor Kozlowski's Patreon at:   https://www.patreon.com/ProfessorKozlowski - where you'll also be able to vote for and suggest new topics for future lectures.

Professor Kozlowski introduces his online section of Troy and the Trojan War for Spring 2023, explaining the rough outline of the course, the expectations for conduct, grading procedures, and general advice for student performance.  Non-students need not listen.

For the first proper lecture in Ethics of Literature, Professor Kozlowski discusses Tolkien's often-overlooked short story, "Leaf By Niggle."  This serves two purposes: by closely examining and interpreting the story, we can determine much of Tolkien's morality and values, just as many of the writers we discuss in future weeks will examine and interpret other works of literature; Tolkien also uses this story to present many of his own thoughts on the value of art and the ethics of creating art, which we will examine and critique. Suggested supplementary readings include: "On Fairy Stories" (also in the Tales From the Perilous Realm collection) The Lord of the Rings The Silmarillion The Bible (Tolkien's an ardent Catholic; his worldview and ethics are distinctly Christian.  Nor is this the last time Christian teaching will be relevant to our discussion) To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/ And please consider contributing to Professor Kozlowski's Patreon at:  https://www.patreon.com/ProfessorKozlowski - where you'll also be able  to vote for and suggest new topics for future lectures.

Professor Kozlowski begins our discussion of the ethics of literature with a simple question: Is Speaking Ethical?  The answer may be simple, but the implementation, and the study of how a work of literature can affect us - for something as simple as its entertainment value, for something as abstract as its beauty, or for something as profound as the imposition of a new ideological perspective - is endlessly complicated.  Yet many thinkers have weighed in on these complicated effects, and even gone so far as to suggest that some works are upright and morally-nourishing, while others are dangerous, or even outright pernicious.  In this introductory lecture, we'll set the rules for our discussion of these ideas: what we will and will not talk about, what works we'll use to guide our understanding of fiction's ethical ramifications, and what knowledge we'll assume going into this discussion.  It'll be messy, but undoubtedly fascinating. To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/ And please consider contributing to Professor Kozlowski's Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/ProfessorKozlowski - where you'll also be able to vote for and suggest new topics for future lectures.

Though Professor Kozlowski admittedly did not play much further, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag remains his favorite game in the franchise, even if it discards or sidelines many of the gameplay elements and characteristics that have defined the series up to this point.  But that raises an interesting question: Is Assassin's Creed at its best when it abandons its fundamental assumptions and principles? - or does Black Flag have more in common with its predecessors than meets the eye? If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski concludes his series on Ray Bradbury by eating crow and admitting that his understanding of Bradbury's art and objectives may be biased by an over-close reading of Fahrenheit 451.  Perhaps Let's All Kill Constance is more a reflection of Bradbury's wild and uncontrollable creativity, and his passion for making big ideas without worrying too much about the details or execution. If you want to support Professor Kozlowski's lectures and research - or if you want to vote for new topics - please consider contributing to his Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/ProfessorKozlowski To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski wrestles with the existential horror of realizing that Ray Bradbury, one of his favorite writers, may have turned into a hack and hypocrite during his later career.  He therefore delivers a confused, half-intelligible discussion of how Bradbury's 2003 detective-noir-ish Let's All Kill Constance fails to stand up to scrutiny from the perspective of its genre, its own idolization of early Hollywood, conventional writing wisdom, and Bradbury's own standards of good art. If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski contends with the wild second half of Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, interrogating the way that Bradbury depicts the good and evil forces of the novel and portrays their struggle, using that as an opportunity to interrogate Bradbury's development as a writer and thinker as he grows older and less restrained. If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/

Professor Kozlowski wildly gestures at the irrational logic of Bradbury's novel of boys, dark carnivals, and nightmare happenings: Something Wicked This Way Comes.  By examining the style and language of Bradbury's prose in this, his (perhaps) most characteristically Bradbury-an novel, perhaps we'll draw closer to an understanding of how this work defies expectations and reaches its own internal, illogical, consistency. If you have questions or topic suggestions for Professor Kozlowski, e-mail him at profbkozlowski2@gmail.com To see what else Professor Kozlowski is up to, visit his webpage: https://professorkozlowski.wordpress.com/