Providence, R.I.--Dr. Stephen Greenblatt, a Shakespeare scholar from Harvard University and the former president of the Modern Languages Association (MLA), will present the annual Delasanta Lecture at Providence College on Thursday, March 26, at 4:30 p.m.

Greenblatt will discuss "Shakespearean Beauty Marks" in Slavin Center '64 Hall. The lecture is open to the public.

The lecture is sponsored by the Liberal Arts Honors Program and named in honor of the late Dr. Rodney K. Delasanta '53, professor of English and the director of the program from 1987-2004.

Greenblatt, the Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard, is a specialist in Shakespeare, 16th and 17th century English literature, the literature of travel and exploration, and literary theory. In addition to being former president of the MLA, he is a permanent fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin.

He also serves as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Philosophical Society.

Considered the founder of "new historicism"--a school of literary theory that emphasizes the relationship between literary works and their historical and cultural context--he is the author and editor of numerous books and anthologies, as well as the founding editor of the literary-cultural journal Representations.

His most recent book, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (W.W. Norton & Company, 2004), reached The New York Times bestseller list.

In his lecture at PC, Greenblatt will describe the essentially featureless ideal of beauty in the Renaissance and how that ideal was shaped by the differing traditions of Protestants and Catholics. According to Greenblatt, this process led to a celebration of beauty based on a theory of harmony.

While Shakespeare endorsed this standard repeatedly in his work, Greenblatt will point out that his deepest aesthetic and erotic attraction was for odd, highly individuated, and distinctly marked forms of beauty.

A recipient of the Mellon Distinguished Humanist Award, Greenblatt earned his bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1964, his master's degree from Cambridge University in 1966, and his doctorate from Yale in 1969.

His academic career has included teaching positions at the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Berlin, the University of Florence, Kyoto University, and the University of Oxford.

Greenblatt's research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies, among other agencies.

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