The sixth episode of Professor Ato Quayson’s vlog Critic.Reading.Writing is up!

In this week’s episode titled “On Pity and Conscience,” Quayson draws viewers back into Sophocles’ literary corpus with the play, Philoctetes.

The 31-minute episode follows Philoctetes into the wild as he grapples with physical pain, betrayal, and loneliness. Professor Quayson reflects on Greek tragedy as a genre that places characters in extreme circumstances to illuminate ethical and philosophical issues within society. Quayson concludes,

The play illustrates the question of conscience and how it evolves on the bearing of witness to the pain of another, because another’s pain places us within the circuit of contamination. This circuit of contamination that is produced on our bearing witness to the injustice and suffering of another requires not merely contemplation but ultimately action.

Click below to watch!

Critic.Reading.Writing with Ato Quayson is the show for booklovers hungry for meaningful conversations about books.

New episodes of Critic.Reading.Writing with Ato Quayson will be posted every Friday.

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