Tag Archives: Elaine Scarry

Lit’s Role in the Decline of Violence

By Robin Bates | Published: August 8, 2012

The empathy fostered by novel reading may have played a role in the decline of violence.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding Tom Jones, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Moll Flanders, Pamela, Samuel Richardson, Steven Pinker, violence | Comments closed

Now for Something Completely Different

By Robin Bates | Published: October 9, 2009

Georgia O’Keefe This past week I seem to have taken as a challenge Elaine Scarry’s observation (in The Body in Pain) that representations of physical pain in literature are rare. Two more I add to the list are the Blake professor in Gail Godwin’s The Good Husband, who is dying of cancer, and Rosie, the […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Body in Pain, Gail Godwin, Good Husband, James Stephens, Leaps of Faith, Pain, Rachel Kranz, Shell | Comments closed

Can We Imagine Another’s Pain?

By Robin Bates | Published: October 5, 2009

In Friday’s post I mentioned how we read and discussed the first few pages of Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World in our most recent salon, held to support colleague Alan Paskow as he battles with cancer. Scarry claims that language is inadequate when it comes to physical pain so […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Body in Pain, Book of Showings, cancer, D. H. Lawrence, Death of Ivan Ilych, Julian of Norwich, Leo Tolstoy, Midsummer Night's Dream, Sons and Lovers, Suffering | Comments closed