“I think Hell is a fable,” Doctor Faustus tells Mephastophilis at one point in Marlowe’s 1593 tragedy. While many Elizabethans would have disagreed—the play terrified them precisely because they believed in a literal hell—we’re more sympathetic with the notion now. To most of us, fire and brimstone and devils with pitchforks are the stuff of […]
Monthly Archives: February 2011
Hell, an Inner Emptiness that Can’t Be Filled
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, materialism, Soul Comments closed
7 Reasons We Help Others
Spiritual Sunday If I want to generate a spirited ethical discussion in a class, all I have to do is ask my students whether altruism derives from a higher moral sense or from enlightened self-interest. It is one of those questions that theologians, philosophers, biologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and others can debate for hours. They draw […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Seven Charitable Chimpanzees", Altruism, Ethics, Scott Bates, Spirituality Comments closed
Why Does Everyone Hate Duke?
Sports Saturday Once again, one of the most hated teams in the country resides atop the NCAA basketball rankings: Duke University. In today’s post I find literary equivalents for the general animus against the Blue Devils. For the life of me I can’t understand why Duke is so disliked. Granted, I myself dislike Duke, but […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Basketball, Booth Tarkington, Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, Mark Twain, Oliver Goldsmith, Penrod, Sports, Tom Sawyer Comments closed
Mexican-U.S. Relations: A Touch of Evil
Film Friday I have been teaching an adult film class this semester in conjunction with a fascinating exhibit on fences that our college’s art gallery has mounted with help from the Smithsonian Museum. My contribution is to exhibit and talk about films that focus on fences, walls, and other types of boundaries. This past Tuesday […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Mexican border, Orson Welles, politics, racism, Touch of Evil Comments closed
Twain and Libya’s Bloody Endgame
The slaughter continues on in Libya, with the number of dead now in the thousands as Qaddafi turns his mercenaries, machine guns and tanks on his own people. While other parts of the country are in the arms of the resistance, he is holed up in Tripoli. It appears that he will indeed fight to […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Libya, Mark Twain, Middle East, politics, violence Comments closed
Purchasing Stockings: A 1950’s Memory
What with Qaddafi slaughtering his people in Libya and workers up in (metaphorical) arms in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio, the world seems a chaotic place at the moment. Today, for respite, I offer a poem that will take you to a quieter time–quieter, that is, if you remember your childhood as being a quieter time. […]
Watching Theater as Shakespeare Did
This past Saturday I got a front row view of what it would have been like watching Shakespeare in the early 17th century. Julia and I journeyed to the replica of the Blackfriars Theater in Staunton, Virginia to watch Comedy of Errors and also John Marston’s 1603 revenge drama The Malcontent. Some of drama’s greatest […]
Song to the Men and Women of Bahrain
As the remarkable uprisings continue to erupt across the Middle East, I turn for a third time to the revolutionary poetry of Percy Shelley. When one looks at his time period, one finds a number of modern day parallels. Napoleon’s wars, although imperial, still carried the ideas of “liberté, égalité, fraternité” into the rest of […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Song to Men of England", Middle East, Percy Shelley, politics, Revolution Comments closed
Step 1: Become Like Little Children
Spiritual Sunday We are currently in Staunton, Virginia with our friends Brent and Carter Douglass, having journeyed here to watch two Renaissance plays at the replica of the Elizabethan Blackfriars Theater. I will have more to say about the plays later this week. For the moment I share a wonderful poem that Carter has written […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Communion", Carter Douglass, Children, Religion, Spirituality Comments closed
