Monthly Archives: January 2018

On the Carnivalesque in Magic Realism

Some argue that magical realism is inherently democratic and point to the carnival qualities of “100 Years of Solitude.” But carnival populism can push right as well as left.

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Telling Your Name the Livelong Day

Insecure people like Trump claim that they know everything whereas poets embrace the words “I don’t know.” Emily Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody” captures the difference between poets and people like Trump.

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Atwood’s Jezebels at the Presidents Club

The Presidents Club scandal bears much resemblance to “the Club” in “Handmaid’s Tale” to which the Commander takes Offred.

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Lit for Survivors Lost in a Dark Wood

Monday Commonweal recently published a heartfelt article by West Point visiting English professor Cassandra Nelson on how literature can help trauma survivors recover. Nelson begins with an angry comment about a University of Chicago dean’s facile dismissal of  trigger warnings, even though she herself opposes them. She, however, speaks from the vantage point of one […]

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How To Find a Paradise Within, Happier Far

Milton would have called those white evangelicals promoting Trumpism “grievous wolves.”

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Wordsworth Changed How We See Nature

Writer Margaret Drabble explains how Wordsworth changed the way we see the world.

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Marquez: How GOP Can Regain Its Soul

What has happened to the GOP is what happens to Col. Aureliano Buendia in “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Fortunately, Garcia Marquez assures us there is a way back.

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Le Guin: To Refuse Death Is To Refuse Life

When Ursula K. Le Guin died yesterday, I thought of the “Farthest Shore,” the young adult novel where she grapples with humans’ fear of death.

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How Atwood Rescued This Single Mom

In an inspiring story, single mom Ashley found Atwood’s novels helped her turn her life around.

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