Meetings, Missed Meetings and Diversions: Train Poetry and Railway Station Literature

Referent: Prof. Dr. Patrick McGuinness | Moderation: Dr. Margit Dirscherl (CAS Researcher in Residence/LMU)

Patrick McGuinness presents a mixture of lecture and reading on train literature, specifically train poetry, based on his own essays about train travel and his poetry and prose about rail lines, commuting, train-consciousness, as a uniquely rich fund of experience. In particular, he will address the unique status of the railway as a place of meetings and non-meetings – of meetings and ‘missings’ –, and consider train travel as an essential part of the modern experience.

The French word for rail connection is ‘correspondance’ – something Baudelaire must have had in mind when he wrote his famous poem ‘Correspondances’: the dream of coherence in an incoherent world.

Patrick McGuinness ist ein britischer Schriftsteller, Dichter und Professor für Literaturwissenschaften. Er lehrt vergleichende Literaturgeschichte und Französisch an der Universität Oxford und ist derzeit Fellow am CAS.