How to Fall in Love with Classics is an exciting National Library Board lecture series by Gwee Li Sui that celebrates the classics. This series looks lovingly and thoughtfully at a few texts to understand the special pleasure we get from them. The study should help to ignite or rekindle your own passion for literature. You may grasp more firmly the importance of particular works and learn to appreciate them more.
Every lecture will explore one classic for its various forms of meaning. The text will be dissected to reveal connections to ideas in history, culture, and society. We will also observe how this can enhance our reflections on ourselves and the world. Series 10 will look at four self-help classics: Sei Shōnagon’s The Pillow Book, Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, and Arthur Yap’s “there is no future in nostalgia”.
Arthur Yap’s “there is no future in nostalgia” is a short but enigmatic twentieth-century Singaporean poem. In a historical drive towards modernisation, this poem had tersely warned against knee-jerk nostalgia and provoked thoughts on self-orientation. Gwee Li Sui will relate its famous lines to other literary reflections on and reactions to changing history in Singaporean literature.
VENUE: Online
LINK: To be provided to registrants
EVENT WEBSITE: Eventbrite (for registration)
DATE AND TIME
26 Mar 2022, 7pm–8.30pm