Date: Monday, May 15
Time: 7 pm EST

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The music of his pipes haunts the wilderness. His presence causes the sudden terror we call “panic.” To see him unbidden is to risk madness and death. He is a guardian of forbidden knowledge. From his earliest origins, Pan has been seen as threatening as well as kind, dangerous as well as helpful. This illustrated lecture will explore the darker side of Pan as a source of overpowering fear, dangerous sexuality, and occult knowledge. Beginning with his early depictions in ancient Greece, in this illustrated talk, we’ll discover the darker side of Pan in Romanticism, weird fiction, and the occult. 

Paul Robichaud is Professor and Chair of English at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the author of Pan: the Great God’s Modern Return (2021) and Making the Past Present: David Jones, the Middle Ages, and Modernism (2007). His poems have appeared in various magazines, including Agenda and The Hudson Review. He has also published (or has forthcoming) essays on the poets W.S. Graham, Leonard Cohen, Karen Solie, and Geoffrey Hill. His current book project is Stories of the Stones: Imagining Prehistory in Britain, Ireland, and Brittany, under contract with Reaktion Books.

Pan: the Great God’s Modern Return will be out in paperback in North America on March 1st.

1.     Pan Reclining, Peter Paul Rubens, ca. 1610
2.     Pan, Mikhail Vrubel, 1899
3.     Aubrey Beardsley illustration from the title page of The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen, 1894
4.     Mask of Pan, Roman, from Hippos (Sussita)
5.     Witches’ Sabbatt, Franciso Goya, 1789
6.    The Great God Pan, 1860. Engraved by the Dalziel Brothers after a drawing by Lord Frederic Leighton (1830-1896)
7.     Pan & Psyche, Edward Burne-Jones, 1874