Dumas in Color

This blog post was written by Andrew White  Alexandre Dumas’s father was one of Napoleon’s generals, nicknamed “Hercules” by the emperor, and “Black Devil” by France’s enemies; Dumas’s surname came from a paternal grandmother, Marie-Cessette Dumas, an Afro-Caribbean woman held in slavery on what is now Haiti. In his career as a writer, the colossally …

Course: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann [SOLD OUT]

Date / Time

  • March 8, 2018
    6:00 pm - 7:45 pm
  • April 12, 2018
    6:00 pm - 7:45 pm
  • May 10, 2018
    6:00 pm - 7:45 pm
  • June 7, 2018
    6:00 pm - 7:45 pm

Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain is held by many to be the greatest novel of the 20th century. Written during and after World War I, the book shows a great artist struggling with the demands of artistic form and also engaging with the contemporary political philosophies sweeping across Europe. With gentle irony and also lyricism, Mann weighs the readiness of the modern bourgeois citizen for democracy, a crucial question for Germany at the end of WWI.

Sold out!-In Conversation with the Rosenbach: Emily Wilson

Date / Time

  • April 4, 2018
    6:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Emily Wilson is the first woman to translate Homer’s Odyssey into English and a professor of Classical Studies and chair of the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. The first great adventure story in the Western canon, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty, and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home.

In Conversation with the Rosenbach: Ulrich Baer

Date / Time

  • May 8, 2018
    6:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Author and translator Ulrich Baer is a Professor of Comparative and German Literature and Vice Provost at New York University. Baer will present some of poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s previously uncollected and untranslated letters of condolence. These 23 letters, culled from Rilke’s correspondence of over 15,000 letters, teach readers how to respond to loss and grief.

Making a Verbal Monster:  Cyclops in Virgil’s Aeneid 3 and Joyce’s Ulysses

For this year’s Bloomsday and the rest of this summer, the Rosenbach’s partner desk display in the historic library is filled with objects that show classic literary influences on James Joyce’s Ulysses.  Starting with his introduction (at age 10) to Homer’s Odyssey through Charles Lamb’s school edition, we see that the characters and language of …

Poetry-Writing Workshop: The Poet’s Process

Date / Time

  • April 15, 2017
    2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
  • April 22, 2017
    2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
  • April 29, 2017
    2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
  • May 6, 2017
    2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
  • May 13, 2017
    2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
  • May 20, 2017
    2:00 pm - 4:00 pm

This course provides an introduction to poetry writing, drawing upon the Rosenbach’s unique collection of writers’ manuscripts to inspire the creation of new poems. Alongside viewings of such manuscripts as Marianne Moore’s poems in various stages of editing and revision, we will engage in discussions and writing experiments designed to spark original thinking, develop facility with writing, and enhance understanding of your creative process. By the end of the course, you will have created a portfolio of poems and enhanced your knowledge of diverse approaches to creative work.