Contact:  Rick Peterson, Manager of News Services, 920/832-6590
For Immediate Release 
Oct. 19, 1999                    

Lawrence Lecture Examines Contrasting Poetic Views of the Bible's
Prodigal Son


     APPLETON, WIS. -- Two contrasting poetic interpretations of the
Biblical story of the prodigal son will be discussed Thursday, Oct. 28
in a Lawrence University Main Hall Forum.
     Wojciech Kotas, assistant professor of English at Lawrence,
presents, "The Parable of the Prodigal Son in the Poems by Rilke and
Bishop" at 4:15 p.m. in Main Hall, Room 109.  The event is free and open
to the public.
     In his lecture, Kotas will examine the different approaches the two
poets took in retelling the same story.  He will contrast German poet
Rainer Maria Rilke's view of the prodigal son in which the past,
especially paternal authority, is rejected for the promise of a fuller
life, with that of 20th-century American poet Elizabeth Bishop, whose
work, "The Prodigal," focuses on the sense of confusion and hopelessness
felt by the nomadic son.
     A specialist in modern British and American poetry, Kotas delivered
a paper earlier this year at an international conference on the art of
Elizabeth Bishop in Ouro Preto, Brazil.  A member of the Lawrence
faculty since 1994, he holds a Ph.D. in English from Harvard University.