Monthly Archives: June 2015

Grendel Violence Never Ends

By Robin Bates | Published: June 19, 2015

Once again a horrific mass shooting. Once again an occasion to turn to “Beowulf.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Beowulf, Dylann Storm Roof, Emanuel AME Church killings, Grendel, gun violence, mass killing, mass shooting | Comments closed

Detecting the Person behind the Poetry

By Robin Bates | Published: June 18, 2015

What we find when we look for the person behind the literary work.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged authorial criticism, Charles Dickens, death of the author, Henry Fielding, intentional fallacy, James Joyce, Lucille Clifton, New Criticism, Roland Barthes, Structuralism, Tom Jones, Ulysses, Wimsatt and Beardsley | Comments closed

Bloodless Criticism Undermines Lit

By Robin Bates | Published: June 17, 2015

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

By Robin Bates | Published: June 16, 2015

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

By Robin Bates | Published: June 15, 2015

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

By Robin Bates | Published: June 14, 2015

In “Chorus,” Elizabeth Jennings finds God in ‘tears shed in the lonely fastness/And in sorrow after anger.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Chorus", Elizabeth Jennings, God, Spirituality | Comments closed

Worshipping the Gods of Fermented Fruit

By Robin Bates | Published: June 12, 2015

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

By Robin Bates | Published: June 11, 2015

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

By Robin Bates | Published: June 10, 2015

Neruda’s “Heights of Macchu Picchu” describes how the lost city of the Incas revitalized his faith in humankind.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Heights of Neruda", Pablo, Working class | Comments closed