Language, Thought, and Style: The Articulated Logos in Victorian Literature with Michael D. Hurley

The Ralston College Podcast

Dr Michael Hurley, Professor of Literature and Theology at Trinity College in the University of Cambridge, delivers a lecture to students in Ralston College’s inaugural Master’s in the Humanities program on the intertwining of language and thought in the work of three major Victorian authors: Walter Pater, John Henry Newman, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Prof. Hurley argues that, far from being merely ornamental, in these authors style is constitutive of thought and the difficult pursuit of beauty is inextricable from the pursuit of truth.

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Ralston College

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00:00 Introduction to the Lecture and Its Significance

01:40 The Special Context of the Lecture

02:00 Exploring the Relationship Between Language and Thought

04:20 Diving Into the Logos Through Literature

21:00 Examining the Dual Nature of Logos

34:00 Analyzing Texts: A Deep Dive into Aestheticism, Truth, and the Logos

43:40 Concluding Reflections and Open Discussion

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Authors, Ideas, and Works Mentioned in this Episode:

Pythagoras

Anti-Empiricism

St. John the Evangelist

Logos

Heraclitus

Romanticism

David Jones

Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach”

Sophocles

Peloponnesian War

John Henry Newman

William Blake

W.B. Yeats

Margot Collis

G.K. Chesterton

William James, “The Present Dilemma in Philosophy”

Pragmatism

Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance

Walter Pater, “Style”

Aestheticism

Oscar Wilde

Harold Bloom

Melos

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa

Prolepsis

Hypotaxis

Parataxis

Cicero

Virgil

Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”; “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”; “Carrion Comfort”

William Shakespeare, Hamlet