The introductory lecture in Prof. Cantor’s course “Myths of Creation.” It explains the importance of creation myths in Western civilization; it lays out the classical and biblical traditions of creation; and outlines the readings in the course and its focus on the Romantic creation myth, which seeks to overturn in gnostic fashion the values of traditional creation myths. Lecture
Read MoreA study of Wagner’s Ring Cycle as a Romantic creation myth, analyzing how it tells the story of an initial harmony with nature, a fall from that unity into the power struggles of civilization, and Wagner’s hope for an apocalypse that would allow for the triumph of love in the world. Lecture
Read MoreThis lecture analyzes Yeats as the poet of a Post-Nietzschean world, having rejected any vision of eternity and embraced human life as a series of historical cycles of creation and destruction; the lecture looks at the opposition between art and life in Yeats’s works and shows how he tries—but ultimately fails—to transcend it. Lecture
Read MoreSamuel Beckett’s Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable) treated as a gnostic creation myth, in which what is created is the book itself, by a mysterious god or gods, who, like the Romantic demiurges, cannot create a decent world for their creatures. Accepting Nietzsche’s idea of the Death of God, Beckett creates a story in which the novelist dies midway, leaving his characters to fend for themselves in the absurd world he leaves behind him. Lecture
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