Session One: 1 November 1755. The Lisbon Earthquake

The Lisbon Earthquake both destroyed countless cultural artefacts and became a major reference point for eighteenth century art. Kant’s notion of the Sublime was much indebted to it, as was Voltaire’s attack on Leibniz in Candide. This class examines the generative power of natural catastrophes from the explosion of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79 to the Asian Tsunami of 2004.

I referred to the following texts this morning:

• Umberto Eco, A Portrait of the Elder as a Young Pliny: How to Build Fame', in On Signs, edited by Marshall Blonsky (Oxford, Blackwell, 1985), pp 289-302.
• Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded (London, Penguin, 2003)
• David Keys, Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World (London, Century, 1999)

In class, I also referred to Xu Zheng-ren's A metapoetic illusion, an installation of neon lights on bamboo scaffolding on a building damaged by the earthquake of 21 September 1999. The abandonment of the building is quite interesting in relation to our discussion of the necessary human dimension to catastrophe. The building is not destroyed as such; it is perfectly intact, only at the wrong angle, hence completely useless as habitation.