Puppets, Ingenuity and the Arts of Cognition: a performance and talk with Stephen Mottram in conversation with Terence Cave

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• Terence Cave (University of Oxford), Stephen Mottram
• Friday 01 March 2019, 17:00-19:00
• Lecture Theatre, Trinity Hall.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Timothy Chesters.

Renowned puppeteer Stephen Mottram performs and discusses his craft in conversation with Terence Cave (Emeritus Professor of French, University of Oxford, author of the recent Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism). The focus of the evening will be ingenuity: that of the puppeteer’s art in exploiting the way viewers impute an inner life to inanimate objects. What are the minimal components or ‘vital signs’ that compel us to think that a piece of wood or cloth, or even a collection of light points, is ‘alive’? How has this ingenious practice been discussed throughout history, and how might it relate to the production of other forms of, say, literary and visual illusion? This performance and discussion will be of interest to scholars in – among others fields – literary studies, art history, the history of science, philosophy of mind, and cognitive psychology.

All are welcome and admission is free. As seating is limited, please arrive early to avoid disappointment.

See http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/28412

This talk is part of the Genius Before Romanticism: Ingenuity in Early Modern Art and Science series.

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• Lecture Theatre, Trinity Hall

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