The Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard University was established in 1925 as an annual lectureship in "poetry in the broadest sense" and named for the university's former professor of fine arts. Distinguished creative figures and scholars in the arts, including painting, architecture, and music deliver customarily six lectures. The lectures are usually dated by the academic year in which they are given, though sometimes by just the calendar year.
Many but not all of the Norton Lectures have subsequently been published by the Harvard University Press. The following table lists all the published lecture series, with academic year given and year of publication, together with unpublished lectures as are known. Titles under which the lectures were published are not necessarily titles under which they were given.
| Years | Lecturer | Title | Published |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1926–1927 | Gilbert Murray | The Classical Tradition in Poetry | 1927 |
| 1927–1928 | Eric Maclagan | Italian Sculpture of the Renaissance | 1935 |
| 1929–1930 | H. W. Garrod | Poetry and the Criticism of Life | 1931 |
| 1930–1931 | Arthur Mayger Hind | Rembrandt | 1932 |
| 1931–1932 | Sigurður Nordal | The Spirit of Icelandic Literature (8 lectures: ???—The Old Poetry—The Sagas of Iceland—...—The World of Reality—The World of Dreams...)[1][2][3][4] | |
| 1932–1933 | T. S. Eliot | The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England (The Relation of Criticism and Poetry—Poetry and Criticism in the Time of Elizabeth—The Classical Tradition: Dryden and Johnson—The Theories of Coleridge and Wordsworth—The Practice of Shelley and Keats—Arnold and the Academic Mind—The Modern Mind: I—The Modern Mind: II)[1][5] | 1933 |
| 1933–1934 | Laurence Binyon | The Spirit of Man in Asian Art | 1935 |
| 1935–1936 | Robert Frost | The Renewal of Words (The Old Way to Be New—Vocal Imagination, the Merger of Form and Content—Does Wisdom Signify—Poetry as Prowess (Feat of Words)—Before the Beginning of a Poem—After the End of a Poem)[6] | |
| 1936–1937 | Johnny Roosval | The Poetry of Chiaroscuro | |
| 1937–1938 | Chauncey Brewster Tinker | Painter and Poet: Studies in the Literary Relations of English Painting | 1938 |
| 1938–1939 | Sigfried Giedion | Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition | 1941 |
| 1939–1940 | Igor Stravinsky | Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons | 1942 |
| 1940–1941 | Pedro Henríquez Ureña | Literary Currents in Hispanic America | 1945 |
| 1947–1948 | Erwin Panofsky | Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character | 1953 |
| 1948–1949 | C. M. Bowra | The Romantic Imagination | 1949 |
| 1949–1950 | Paul Hindemith | A Composer's World: Horizons and Limitations | 1952 |
| 1950–1951 | Thornton Wilder | The American Characteristics in Classic American Literature (Adapting an Island Language to a Continental Thought—Thoreau, or the Bean-Row in the Wilderness—Emily Dickinson, or the Articulate Inarticulate—Walt Whitman and the American Loneliness)[7][8][9] | |
| 1951–1952 | Aaron Copland | Music and Imagination | 1952 |
| 1952–1953 | E. E. Cummings | i: six nonlectures | 1953 |
| 1953–1954 | Herbert Read | Icon and Idea: The Function of Art in the Development of Human Consciousness | 1955 |
| 1955–1956 | Edwin Muir | The Estate of Poetry | 1962 |
| 1956–1957 | Ben Shahn | The Shape of Content | 1957 |
| 1957–1958 | Jorge Guillén | Language and Poetry: Some Poets of Spain | 1961 |
| 1958–1959 | Carlos Chávez | Musical Thought | 1961 |
| 1960–1961 | Eric Bentley | The Springs of Pathos[10] | |
| 1961–1962 | Félix Candela | The Paradox of Structuralism, Comments on the Collaboration Between Architects and Engineers, The Creative Process and the Expressiveness of Inner Space[11] | |
| Buckminster Fuller | |||
| Pier Luigi Nervi | Aesthetics and Technology in Building[12] | 1965 | |
| 1962–1963 | Leo Schrade | Tragedy in the Art of Music | 1964 |
| 1964–1965 | Cecil Day-Lewis | The Lyric Impulse | 1965 |
| 1966–1967 | Meyer Schapiro | Romanesque Architectural Sculpture | 2006 |
| 1967–1968 | Jorge Luis Borges | This Craft of Verse | 2000 |
| 1968–1969 | Roger Sessions | Questions about Music | 1970 |
| 1969–1970 | Lionel Trilling | Sincerity and Authenticity | 1972 |
| 1970–1971 | Charles Eames | Problems Relating to Visual Communication and the Visual Environment | |
| 1971–1972 | Octavio Paz | Children of the Mire: Modern Poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde | 1974 |
| 1973–1974 | Leonard Bernstein | The Unanswered Question | 1976 |
| 1974–1975 | Northrop Frye | The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance | 1976 |
| 1977–1978 | Frank Kermode | The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative | 1979 |
| 1978–1979 | James Cahill | The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting | 1982 |
| 1979–1980 | Helen Gardner | In Defence of the Imagination | 1982 |
| 1980–1981 | Charles Rosen | The Romantic Generation | 1995 |
| 1981–1982 | Czesław Miłosz | The Witness of Poetry | 1983 |
| 1983–1984 | Frank Stella | Working Space | 1986 |
| 1985–1986 | Italo Calvino | Six Memos for the Next Millennium | 1988 |
| 1987–1988 | Harold Bloom | Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible to the Present | 1989 |
| 1988–1989 | John Cage | I-VI | 1990 |
| 1989–1990 | John Ashbery | Other Traditions | 2000 |
| 1992–1993 | Umberto Eco | Six Walks in the Fictional Woods | 1994 |
| 1993–1994 | Luciano Berio | Remembering the Future | 2006 |
| 1994–1995 | Nadine Gordimer | Writing and Being | 1995 |
| 1995–1996 | Leo Steinberg | "The Mute Image and the Meddling Text" | |
| 1997–1998 | Joseph Kerman | Concerto Conversations | 1999 |
| 2001–2002 | George Steiner | Lessons of the Masters (published as: Lasting Origins—Rain of Fire—Magnificus—Maîtres à Penser—On Native Ground—Unaging Intellect)[13] | 2003 |
| 2003–2004 | Linda Nochlin | Bathers, Bodies, Beauty: The Visceral Eye (published as: Renoir's Great Bathers: Bathing as Practice, Bathing as Representation—Manet's Le Bain: The Déjuner and the Death of the Heroic Landscape—The Man in the Bathtub: Picasso's Le Meutre and the Gender of Bathing—Monet's Hôtel des Roches Noires: Anxiety and Perspective at the Seashore—Real Beauty: The Body in Realism—More Beautiful than a Beautiful Thing: The Body, Old Age, Ruin, and Death)[14] | 2006 |
| 2006–2007 | Daniel Barenboim | Sound and Thought (published in Music Quickens Time as: Sound and Thought—Listening and Hearing—Freedom of Thought and Interpretation—The Orchestra—A Tale of Two Palestinians—Finale)[15][16] | 2008 |
| 2009–2010 | Orhan Pamuk | The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist (What Happens to Us as We Read Novels—Mr. Pamuk, Did You Really Live All of This?—Character, Time, Plot—Pictures and Things—Museums and Novels—The Center)[17] | 2010 |
| 2011–2012 | William Kentridge | Six Drawing Lessons (In Praise of Shadows—A Brief History of Colonial Revolts—Vertical Thinking: A Johannesburg Biography—Practical Epistemology: Life in the Studio—In Praise of Mistranslation—Anti-Entropy)[18] | 2012 |
| 2013–2014 | Herbie Hancock | The Ethics of Jazz (The Wisdom of Miles Davis—Breaking the Rules—Cultural Diplomacy and the Voice of Freedom—Innovation and New Technologies—Buddhism and Creativity—Once upon a Time...)[19] | |
| 2015–2016 | Toni Morrison | The Origin of Others - The Literature of Belonging (Romancing Slavery—Being and Becoming the Stranger—The Color Fetish—Configurations of Blackness—Narrating the Other—The Foreigner's Home)[20] | 2017 |
| 2017-2018 | Frederick Wiseman |
Wide Angle: The Norton Lectures on Cinema (The Search for Story, Structure, and Meaning in Documentary Film: Part I—The Search for Story, Structure, and Meaning in Documentary Film: Part II)[21][22] |
|
| Agnès Varda | (The 7th Art and Me—Crossing the Borders)[23][24] | ||
| Wim Wenders | (Poetry in Motion—The Visible and the Invisible)[25][26] | ||
| 2021-2022 | Laurie Anderson | Spending the War Without You: Virtual Backgrounds[27] | |
| 2023-2024 | Viet Thanh Nguyen | To Save and To Destroy: On Writing as an Other[28] |
The post had no incumbent in years omitted.