In Auden’s “Christmas Oratorio,” the shepherds stand in for the working class, who find love and personhood in the birth of Jesus.
Monthly Archives: December 2016
Joy of Life Revealed in Love’s Creation
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Christmas Oratorio", "Nativity", Christmas, For the Time Being, shepherds, W. H. Auden Comments closed
2016’s Top Story–Trump, Trump, Trump
Looking back of 2016, I choose three posts that stood out to me, all dealing with Trump. One compares him to Satan inspiring the invasion of Earth by Sin and Death in “Paradise Lost.” The other two compare him to Herman Melville’s “Confidence Man” and to the narrator’s son in the Raymond Carver short story “Why, Honey?”
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged 2016 presidential election, Confidence Man, Donald Trump, Herman Melville, Hillary Clinton, John Milton, Raymond Carver, Why Honey? Paradise Lost Comments closed
Can Art Thwart Trump? A Debate
In which I argue with a writer who claims that art and artists have an inflated sense of their power and that they are irrelevant in the battle against Donald Trump.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Donald Trump, Grapes of Wrath, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Invisible Man, John Steinbeck, propaganda, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, social realism, socialist realism, Uncle Tom's Cabin, W. H. Auden Comments closed
Did Western Liberalism Give Us Trump?
Conservative columnist Ross Douthat suggests that, to understand Trump’s rise, we look not to novels like Sinclair’s “It Can Happen Here” and Roth’s “Plot against America” and instead turn to works by French novelist Michel Houellebecq. These helps us understand the crisis of Western liberalism, which Douthat sees as the major culprit.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Donald Trump, Elementary Politics, It Can't Happen Here, Michel Houellebecq, Philip Roth, Plot against America, Soumission, Upton Sinclair Comments closed
Irving’s Xmas Essays Influenced Dickens
While Charles Dickens deserves much of the credit for our modern Christmas, he himself was heavily influenced by Washington Irving essays written when he was a boy. Irving describes a Christmas he witnessed while visiting rural England.
Christmas During Life’s Storms
In “Christmas at Sea,” Robert Louis Stevenson’s speaker is both buoyed up and saddened by childhood Christmas memories.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Christmas at Sea", Christmas, home, Robert Louis Stevenson Comments closed
Dickens Returned Xmas to Medieval Roots
Dickens’s “Christmas Carol” didn’t so much invent Christmas as we have come to know it as take it back to its medieval roots.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Charles Dickens, Christmas, Christmas Carol, Marmion, Pickwick Papers, Sir Walter Scott Comments closed
Decline & Fall of the American Republic?
Trump’s victory may signal the decline of the American republic, just as the rise of the Caesar signaled the end of the Roman republic. Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” is only too relevant to today’s politics.
