Cornell Great Books Lecture: "A Case for Comedy: Puns, Cross-Dressing, and the Playful Cosmos in Twelfth Night"

6:30 PM
BMH 101

Dr. Mary Elizabeth Halper will deliver the 2025 Cornell Great Books Lecture: "A Case for Comedy: Puns, Cross-Dressing, and the Playful Cosmos in Twelfth Night." The lecture will take place on Tuesday, November 4 at 6:30 PM, BMH 101. She is a Tutor at St. John’s College, Annapolis and Dean of Humanities at Hertog. Generously endowed by the family of the late Dr. Christine Cornell, each year the Cornell Great Books Lecture welcomes speakers to St. Thomas to discuss the Great Books and Liberal Education more broadly. Dr. Halper’s lecture will consider the role of comedy in a Liberal Education.

There are too many books to read. Even if one limits oneself to the greatest books, there are still too many. Books that rigorously address the highest questions, books that beautifully plumb the profundity of our human condition, books that gravely honor the scope of human suffering and action: there are too many to fit in even the lengthiest lifetime. But how about books with fart jokes? Books filled with japes, pranks, and wordplay? Why bother when there is so much else to read? Should we—can we—take comedy seriously?

This lecture offers an answer to that question by way of considering three elements of comedy as they occur in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. In reflecting on a linguistic device (puns), a plot mechanism (cross-dressing), and a hermeneutic context (playful cosmos), this lecture limns one line of defense for comedy: that comedies shape us into learners better ready to confront the infinite task of education, finite though we be.