Monthly Archives: February 2017

With Many Tears I Went in Search of HIm

By Robin Bates | Published: February 19, 2017

Spiritual Sunday I know George MacDonald as the author of various fantasy novels but didn’t realize that he also wrote poetry. Here’s a lovely sonnet about looking for God after suffering a crisis of faith. The poet doesn’t find his “friend” when he searches in the wilderness or in cities, in cathedrals or in charnel houses, […]

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Chaucer’s Wife, an Early Gaslighter

By Robin Bates | Published: February 16, 2017

Donald Trump’s non-ending falsehoods have sometimes been described as “gaslighting,” after the old Charles Boyer-Ingrid Bergman film. An early literary example of a gaslighter is Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, although her use of the tactic is far more justifiable.

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Trump’s Faustian Emptiness

By Robin Bates | Published: February 15, 2017

Donald Trump has a lot in common with Doctor Faustus: both are narcissists who create hells for themselves by being unable to reach out beyond themselves.

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Teaching Euripides in the Age of Title IX

By Robin Bates | Published: February 14, 2017

Recently a student reported me for using sexist language in the classroom. (This while teaching a Kingsolver novel and Euripides’s “The Bacchae.”) The language did not reflect my own views, but the complaint made me realize that I need to be more careful with this generation of students.

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How to Make All Your Fantasies Come True

By Robin Bates | Published: February 13, 2017

In high school I learned, from Jacques Offenbach’s opera “Tales of Hoffman,” how to make all my sexual fantasies come true. It took several decades of married life to fully embrace his insight.

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Hughes Dreams the Real American Dream

By Robin Bates | Published: February 12, 2017

Langston Hughes’s “Let America Be America Again” is a powerful riposte to President Steven Bannon and Co.’s “Make America Great Again.” Poems like this one can play an important role in resistance against the Trump administration.

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Suffering and God’s Apparent Silence

By Robin Bates | Published: February 11, 2017

Susaku Endo’s great novel “Silence” wrestles with the seeming silence of God in the face of humanity’s suffering. A missionary priest in 17th century Japan struggles with his doubts as he witnesses the torture of Christians. In the end, it takes his own betrayal of his mission for him to grasp the meaning of Christ’s sacrifice.

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Humiliation, a Lit Department Game

By Robin Bates | Published: February 9, 2017

David Lodge describes a game in “Changing Places” that English departments might enjoy: Humiliation. Check out the rules here.

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Poetry & the Sea Liberate the Imprisoned

By Robin Bates | Published: February 8, 2017

For Pablo Neruda’s, the “poet’s obligation” is to speak for freedom–which makes poetry vital important in our time.

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