You can view the recording here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxjqRRwJlsQ
"Mourning Becomes Magnanimity: Cleopatra’s Infinite Virtue"
Cornell University, September 12, 2024
Julia Reinhard Lupton
Co-Director, New Swan Shakespeare Center
In this talk, Julia Lupton explores the ancient virtue of magnanimity or greatness of soul. Aristotle called magnanimity the crown or ornament of the virtues. In the Renaissance, magnanimity was the “heroical virtue,” the summation of the great man’s generosity, fortitude, and forbearance. This talk explores Cleopatra’s magnanimity as an attribute of her queenship, as a feature of her iconographic projects, and as the dynamic of Shakespeare’s ongoing rewriting of his earlier works in the sonorous space of romance. Romance is the crown or ornament of the genres, and its virtuous signature is magnanimity.
The Gottschalk Memorial Lecture was established in memory of Paul Gottschalk, Professor of English at Cornell, scholar of British Renaissance literature and author of The Meanings of Hamlet (1972). He died in 1977 at the age of 38.