Monthly Archives: August 2015

Sacks & the Bard’s Midsummer Madness

By Robin Bates | Published: August 31, 2015

The late Oliver Sacks’s observations on the mind sometimes sound a lot like Shakespeare in “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Tempest.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Charles Bonnet syndrome, hallucinations, human mind, Midsummer Night's Dream, Oliver Sacks, Tempest, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

He Doth Sit By Us and Moan

By Robin Bates | Published: August 30, 2015

Last week I was honored by my friend Jean Yeatman when she asked me to sit with her at her mother’s deathbed. We talked about childhood excursions that our families took together and also about the importance of ritual in our lives. Today’s William Blake poem is for her and her brother Clay. Blake finds […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "On Another's Sorrow", death and dying, grieving, mourning, William Blake | Comments closed

All the Devils of Hell Unleashed by Katrina

By Robin Bates | Published: August 28, 2015

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!”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Fema, Hurricane Katrina, Michael Brown, New Orleans, Tempest, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Trump as Frankenstein’s Monster

By Robin Bates | Published: August 27, 2015

What is it about Donald Trump that brings out the literary analogies? First a Salon columnist compared him to Odysseus’s Cyclops, then the New Yorker’s John Cassidy saw him as Gulliver, and most recently Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and others have compared him to Frankenstein’s monster. I’ve written about the Cyclops parallel here, but let’s take […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Donald Trump, Frankenstein, GOP, Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, politics | Comments closed

The Pleasure of a Pathless Wood

By Robin Bates | Published: August 26, 2015

For Americans, wilderness is a more unkempt affair than it for Europeans.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alexander Pope, Childe Harold, Evangeline, forests, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Lord Byron, Nature, Romanticism, wilderness, Windsor Forest | Comments closed

Trollope and Patriarchal Marriage

By Robin Bates | Published: August 25, 2015

My portraying traditional Victorian marriages, Anthony Trollope exposes the pathologies that came with them.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged angel on the hearth, Anthony Trollope, Marriage, marriage role, Prime Minister, Relationships, traditional marriage | Comments closed

Please Go Gentle into That Good Night

By Robin Bates | Published: August 24, 2015

Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle” can be read as a narcissistic desire by young people that their elders will go out on young people’s terms.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night", Christopher Marlowe, death and dying, Death of Ivan Ilych, Doctor Faustus, Dylan Thomas, Leo Tolstoy | Comments closed

Dante’s Love: Hot Coals Unconsumed

By Robin Bates | Published: August 23, 2015

Solomon plays an important role in Dante’s “Paradiso” become he combines earthly sensuality and celestial wisdom. I find this to be a healthier vision than those who elevate the spirit over the body.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Dante, Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Solomon, Song of Solomon | Comments closed

The Hardy Boys Do Not Age Well

By Robin Bates | Published: August 20, 2015

I loved the Hardy Boys when I was growing up. Now I find them unreadable.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged childhood reading, Franklin W. Dixon, Hardy Boys | Comments closed