Through describing their essays on “Beowulf,” I recount how five students are responding to the Covid crisis.
To teach students how to understand and respond to violence, Beowulf is a go-to work.
“Beowulf” and “Lord of the Rings” have blind spots but they are transcendent works for all that.
Thursday When I launched this blog over 10 years ago, I called it Better Living through Beowulf because Beowulf is the starting text for those of us specializing in British Literature. I used Beowulf to represent all of literature and felt free to write about any literary work that provides insight into the life we […]
Thursday Today I will be delivering the following talk as part of Sewanee’s Lifelong Learning series, delivered in a venue that used to be my high school and where I spoke 50 years ago. It may sound strange to some of you that a literary scholar such as myself would talk about fantasy. Aren’t we […]
Thursday I report today on a memorable encounter I had with an African American alum upon my first post-retirement return to St. Mary’s College of Maryland. I was talking with a former colleague when Candace looked in and began reminiscing. I didn’t recognize her, even after she told me her name, but something clicked when […]
Tuesday Today is the 19th anniversary of my oldest son’s death. When Justin died in a freak drowning accident in 2000, our world turned upside down. He was 21 at the time and would have been 40 this year. In “When Great Trees Fall,” Maya Angelou captures much of what I experienced. I’m struck by […]
Monday Often, following mass killings such as occurred yesterday in Sri Lanka, I turn to Beowulf since few works understand the horrors of internecine violence so well. Beowulf was already on my mind as friends have been sending me word of new discoveries about the poem, and now we see killer trolls once again on […]
Wednesday A friend the other day asked where my ideas come from, especially when I apply a passage from one century to incidents in another. Yesterday, for instance, I said that Trump confidant Roger Stone reminded me of a passage in Herman Melville’s Confidence Man. So how did that enter my head? To answer, let […]
