Professor Alison Sinclair: What’s wrong with wrongdoing?

Duration: 1 hour 5 mins

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Description:	Professor Alison Sinclair, Professor of Modern Spanish Literature and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge, delivers a public lecture at Madingley Hall on 23 October 2013. The lecture is chaired by Professor Manuel Eisner, Professor of Comparative and Developmental Criminology at Cambridge, and introduced by Dr Rebecca Lingwood, Director of Continuing Education. Please note that the lecture proper begins at the 03:53 minute point in the video.

Description:

Professor Alison Sinclair, Professor of Modern Spanish Literature and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge, delivers a public lecture at Madingley Hall on 23 October 2013.

The lecture is chaired by Professor Manuel Eisner, Professor of Comparative and Developmental Criminology at Cambridge, and introduced by Dr Rebecca Lingwood, Director of Continuing Education.

Please note that the lecture proper begins at the 03:53 minute point in the video.

Created:

2013-11-05 13:37

Collection:

Madingley Lectures
Madingley Lectures

Publisher:

University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education

Professor Alison Sinclair

Language:

eng (English)

Keywords:

English literature; Spanish literature; crime; wrongdoing;

Credits:

Actor:	Professor Alison Sinclair
Author:	Professor Alison Sinclair


Abstract:	The ongoing popularity of crime novels and crime drama on television attests to our interest in the wrongdoings done by others. This lecture looks at the dynamics of the reader (or viewer) and the cultures of wrongdoing. It does so not through contemporary examples but via popular literature of the 19th century. Simple in form, and directed towards a reading public that in general lacked sophistication, these popular texts allow us to think about how we engage with victims, perpetrators, those who lament (or moan) and those who are braggarts. A central question is that of why we take pleasure and interest in these texts. If we think along the lines, ‘What’s in it for us?’, is there anything ‘wrong’ in what might be in it for us? The examples are drawn from Spanish and English popular literature currently on display at the exhibition ‘Read all about it! Wrongdoing in Spain and England in the long nineteenth century’, available on the Cambridge University Library website.

Abstract:

The ongoing popularity of crime novels and crime drama on television attests to our interest in the wrongdoings done by others. This lecture looks at the dynamics of the reader (or viewer) and the cultures of wrongdoing. It does so not through contemporary examples but via popular literature of the 19th century. Simple in form, and directed towards a reading public that in general lacked sophistication, these popular texts allow us to think about how we engage with victims, perpetrators, those who lament (or moan) and those who are braggarts. A central question is that of why we take pleasure and interest in these texts. If we think along the lines, ‘What’s in it for us?’, is there anything ‘wrong’ in what might be in it for us?

The examples are drawn from Spanish and English popular literature currently on display at the exhibition ‘Read all about it! Wrongdoing in Spain and England in the long nineteenth century’, available on the Cambridge University Library website.

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