Posts about poetry

Macbeth and the Fall of Soul

On Thursday, October 16, from 6-8pm ET, members of the Lyceum Institute will gather to discuss the beginning of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth under the guidance of Dr. Mark McCullough, who is providing us lectures and readings to focus our understanding. There is much that we can learn from this great tragedy—and here we will focus […]

On Tragedy

A Philosophical Happy Hour on the nature and purpose of tragedy in both poetic and real experience. Twenty-three years ago, on nearly this day, many of us bore witness to an undoubtedly tragic event—a relative few with our own eyes, most through the television.  I do not need to elaborate: only to say that I […]

Reading Poetry

A Philosophical Happy Hour on the merits of immersion in the poetic arts. Ποίησις: poiesis, the Greeks named it, the making of something which did not previously exist. The Greek conception extended far beyond the modern notion of “poetry”—but from the most ancient to the latest modern, every successful form of the “poietic” resounds by […]

Walls of Glass

Metaphors of Personal Identity in Derek Parfit and Teresa of Ávila Personal identity over time is an idea derided by analytic philosophy.  Hume began the process of debunking the person, or self, as “nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions.”[1]  The demolition job concluded in 1984, with the publication of Derek Parfit’s Reasons […]

The Challenge of Chivalry

Written by an anonymous author in the late 14th century, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight continues to entice the human spirit: drawing us toward something grand, mysterious, and—perhaps most of all—towards the betterment of our own virtue. The titular hero, captured in poetic verse, exemplifies chivalry. Sir Gawain demonstrates courage, piety, courtesy, honesty, honor, […]

⚘ The Semiosis of Boethius’s Prosimetric Style in “De consolatione philosophiae” | Wesley C. Yu

On 24 September 2022 at 2pm ET (see event times around the world here and join the live Q&A here) Wesley Chihyung Yu will present on “The Semiosi of Boethius’s Prosimetric Style in De consolatione philosophiae“. Wesley Chihyung Yu is Associate Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College. His interdisciplinary research on medieval poetics concentrates […]

Summer Latin Courses

Upcoming Courses Elementary: Tuesdays5 July – September 27 Intermediate: Tuesdays26 July – November 15 Prose & Poetry: Thursdays4 August – October 27 Our Summer Latin courses will begin soon! This Summer, we are offering Elementary and Intermediate courses again, as well as an advanced Prose & Poetry course. These courses are open to all members, […]

Lectio Commedia: Dante, Poet of Hope

Beginning October 6th, every other Wednesday Dr. Mark McCullough (PhD in Humanities from the City University of New York) will facilitate a 45-minute discussion on one canto of Dante Alighieri’s masterwork The Divine Comedy at 12pm ET: the Lectio Commedia: Dante, Poet of Hope. This will be preceded by a reading of the canto with […]

Fall Seminars

Fall Seminars Open for Enrollment: More than Aesthetics, The Meaning of Evil, and Metaphysics: God.

[Symposium] Paradise Lost – Book IX

A two-week Symposium event on Book IX of Paradise Lost, available to all Lyceum Members.

Beyond the University

Beyond the University exists because the modern university, even where it succeeds, has become inadequate to the true tasks of education.  Education is not the transmission of information or preparation for employment, but the formation of good intellectual habits.  These aims no longer fit comfortably within institutions ordered primarily toward efficiency, expansion, and measurable outcomes.  The Lyceum Institute was founded to provide a genuinely different institutional form—one ordered toward education as an integral part of life rather than as a credentialing process.

The Lyceum cultivates enduring intellectual habits of inquiry, order, and memory through rigorous seminars, focused studies of the Trivium, classical languages, guided reading, and sustained inquisitive conversation.  By supporting the Lyceum Institute, you help sustain an independent public institution devoted to education ordered toward truth, continuity, and long-term intellectual formation.  Your gift ensures that this alternative remains available—not only for today’s students, but for generations to come.

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