Theatre critic and scholar Fintan O’Toole will present the Robert Fagles Memorial Lecture entitled, “Unspeakable Horror: How Ireland Fought the Great War,” on Friday, February 13 at 4:30 p.m. at the Lewis Center for the Arts’ James M. Stewart ’32 Theater, 185 Nassau Street. Part of the 2014-15 Fund for Irish Studies series at Princeton University, the event is free and open to the public.
Fintan O’Toole, one of Ireland’s leading public intellectuals, is a theatre critic and scholar. As a drama critic, O’Toole has written for The Irish Times, New York Daily News, Sunday Tribune (Dublin), and In Dublin Magazine. His books on theater span a wide range of topics, from his biography of Richard Brinsley Sheridan to theater currently appearing on Irish stages. He is Assistant Editor, columnist and feature writer for The Irish Times. He also contributes to The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Granta, The Guardian, The Observer, and other international publications. The Observer named O’Toole one of “Britain’s top 300 intellectuals” in 2011. He has received the A.T. Cross Award for Supreme Contribution to Irish Journalism, the Millennium Social Inclusion Award, and Journalist of the Year in 2010 from TV3 Media Awards.
O’Toole’s most recent project, History of Ireland in 100 Objects, covers 100 highly charged artifacts from the last 10,000 years. It has been published in book form by the Royal Irish Academy and as an application for iPad, iPhone and Android devices.
O’Toole is a Visiting Lecturer in Theater at the Lewis Center for the Arts and the Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Visiting Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton. His professorship is made possible through funding from Leonard L. Milberg, Princeton Class of 1953, a generous supporter of the arts and cultural studies who in 2011 donated an extensive collection of prose by Irish writers to the University, including more than 1,700 books, manuscripts, portraits, audio-visual materials and other items that illustrate the richness and vitality of Irish writing from 1798 to the present. Milberg’s donation of the Irish prose collection was made in Fagles’ honor.
Robert Fagles, for whom the annual Memorial Lecture is named, was a member of the Princeton faculty for 42 years in the Department of Comparative Literature and a renowned translator of Greek classics. His critically acclaimed translations of Homer’s “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” became bestsellers.
Information on upcoming Fund for Irish Studies series events can be found at fis.princeton.edu and includes:
- Glenn Patterson, the Belfast novelist, reading from his work on March 27
- Regina Ui Chollatain on “A ‘New’ Gaelic League Idea: Douglas Hyde 100 Years On” on April 10
- Poulomi Saha on “Easter Risings: The Irish Insurrection in India” on April 17
- Feile Na Bealtaine: The Ghost Trio in a concert of Irish traditional songs, cosponsored with Princeton’s Department of Music, on May 1
