Final colloquium in English Department 2007-2008 series is Friday
Members of the UST community are invited to the sixth and final English Department Colloquium Series event of the 2007-08 academic year. This event is a lecture by St. Thomas English professor Dr. Martin Warren, titled "The Quakers as Parrhesiasts: Frank Speech and Plain Speaking as the Fruits of Silence."
Warren's talk will be held from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Friday, April 18, in the O'Shaughnessy Room, Room 108, O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library Center. Light refreshments will be served.
Michel Foucault has suggested that mysticism in the Christian tradition is a voice of revolution, a voice that speaks parrhesiastically. With Foucault's opinion in mind, Warren offers an examination of parrhesia (confident public speech) in the early Quaker tradition of mid-17th-century England.
Suspicious of professionalized preaching in the new Protestant faith and troubled by the implacable nature of sola scriptura, the early Quakers engaged in group mysticism within which they became convinced that they were able to meet God face to face. From this experience arose the ability to preach parrhesiastically, challenging the new Puritan establishment that emerged from the English Civil War.
Questions about the colloquium series can be directed to the English Department, (651) 962-5600.
