Empson Lectures

During April and May of 2000, Margaret Atwood gave a series of lectures at the University of Cambridge’s Lady Mitchell Hall. The six lectures, entitled ‘Negotiating with the Dead,’ will be published in book form by Cambridge University Press in the spring of 2002.

These lectures are about writing and the writing life, exploring how writers see themselves in relation to their work and to their audience, and addressing the question of what fiction and poetry are for. What is the role of the writer? Seer? Prophet? Court Jester? Or witness to the real world? The series will examine the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain – or excuse! – their activities both to others and to themselves, looking at what costumes they have seen fit to assume, what roles they have chosen to play. The series culminates in ‘Negotiating with the Dead.’ If a writer is to be seen as ‘gifted,’ who is doing the giving, what are the terms of the gift, and, if the givers are dead, what do they ask in return?