Friday My wife Julia alerted me to a luminescent Atlantic article about women disappearing as they grow older. Although some regard this as a problem, author Akiko Busch draws on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway to show how women can turn it to their advantage. First, the apparent problem. When women are treated as objects, they […]
Monthly Archives: February 2019
Mrs. Dalloway and the Gift of Aging
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Aging, identity, Mrs. Dalloway, Sur, Ursula K Le Guin, Virginia Woolf Comments closed
John Wilmot Sums Up Current GOP
Thursday One of the interchanges in Trump fixer Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Investigation Committee yesterday jumped out at me because it had such an 18th century flavor to it. Kentucky Republican James Comer, seeking to undermine Cohen, challenged him with the following: Comer: “You called Trump a cheat. What would you call yourself?” […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Satyr against Reason and Mankind", Congress, Congressional hearings, Donald Trump, GOP, Ireland, John Wilmot, Jonathan Swift, Michael Cohen Comments closed
Chaucer’s Friar and Abusive Clergy
Wednesday Like many, I had hopes that Pope Francis’s Vatican meeting on clergy sexual abuse would yield something substantial, and like many I have been disappointed. The pope, according to the New York Times, decided that the best way for the church to address the problem lay not in issuing an edict from Rome but […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Catholic Church, clergy sexual abuse, Friar's Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer, Pope Francis, Wife of Bath Comments closed
Brexit or Never Let Me Go?
Tuesday I see there is a glimmer of hope in the United Kingdom (albeit a very tiny one) as Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has dropped his opposition to a second referendum on Brexit, even though he himself supposedly wants out. This means that a possibility at least exists that Brits can reverse their catastrophic, […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Brexit, Buried Giant, clones, fatalism, Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go, Remains of the Day Comments closed
Caution against Purity Policing
Monday One of my conservative readers wrote me recently asking me how I felt about leftist insistence that Virginia governor Ralph Northam resign for having posted a racist picture in his medical school yearbook years ago. After all, hasn’t Northam lived a fairly exemplary life since then? The reader also sent me a Quillette article […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Aphra Behn, Henry Fielding, Merchant of Venice, Oroonoko, purity policing, Tom Jones, William Shakespeare Comments closed
C. S. Lewis: Literature as Theology
Spiritual Sunday I write today about a fascinating talk I heard in our church’s Adult Forum this past Sunday. Dr. Rob MacSwain, editor of The Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis, talked about Lewis’s special contribution to our understanding of God and Christianity. MacSwain, who teaches “Theology of Ethics” at Sewanee’s School of Theology, opened […]
Dickens Anagrams
Friday For a change of pace, I offer up some title anagrams, generated by one Ross Daniel Bullen, who tweeted them out recently in honor of Charles Dickens’s birthday. I got all but one but must admit to semi-cheating. I’m familiar with all of his novels (with the exception of Dombey and Son) so I plugged the novels […]
Fantasy Keeps Dreams Alive
Thursday In Monday’s and Tuesday’s posts (see here and here), I laid out the outlines of my first “Wizards and Enchantresses” class, which I’m currently teaching as part of Sewanee’s Lifelong Learning Program. The first class I devoted to Merlin, the second will focus on Morgan Le Fay, the third will take up Shakespeare’s Prospero, […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Alfred Lord Tennyson, Arthurian tales, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, fantasy, Idylls of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Mark Twain, Merlin, Once and Future King, Sword in the Stone, T. H. White Comments closed
My Brief Flirtation with Lyndon LaRouche
Wednesday Here’s a story that most people missed but that registered with me: Lyndon LaRouche died last week at 97. I was never a “LaRouchie,” but for a few months as a graduate student I took his ideas seriously. That’s until I discovered he was a fanatic. I learned about LaRouche from a friend who […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Aristotle, empiricism, Idealism, Lyndon LaRouche, Neo-Platonism, Platonism Comments closed
