In my “Restoration and 18th Century Couples Comedy” class, my students paired old rom-coms with contemporary films, including “Ten Things I Hate about You,” “How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, “Friends with Benefits,” and others.
Alexander Pope warned, in “Essay on Man” that vice loses its ugliness once it becomes familiar. This is the danger we face with the normalization of Donald Trump.
For Americans, wilderness is a more unkempt affair than it for Europeans.
“Inside Out” has a lot in common with Pope’s “Rape of the Lock.” Both show us the interior drama of their heroines. In both works, the heroines lose touch with their upbeat helpers.
Fans’ obsession with autographs are like the Baron’s obsession with Belinda’s locks in “Rape of the Lock.”
Literature is filled with fetish objects that take on outsized significance to various characters.
Pope’s “a little learning is a dangerous thing” applies to many of today’s policy debates.
The movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” uses an Alexander Pope poem as its springboard.
