The Charles Eliot Norton

Charles Eliot Norton

Charles Eliot Norton, was a leading American author, social critic, and professor of art. He was a militant idealist, a progressive social reformer, and a liberal activist whom many of his contemporaries considered the most cultivated man in the United States.-Biography:Norton was born at...

 Professorship of Poetry at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 was established in 1925 as an annual lectureship in "poetry in the broadest sense" and named for the university's former professor of fine arts. Distinguished creative figures and scholars in the arts, including painting, architecture, and music deliver customarily six lectures. The lectures are usually dated by the academic year in which they are given, though sometimes by just the calendar year.

Many but not all of the Norton Lectures have subsequently been published by the Harvard University Press

Harvard University Press

Harvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...

. The following table lists all the published lecture series, with academic year given and year of publication, together with unpublished lectures as are known. Titles under which the lectures were published is not necessarily titles under which they were given.

Charles Eliot Norton Lectures

Table of lecturers and lectures held:

Years	Lecturer	Title	Published
1926-1927	Gilbert Murray Gilbert Murray George Gilbert Aimé Murray, OM was an Australian born British classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century...	The Classical Tradition in Poetry	1927
1927-1928	Eric Maclagan	Italian Sculpture of the Renaissance	1935
1929-1930	H. W. Garrod H. W. Garrod Heathcote William Garrod was a British classical scholar and literary scholar. He was Fellow of Merton College, Oxford for over 60 years...	Poetry and the Criticism of Life	1931
1930-1931	Arthur M. Hind	Rembrandt	1932
1931-1932	Sigurður Nordal Sigurður Nordal Sigurður Nordal was an Icelandic scholar, writer and ambassador. He was influential in forming the theory of the Icelandic sagas as works of literature composed by individual authors....
1932-1933	T. S. Eliot T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...	The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England	1933
1933-1934	Laurence Binyon Laurence Binyon Robert Laurence Binyon was an English poet, dramatist and art scholar. His most famous work, For the Fallen, is well known for being used in Remembrance Sunday services....	The Spirit of Man in Asian Art	1935
1935-1936	Robert Frost Robert Frost Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
1936-1937	Johnny Roosval Johnny Roosval John August Emanuel Roosval was a Swedish art historian.Roosval was born in a bourgeois family in Kalmar, but grew up in Stockholm from the age of five and went to school there...	The Poetry of Chiaroscuro
1937-1938	Chauncey Brewster Tinker	Painter and Poet: Studies in the Literary Relations of English Painting	1938
1938-1939	Sigfried Giedion Sigfried Giedion Sigfried Giedion was a Bohemia-born Swiss historian and critic of architecture....	Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition	1941
1939-1940	Igor Stravinsky Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....	Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons	1942
1940-1941	Pedro Henriquez-Ureña	Literary Currents in Hispanic America	1945
1947-1948	Erwin Panofsky Erwin Panofsky Erwin Panofsky was a German art historian, whose academic career was pursued mostly in the U.S. after the rise of the Nazi regime. Panofsky's work remains highly influential in the modern academic study of iconography...	Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character	1953
1948-1949	C. M. Bowra	The Romantic Imagination	1949
1949-1950	Paul Hindemith Paul Hindemith Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...	A Composer's World: Horizons and Limitations	1952
1950-1951	Thornton Wilder Thornton Wilder Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...
1951-1952	Aaron Copland Aaron Copland Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...	Music and Imagination	1952
1952-1953	E.E. Cummings	i: six nonlectures	1953
1953-1954	Herbert Read Herbert Read Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....	Icon and Idea: The Function of Art in the Development of Human Consciousness	1955
1955-1956	Edwin Muir Edwin Muir Edwin Muir was an Orcadian poet, novelist and translator born on a farm in Deerness on the Orkney Islands. He was remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry in plain language with few stylistic preoccupations....	The Estate of Poetry	1962
1956-1957	Ben Shahn Ben Shahn Ben Shahn was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He is best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content.-Biography:...	The Shape of Content	1957
1957-1958	Jorge Guillen Jorge Guillén Jorge Guillén y Álvarez was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27.-Biography:Jorge Guillén was born in Valladolid. His life paralleled that of his friend Pedro Salinas, whom he succeeded as a Spanish teaching assistant at the Collège de Sorbonne in the University of Paris from 1917 to...	Language and Poetry: Some Poets of Spain	1961
1958-1959	Carlos Chavez Carlos Chávez Carlos Antonio de Padua Chávez y Ramírez was a Mexican composer, conductor, music theorist, educator, journalist, and founder and director of the Mexican Symphonic Orchestra. He was influenced by native Mexican cultures. Of his six Symphonies, his Symphony No...	Musical Thought	1961
1960-1961	Eric Bentley Eric Bentley Eric Bentley is a critic, playwright, singer, editor and translator. He became an American citizen in 1948, and currently lives in New York City...
1961-1962	Pier Luigi Nervi Pier Luigi Nervi Pier Luigi Nervi was an Italian engineer. He studied at the University of Bologna and qualified in 1913. Dr. Nervi taught as a professor of engineering at Rome University from 1946-61...	Aesthetics and Technology in Building	1965
1962-1963	Leo Schrade Leo Schrade Leo Schrade was an American musicologist of German birth.-Biography:He was born in Allenstein, East Prussia, , then part of the German Empire...	Tragedy in the Art of Music	1964
1964-1965	Cecil Day Lewis	The Lyric Impulse	1965
1966-1967	Meyer Schapiro Meyer Schapiro Meyer Schapiro was a Lithuanian-born American art historian known for forging new art historical methodologies that incorporated an interdisciplinary approach to the study of works of art...	Romanesque Architectural Sculpture	2006
1967-1968	Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...	This Craft of Verse	2000
1968-1969	Roger Sessions Roger Sessions Roger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic, and teacher of music.-Life:Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendent of Samuel Huntington, a signer of...	Questions about Music	1970
1969-1970	Lionel Trilling Lionel Trilling Lionel Trilling was an American literary critic, author, and teacher. With wife Diana Trilling, he was a member of the New York Intellectuals and contributor to the Partisan Review. Although he did not establish a school of literary criticism, he is one of the leading U.S...	Sincerity and Authenticity Sincerity and Authenticity Sincerity and Authenticity is a book by Lionel Trilling, based on a series of lectures he delivered in 1970 as Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard University....	1972
1970-1971	Charles Eames
1971-1972	Octavio Paz Octavio Paz Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...	Children of the Mire: Modern Poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde	1974
1973-1974	Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...	The Unanswered Question	1976
1974-1975	Northrop Frye Northrop Frye Herman Northrop Frye, was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century....	The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance	1976
1977-1978	Frank Kermode Frank Kermode Sir John Frank Kermode was a highly regarded British literary critic best known for his seminal critical work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, published in 1967 ....	The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative	1979
1978-1979	James Cahill	The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting	1982
1979-1980	Helen Gardner	In Defence of the Imagination	1982
1980-1981	Charles Rosen Charles Rosen Charles Rosen is an American pianist and author on music.-Life and career:In his youth he studied piano with Moriz Rosenthal. Rosenthal, born in 1862, had been a student of Franz Liszt...	The Romantic Generation	1995
1981-1982	Czesław Miłosz	The Witness of Poetry	1983
1983-1984	Frank Stella Frank Stella Frank Stella is an American painter and printmaker, significant within the art movements of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.-Biography:...	Working Space	1986
1985-1986	Italo Calvino Italo Calvino Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...	Six Memos for the Next Millennium Six Memos for the Next Millennium Six Memos for the Next Millennium is a book based on a series of lectures written by Italo Calvino for the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard, but never delivered as Calvino died before leaving Italy. The lectures were originally written in Italian and translated by Patrick Creagh. The...	1988
1987-1988	Harold Bloom Harold Bloom Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...	Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present	1989
1988-1989	John Cage John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...	I-VI	1990
1989-1990	John Ashbery John Ashbery John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...	Other Traditions	2000
1992-1993	Umberto Eco Umberto Eco Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...	Six Walks in the Fictional Woods Six Walks in the Fictional Woods Six Walks in the Fictional Woods is a book by Umberto Eco. Originally delivered at Harvard for the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in 1992 and 1993, the six lectures were published in the fall of 1994....	1994
1993-1994	Luciano Berio Luciano Berio Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...	Remembering the Future	2006
1994-1995	Nadine Gordimer Nadine Gordimer Nadine Gordimer is a South African writer and political activist. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature when she was recognised as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".Her writing has long dealt...	Writing and Being	1995
1995-1996	Leo Steinberg Leo Steinberg Leo Steinberg was an American art critic and art historian and a naturalized citizen of the U.S.-Life:Steinberg was born in Moscow, Russia and grew up in Berlin, Germany. He was the son of Isaac Nachman Steinberg. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art...	"The Mute Image and the Meddling Text"
1997-1998	Joseph Kerman Joseph Kerman Joseph Wilfred Kerman is an American critic and musicologist. One of the leading musicologists of his generation, his 1985 book Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology was described by Philip Brett in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a defining moment in the field." He is...	Concerto Conversations	1999
2001-2002	George Steiner George Steiner Francis George Steiner, FBA , is an influential European-born American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, translator, and educator. He has written extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the impact of the Holocaust...	Lessons of the Masters	2003
2003-2004	Linda Nochlin Linda Nochlin Linda Nochlin is an American art historian, university professor and writer. She is considered to be a leader in feminist art history studies. She is best known as a proponent of the question "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?"...	Bathers, Bodies, Beauty: The Visceral Eye	2006
2006-2007	Daniel Barenboim Daniel Barenboim Daniel Barenboim, KBE is an Argentinian-Israeli pianist and conductor. He has served as music director of several major symphonic and operatic orchestras and made numerous recordings....	Music Quickens Time	2008
2009-2010	Orhan Pamuk Orhan Pamuk Ferit Orhan Pamuk , generally known simply as Orhan Pamuk, is a Turkish novelist. He is also the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches comparative literature and writing....	The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist	2010

The post had no incumbent in years omitted.

External links

• Article from Harvard Gazette naming 2006 lecturer (date later changed to fall 2006) and giving history of series
• List of incumbents, 1926-2002, as reported by Harvard University's English Department