In “Amber Spyglass,” Pullman rebels against orthodox versions of the afterlife and creates his own.
Tag Archives: Aeschylus
Philip Pullman’s Unorthodox Afterlife
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "World", "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep", Adonais, Afterlife, Amber Spyglass, Dante, Divine Comedy, Eumenides, Golden Compass, Henry Vaughan, Inferno, life after death, Mary Elizabeth Frye, Oresteia trilogy, Paradiso, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Philip Pullman Comments closed
Got a Problem? Call a Poet
Tragedy, it turns out, is a powerful literary form for dealing with posttraumatic fear.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Agamemnon, Angus Fletcher, Aristotle, bibliotherapy, catharsis, literary technique, Oedipus, philosophy, posttraumatic fear, PTSD, Rhetoric, Sigmund Freud, sophists, Sophocles, Wonderworks Comments closed
Kundera Understood Authoritarianism
The late Milan Kundera understood the authoritarian mindset in a deep way. “Book of Laughter and Forgetting” and “Eternal Lightness of Being” capture the mindset.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Agamemnon, Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Donald Trump, Eternal Lightness of Being, Flies, Jean Paul Sartre, MAGA, Milan Kundera Comments closed
A Partial Defense of Plato’s Poet Ban
Perhaps Plato banished poets from his ideal society because he appreciated the destructive potential of stories. He’s relevant in light of today’s conspiracy theories.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged 1Q84, conspiracy theories, Donald Trump, Euripides, Haruki Murakami, Homer, philosophy vs. poetry, Plato, QAnon, Republic, Sophocles Comments closed
Our New President Understands Suffering
America has elected a president who understands suffering. A passage from Aeschylus’s “Agamemnon” seems right.
Through Lit, We Learn Compassion
Tuesday My brother Sam, an enthusiastic Unitarian Universalist, gave me Karen Armstrong’s Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life for Christmas, and I was pleased that the author sees literature playing a major role. In today’s post I share how she draws on the ancient Greeks. Armstrong writes, “All faiths insist that compassion is the test […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Prelude", compassion, Eumenides, Euripides, Heracles, Homer, Iliad, Oedipus at Colonus, Oresteia, Sophocles, Tintern Abbey, William Wordsworth Comments closed
#MeToo: A New Day for Cassandra
The prophetess Cassandra wasn’t listened to, but the #MeToo movement is changing that.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Agamemnon, MeToo, patriarchy, sexual assault, sexual harassment Comments closed
Climate Scientists, Our Cassandras
Our climate scientists must feel like modern day Cassandras, as she appears in Aeschylus’s “Agamemnon” or Robinson Jeffers’s “Cassandra.” The prophetess knew what would happen but no one believed her. As a result, Troy fell.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Cassandra", Agamemnon, climate change, climate denialism, Robinson Jeffers Comments closed
