The poem that uses myth and literature to imagine the possibilities for action in the face of oppression.
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Tag Archives: Antigone
Using Poetry to Stand Up to Tyranny
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Chanson d'automne", “Sleepless Nights", Bertolt Brecht, Galileo, Kimm Addonizio, Nelson Mandel, Oedipus, Paul Verlaine, Sophocles Leave a comment
Classics to the Rescue in Dark Times
In Trump’s first 100 days, Jill Lepore turned to 100 classics to survive.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "1914", "Fears in Solitude", "Nightingales Are Drunk", "Nose", "Story of the Bad Little Boy", "With Antecedents", Aesop, classic literature, Dante, Eclogue II, Edith Wharton, Figure in the Carpet, Frogs Who Demanded a King, Grimm Brothers, Hafez, Henry James, Homer, Inferno, Jill Lepore, Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, Matsuo Basho, Modest Proposal, Nikolai Gogol, Odyssey, Reckoning, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Six Servants, Sophocles, Virgil, Walt Whitman, Wilfred Owen, Yoshido Kenkō Comments closed
Upon the Meaning of Feeling Guilty
In which I reflect upon why we feel guilty for things beyond our control. Anouilh’s “Antigone” and a Clifton poem enter into the exploration.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "poem with rhyme in it", guilt, injustice, Jean Anouilh, Lucille Clifton Comments closed
Are You an Antigone or an Ismene?
In an essay calling Chinese activist Chow Hang Tung “the Antigone of Hong Kong,” Wendy Gan compares herself to Ismene.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged activism, authoritarianism, Chinese repression, Chow Hang Tung, Hong Kong, Oedipus in Colonus, political dissent, Power of the Powerless, Sophocles, Tiananmen Square, Vaclav Havel Comments closed
Antigone Would Bury Boston Bomber
Sophocles and Homer present compelling cases for granting full funeral rights to the Boston Marathon bomber.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Ajax, Boston Marathon bombing, funerals, Homer, Iliad, Odyssey, Sophocles, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Terrorism Comments closed
Shakespeare Was Mandela’s Lifeline
A copy of Shakespeare’s works that circulated through apartheid-era prisons shows the Bard providing solace for the prisoners.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Henry V, Merchant of Venice, Nelson Mandela, Shakespeare in the prisons, Sophocles, Tempest, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Using Twilight to Teach Antigone
Having compared Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight yesterday with Frances Burney’s Evelina, I feel I owe my readers an apology and an explanation. The apology is that I violated one of my principles for the website and judged the book by the movie. All I’ve read of Twilight is the excerpt on amazon.com. If I sell the […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged adolescence, Alexander Pope, Dunciad, Father-daughter conflict, Sophocles, Stephenie Meyer, teaching Comments closed
Why Didn’t Poetry Save Neil from Suicide?
Yesterday I wrote about how Dead Poets Society, despite its support for poetry, still doesn’t give poetry enough credit and that Keating is the coin side of J. Evans Pritchard. Whereas Pritchard wants to graph literary excellence on a Cartesian plane, Keating (at least in the scenes we see, which are all we have to […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged adolescence, Dead Poets Society, English teachers, Midsummer Night's Dream, Peter Weir, Sophocles, suicide, teaching, William Shakespeare Comments closed