Philosophical Fiction Book Club

This event is supported by The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Local Partners Programme.

N.B. this meeting will be held in person in the Prince of Wales pub near Covent Garden. There is also an online session held on Thursday if you are not in London or are not able to attend in person for any other reason.

In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a mariner crashes a wedding party and tells his tale of disaster after he kills an albatross at sea. Our first ever poem, this is a relatively short read before our big December book (Crime and Punishment) and one with similar themes of murder of an innocent, torment and spiritual redemption.

As it's the shortest work we've ever discussed and there are plenty of free versions (including audio recordings), it might be worth a couple of reads/listens.

The meeting starts at 7pm with drink breaks at 8 and 9. The discussion will end around 10pm but leave whenever you need to.

Here's the blurb from GoodReads:

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one of the best-known and best-loved poems in the English language. It is the longest major poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and was written in 1797-98 and revised in 1817. The mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The wedding-guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience to fear to fascination as Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem.

This event is supported by The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Local Partners Programme.

N.B.: this meeting will be held online via Google Meet There is also an in-person session being held on Wednesday in the Prince of Wales pub near Covent Garden.

In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a mariner crashes a wedding party and tells his tale of disaster after he kills an albatross at sea. Our first ever poem, this is a relatively short read before our big December book (Crime and Punishment) and one with similar themes of murder of an innocent, torment and spiritual redemption.

As it's the shortest work we've ever discussed and there are plenty of free versions (including audio recordings), it might be worth a couple of reads/listens.

The meeting starts at 7pm with drink breaks at 8 and 9. The discussion will end around 10pm but leave whenever you need to.

Here's the blurb from GoodReads:

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one of the best-known and best-loved poems in the English language. It is the longest major poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and was written in 1797-98 and revised in 1817. The mariner stops a man who is on the way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The wedding-guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience to fear to fascination as Coleridge uses narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood in different parts of the poem.

This event is supported by The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Local Partners Programme.

N.B. this meeting will be held in person in the Prince of Wales pub near Covent Garden. There is also an online session held on Thursday if you are not in London or are not able to attend in person for any other reason.

For the culmination of our 'Crisis of Values' year, we return to Russian nihilist philosophy and its consequences in the eyes of Dostoevsky. We join poverty-stricken protagonist Rodion Raskolnikov as he schemes to commit a 'justified' murder, and the moral and spiritual crisis that haunts him afterwards.

The meeting starts at 7pm with drink breaks at 8 and 9. The discussion will end around 10pm but leave whenever you need to.

Here's the blurb from GoodReads:

Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden sex worker, can offer the chance of redemption.

This event is supported by The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Local Partners Programme.

N.B.: this meeting will be held online via Google Meet. There is also an in-person session being held on Wednesday in the Prince of Wales pub near Covent Garden.

For the culmination of our 'Crisis of Values' year, we return to Russian nihilist philosophy and its consequences in the eyes of Dostoevsky. We join poverty-stricken protagonist Rodion Raskolnikov as he schemes to commit a 'justified' murder, and the moral and spiritual crisis that haunts him afterwards.

The meeting starts at 7pm with drink breaks at 8 and 9. The discussion will end around 10pm but leave whenever you need to.

Here's the blurb from GoodReads:

Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden sex worker, can offer the chance of redemption.