A New York Times article argues that Trump is using rhetorical flourishes like those that Marc Antony uses to defeat Brutus in Shakespeare’s play. His key strategy is casting himself as authentic against the inauthenticity of politicians.
Obama’s speech passing the baton to Hillary Clinton last night brings to mind a passage from “Hamlet.”
Recent evidence further confirms what most Shakespeare scholars believe: that Shakespeare wrote the plays ascribed to him. The Bard’s social anxieties, however, may have communicated themselves to the skeptics, who play out their own anxieties as they attempt to tear him down.
Recent research shows how much of a social climber Shakespeare was. The knowledge gives us new insight into characters like Malvolio and Othello.
A “Guardian” article applies Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Dead Statesman” to those irresponsible politicians who brought about Brexit. The poem applies equally well to Donald Trump.
Yale English majors have been complaining about requiring them to study canonical writers. Here’s is why they are wrong.
Many who vowed NeverTrump are backing away from the word “never.” “Never” is an important word in “King Lear” and Lear, unlike Lear’s opponents, doesn’t back away from it.
As the GOP reels in the wake of Trump’s victory, it might want to model itself on Edgar in “King Lear.”
When traditional institutions like the government or the Supreme Court are undermined, the way is cleared for the rise of liar like Trump.
After John Boehner compared Sen. Ted Cruz to Lucifer, I went looking through “Paradise Lost” to find passages that would apply. If found a particularly good one but, if you ask me, Cruz more resembles Blifil, Tom Jones’s nemesis.
Posted in Fielding (Henry), Milton (John), Shakespeare (William), Stoker (Bram) | Also tagged Bram Stoker, Dracula, Henry Fielding, John Boehner, John Milton, Julius Caesar, Lucifer, Paradise Lost, Peter King, politics, Presidential Primaries, Satan, Senate, Ted Cruz, Tom Jones |
An anthropologist argues that human beings took over the world because they had the ability to compose fictions. Literature continues to point the way forward for us as a species.
While Trump calls for torture of terrorists and Ted Cruz calls for carpet bombing them, President Obama calls for America to take the high moral road. He sounds like Albany arguing with Goneril in “King Lear.”
Donald Trump has a very distinctive twitter style., one that would be great for classic book reviews. A BuzzFeed writer imagines how he might have reviewed “Hamlet,” “Tristram Shandy,” “Ulysses,” and other classics.
Posted in Hemingway (Ernest), Joyce (James), Shakespeare (William), Sterne (Lawrence), Tolkien (J.R.R.) | Also tagged Albert Camus, Donald Trump, Ernest Hemingway, Hamlet, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Joyce, Lawrence Sterne, Lord of the Rings, Stranger, Sun Also Rises, Tristram Shandy, Ulysses |
“Beware the Ides of March,” the soothsayer tells Julius Caesar. On the Ides of March 2016, Marco Rubio received the unkindest cut from his home state of Florida. But if for perhaps a more apt application of the play, one should look at how members of the GOP establishment are hoping to stab Donald Trump at the July convention.
New School philosophy professor Simon Critchley argues that theatre and the arts in general are vital in helping societies understand and moderate endemic violence. Aeschylus’s “Oresteia” and Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” are particularly important.
Think of Shakespeare’s “Tempest” as an allegory for the current state of American politics, especially the presidential primaries. It contains visionaries and cynics, orchestrators and disrupters. If Prospero is the island “establishment,” then he enjoys some success but it is qualified.
The struggle between Jeb Bush and his former protegé Marco Rubio has been described as Shakespearean. The Shakespeare duos that come to mind are Caesar-Brutus, Duncan-Macbeth, and Henry IV-Hal.
In another significant post that appeared this past year, I compared GOP extremists to King Lear–more interested in self-indulgent behavior than in responsible governance. The result is a divided country at war with itself.
Psychologists say that a strong sense of narrative identity can lead to the profound sense of happiness described by Aristotle. Literature helps us make sure we have available to us the best narratives.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Aristotle, Brothers Karamazov, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Emma, eudaimonic well-being, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Great Expectations, happiness, Jane Austen, King Lear, stories |
My attempt at an overarching theory of literature and its place in human history and human progress.
Posted in Austen (Jane), Rand (Ayn), Shakespeare (William), Sidney (Sir Philip), Terence | Also tagged Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Sir Philip Sidney, Terence, Twelfth Night, Wayne Booth |
Although today we are sometimes suspicious when literature seeks to instruct us, Samuel Johnson considered this to be literature’s primary aim. He held up Shakespeare as proof.
Does Jeb Bush resemble at the moment Samson Agonistes? His rivalry with Marco Rubio also resembles any number of Shakespeare tragedies. There’s an Oedipus parallel as well.
Posted in Milton (John), Shakespeare (William), Sophocles | Also tagged 2016 election, GOP, GOP primary, Henry IV Part II, Jeb Bush, John Milton, Joseph Campbell, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Marco Rubio, Oedipus, politics, Samson Agonistes, Sophocles |
In honor of Halloween, check out what Shakespeare had to say about ghosts. When his graves yawn and yield up their dead, they produce apparitions that are genuinely frightening.
Literature impacts our lives but the influence is best if we read a wide variety of works. Limiting ourselves to just a few authors can warp us.
The classics are capable to doing great good but can they also do harm? Even as they powerfully open up the mind to new possibilities, can they also close it down? A debate.
Posted in Aristotle, Austen (Jane), Plato, Shelley (Percy), Sidney (Sir Philip) | Also tagged "Anabelle Lee", Aristotle, Bridge to Terabithia, Charles Dickens, Earth Sea Trilogy, Edgar Allan Poe, George Eliot, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jane Austen, Katherine Paterson, Middlemarch, Old Curiosity Shop, Percy Shelley, Plato, Pride and Prejudice, Sir Philip Sidney, Twelfth Night, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ursula Leguin |
The late Oliver Sacks’s observations on the mind sometimes sound a lot like Shakespeare in “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Tempest.”
The panic of New Orleans 9th Ward residents ten years ago is reminiscent of the passengers on board the ship in Shakespeare’s “Tempest”: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here!”
In “Twelfth Night,” 400 years before Obergefell v. Hodges, Shakespeare dreamed of same sex marriage. He would have been celebrating Friday after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage.
“Midsummer Night’s Dream” dips into ancient British legends about the mystical aspects of midsummer.
Posted in Kipling (Rudyard), Nesbitt (E.), Shakespeare (William), Sir Gawain Poet | Also tagged A. S. Byatt, Children's Book, E. Nesbit, Midsummer Night's Dream, Midsummer Night's Eve, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, summer, summer solstice |
Lily King’s “The English Teacher” is filled with literary lllusions, most of them thematically important.
Posted in Beowulf Poet, Eliot (T.S.), Faulkner (William), Hardy (Thomas), Homer, Joyce (James), King (Lily), Poe (Edgar Allan), Twain (Mark) | Also tagged "Voice", Annabelle Lee, Beowulf, Edgar Allen Poe, Homer, Huckleberry Finn, Love Song of J. Alfred Pruforck, Mark Twain, Odyssey, Othello, Rose for Emily, T. S. Eliot, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner |
10 memorable pick-up lines from poetic greats. Try them at a bar near you.
Posted in Austen (Jane), Behn (Aphra), Donne (John), Herrick (Robert), Marvell (Andrew), Montagu (Lady Mary Wortley), Rostand (Edmond de), Shakespeare (William), Wilmot (John) | Also tagged "Flea", "Phyllis Be Gentler", "The Lover", "To His Mistress Going to Bed", "To the Virgins to Make Much of Time", Andrew Marvell, Aphra Behn, Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond de Rostand, Jane Austen, John Donne, John Wilmot, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Pride and Prejudice, Robert Herrick, Rover, To His Coy Mistress, Twelfth Night |
