The internationally renowned scholar, art theorist Prof Noel Carroll visited our Academy from 23 to 30 December 2015 and gave a lecture on his latest studies entitled Aristotle's Poetics--A New Interpretation of the Ancient Theory.
Aristotle's Poetics is the foundational document of Western philosophy of play. Because of the development of narrative psychology since Aristotle's thesis, the influence of Poetics on the story structure of Hollywood mainstream movies and the guiding principles of film and TV script writing can still be felt more deeply. Indeed, Aristotle's Poetics can be read mainly as narrative works, because it stated the deep structure of the relationship between story-telling and emotions.
In his two lectures, Professor Carroll discusses Aristotle's concept of tragedy, his discussion of plot structure, his interpretation of the tragic value, its composition and role, significance of Catharsis, his key terminologies that define tragedy, and so on. On each of these topics, Professor Carol first introduced the debate of Poetics related issues in the international academic circles, and then presented his own views. Thus, in these two lectures, Professor Carol made a detailed reading of Poetics.
These lectures were co-organized by the Academic Affairs Office and the Department of Theatrical Literature. Besides the undergraduate students of the Department of Theatrical Literature, the audience also included a good number of postgraduate students and young teachers of our Academy. After the lecture, the audience and Professor Carol held a lively discussion on the related topics.
