Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Left Wants to Cancel Orwell? Nope

MAGA fans of 1984 are now accusing leftists of canceling Orwell. Which is not true.

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Trump as Dracula and Ancient Mariner

Maureen Dowd compares Trump to Dracula and the Ancient Mariner. The comparisons are worth exploring.

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Soliloquies Changed Us Fundamentally

Hamlet’s soliloquies changed the way we see ourselves and others and led the way to the novel.

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Light in a Time of Darkness

Allan Boesak’s “Advent Credo” reminds us that Advent is a time of radical hope.

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Beowulf’s Lessons in How to Grieve

Hamlet, Beowulf, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight each show us powerful ways to grieve.

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Dec. 7 & Watching One’s Son Go to War

Today being Pearl Harbor Day, I share a Gwendolyn Brooks poem about a mother who loses her son to the war.

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Pachinko and the Miracle of Teaching

Min Jin Lee’s “Pachinko” has a scene that goes to the heart of literature teaching.

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Burns on December (and Austen on Burns)

In “Thou Gloomy December,” Burns mourns a sad parting. While I enjoy Burns, I also enjoy Austen’s satiric takedown of the poet in “Sanditon.”

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George Eliot’s Humanism

George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” was instrumental in developing a new humanism.

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