April 10th
Dr. Rae Greiner (English, Indiana University) will present “Stupidity After Enlightenment.” Stupidity at the fin de siecle was fast becoming purely a matter of I.Q. Prior to this, eighteenth-century writers developed notions of dullness and of dunces, Romantic writers the figure of the (sometimes blessed) idiot. Centering on the period in between, this talk surveys a selection of nineteenth-century writings which features more open-ended concepts of stupidity, some not tied to matters of intelligence alone.
