In this lecture, Marit Grøtta explores the role of portrait photographs in the works of Proust, Kafka, and Woolf, emphasizing the emotional and relational aspects of photographs, the problem of the unreturned gaze, and the uncertain status of the human face in the modernist period.
Marit Grøtta is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo, Norway. She has published Baudelaire’s Media Aesthetics: The Gaze of the Flâneur and 19th-Century Media (2015), Litterære bagateller: Introduksjon til litteraturens korttekster (Literary Trifles: Introduction to the Short, Literary Forms, 2009), as well as articles on Schlegel, Baudelaire, Proust, Duchamp, and Agamben.
“Reading Faces in the Age of Portrait Photography: Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, and Virginia Woolf”
Marit Grøtta
Associate Professor
Department of Comparative Literature
University of Oslo
Thursday, November 8th, 5-7pm
The Comparative Literature Library
Old Campus, Bingham Hall
8th Floor
Reception to Follow