Once again a horrific mass shooting. Once again an occasion to turn to “Beowulf.”
Monthly Archives: June 2015
Grendel Violence Never Ends
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Beowulf, Dylann Storm Roof, Emanuel AME Church killings, Grendel, gun violence, mass killing, mass shooting Comments closed
Bloodless Criticism Undermines Lit
Literature can function as an evasion as well as a guide. But only if we talk about it in evasive ways.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Leda and the Swan", English Teacher, Lily King, Lord Gordon Byron, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy, Thorn Birds, William Butler Yeats Comments closed
The Complex Inner Life of Teachers
Lily King’s “The English Teacher” is filled with literary lllusions, most of them thematically important.
Posted in Uncategorized 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, William Shakespeare Comments closed
An English Teacher as Tess
Lily King’s novel “English Teacher” is a profound meditation on how a trauma victim may view “Tess of the d’Urbervilles.”
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged English Teacher, Lily King, Rape, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy, trauma Comments closed
The Spirit Moves in Continual Creation
In “Chorus,” Elizabeth Jennings finds God in ‘tears shed in the lonely fastness/And in sorrow after anger.”
Worshipping the Gods of Fermented Fruit
The way Peruvian farmers use corn be gives insight into Teiresias’ encomium on wine in Euripides’ “The Bacchae.”
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Bacchae, chica, Euripides, Feast of Corpus Christi, Incas, Pachamama, syncretism Comments closed
The Color Purple and a Texas Pool Party
The out-of-control police officer at an African American pool party brings to mind a scene from “The Color Purple.” We’ve made progress, however, since the days in which the novel is set.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Alice Walker, Color Purple, police violence, racism, Texas pool party Comments closed
Neruda on Machu Picchu’s Healing Powers
Neruda’s “Heights of Macchu Picchu” describes how the lost city of the Incas revitalized his faith in humankind.
