HPL Great Books Reading and Discussion Group: November 2022

Friday, November 25, 2022

Hawthorne and Bernard on Human Experimentation

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1813-1878)

This month's two selections are "Rappaccini's Daughter," by the great though, as most would agree, enigmatic American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, and "Vivisection," by French physiologist Claude Bernard. Both pieces concern the use of humans in medical experimentation, although the Hawthorne story is fictional and Bernard's piece is from his book An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine. The New York Public Library Companion to Literature calls "Rappaccini's Daughter" one of Hawthorne's "greatest studies of monomania," defined as a single-minded pursuit of an end. A question for Monday: What is Dr. Rappaccini monomanical about?

Next Meeting

Our next meeting takes place on Monday, January 27th 2025 at 7 pm at the Main Library Meeting Room or via Zoom. The selection is the the dramatic tragedy "Hekabe" by Euripides (480-406 B.C.E.), which can be found in Great Conversations 5. The anthology can be purchased at the Main Library front desk at 338 Main Street, Huntington, N.Y. at the subsidized price of $10 (thanks to a generous donation from the Friends of the Huntington Public Library). The 2025 February meeting will be on Monday, February 24th, when the selection will be three poems by John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and "Ode on Melancholy."

About Shared Inquiry

Also known as the "Socratic Method," the Shared Inquiry discussion technique championed by the Great Books Foundation is a nonauthoritarian approach to book discussion that values life experience as a important element of learning. Discussion leaders ask questions and do not give opinions.

Five rules of Shared Inquiry are:

1. Concentrate on the selection.
2. Address the question at hand.
3. Speak up (but one person at a time, please!)
4. Listen carefully.
5. Discuss the author's ideas, not the author's life and times.