A Millennium in Perspective

Lecture by Anton Shammas

Don Quixote, "the first great novel of world literature," orginally written in Arabic by an Arab historian then translated into Castilian as Cervantes, its "alleged" author claimed - was it the first literary realization of liner perspective, which had been first developed by Ibn al-Haytham, an eleventh century Arab Mathematician? Three key witnesses, practitioners of intersemiotic translation, will be called upon to substaniate the spatial argument, as Time permits: Valazquez, Picasso and his surprisingly identical twin - William Faulkner.