Professor Rhodri Lewis, The Rules of the Game: Writing about Frank Kermode

Professor Rhodri Lewis,

The Rules of the Game: Writing about Frank Kermode

Laura Marcus Life-Writing Workshop

How do you write the biography of a famous thinker?

What do you do when it becomes clear your subject has fabricated parts of their life story?

Sir Frank Kermode (1919-2010) was one of the most prominent public intellectuals on either side of the Atlantic—in his case, on both of them—from the years around 1960 until his death half a century later. Perhaps the most prominent such English-speaking figure. His papers are now housed in Princeton University Library, and when I went to look at them (for want of anything else to do) during the grizzly years of the pandemic, it soon became clear to me that they had the capacity to tell a story that would be of interest to a constituency larger and more diverse than one of locked-down mid-career academics suffering from archive fever. 

The question was how and in what format to tell it. It was all the more challenging because 1) Kermode had published a best-selling autobiography (Not Entitled [1995]), and 2) Kermode had preserved an archive in which he showed (not least in the manuscript drafts of several earlier autobiographies) that the account of himself given in Not Entitled is, in large measure, a work of deftly executed fiction. In telling a story about his extraordinary life and equally extraordinary writing, I’ve had to take account of these challenges; in this talk, I’ll discuss some of the ways in which I’ve tried to make a virtue of necessity.

This workshop will appeal to anyone interested in the particular issues that arise when writing biographies of scholars, critics, and thinkers; as well as those interested in the history of literary scholarship as a discipline.

Speaker Details:

After many years at Oxford (culminating in a stint as Director of Ertegun House), Professor Rhodri Lewis moved to Princeton University in 2018, where he teaches English and Comparative Literature and spends more time than he should writing reviews. His most recent book is Shakespeare’s Tragic Art (Princeton UP, 2024), and he is at present about three quarters of the way through a critical life of Frank Kermode.

@profrhodrilewis
@rhodrilewis.bsky.social

Further Details and Contacts:

This is an in-person event and will not be recorded.

NOTE: this event takes place at the new Schwarzman Centre, not the St Cross building.

Registration is required and will close on the Tuesday before the event. Confirmations of successful registration will be sent on Tuesday evening.

Please note that this event is exclusively open to current members of the University of Oxford. Workshop places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis, with priority given to members of the English Faculty. 

Queries regarding this event should be addressed to Charles Pidgeon.