Love and Literature: TCD School of English Evening Lectures 2026

The author La Rochefoucauld once wrote that many people would never have fallen in love in their lives if they had never heard other people talk about love. And for centuries, it was literature, first and foremost, that talked to people about love: what love was, how it affected people, what its promises and dangers were, and how this strong affection should best be navigated. In some cases, literature also allowed lovers to bond in the first place, for example, quite notoriously, when young people read poems together. The lecture series will investigate the literary history of an intense and complicated feeling.

Fee
€50 for the entire series. Individual lectures are € 5 each.
Concessionary rates for the full series will be € 40 or individual lecture € 4 each.
The concessionary rate applies to: students, OAPs, unemployed, groups of 20+, TCD staff and Graduates.

Dates: Tuesdays: 20 Jan to 7 April
Time: 19:00-20:00,
Venue: Jonathan Swift Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin.
Tickets: available via Eventbrite (guaranteed) and at the door (if available).
Schedule
There will be ten weekly lectures beginning on Tuesday 20 January, 2026.

20 Jan: Alice Jorgensen: Love Before Romance: Love Between Men and Women in Old English

27 Jan: Brendan O’Connell: Faking It: Chaucerian Mimicry in The Court of Love

3 Feb: Mark Sweetnam: “Love Is Not Love” – Or Is It?: Divine and Human Love in the Poetry of John Donne

10 Feb: Nicholas Grene: Romcoms from Much Ado to Pride and Prejudice

17 Feb: Darryl Jones: “The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name”: The Queer Edwardians

24 Feb: Sinéad Moriarty: Belonging: Place Attachment in Contemporary Irish Environmental Picturebooks

3 Mar: Reading Week​ - No Lecture

10 Mar: Jane Carroll: Love, Friendship, and Fetish in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows

24 Mar: Jarlath Killeen: The Popular Romance

31 Mar: Julie Bates: '"Nothing Is Funnier Than Unhappiness": Samuel Beckett’s Marriages

7 Apr: Rosie Lavan: The Love Department: William Trevor and the Sad Facts of Love

Online/Video Recordings of Lectures
The lectures are happening live in the Jonathan Swift Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin. However they will also be recorded. If you purchased a ticket to a particular lecture, to several lectures, or to the entire series, you will be emailed a link to the video recording of the lecture or lectures as soon as these are available (usually the next day). The recordings will be available and watchable at any time until the end of the Evening Lecture series in May. We regret that it is not possible to livestream the lectures as they happen.

Contact Details:
Ms Sophia Ni Sheoin
E-mail: [email protected]

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