Lauren Groff: Islands (July 2015)

“We are like islands in the sea,” William James says, “separate on the surface, but connected in the deep.” Groff’s lecture confronts the issues involved in being a writer—a lonely and sometimes solipsistic position—during a time of environmental crisis.  Among the texts discussed are Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, J.M. Coetzee’s Foe, Elizabeth Bishop’s “Crusoe in England,” Derek Walcott’s Omeros, and Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea.