For Halloween, here’s one of the scariest poems that I know. In it, Robert Graves recalls a childhood nightmare after he was wounded in World War I.
Tag Archives: Carl Jung
Halloween: “Purring in My Haunted Ear”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Child's Nightmare", Halloween, PTSD, Robert Graves Comments closed
The Meaning of Trump’s Shark Fears
Trump’s anxiety about sharks can be understood through an examination of “Jaws.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Donald Trump, Jaws, Jungian psychology, Peter Benchley, sharks, Sigmund Freud Comments closed
On Lear and Turning 73
Poet David Wright finds retirement lessons in “King Lear.” And aging lessons as well.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Lines on Retirement after Reading Lear", Aging, David Wright, King Lear, W. B. Yeats, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Why I Think the Way I Think
I survey my intellectual history, especially the evolution of my thinking about literature’s impact on human behavior.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Antonio Gramsci, Beowulf, Carleton College, Hans Robert Jauss, Harper Lee, Huckleberry Finn, intellectual history, J. Paul Hunter, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jerome Beaty, Karl Marx, Literary Theory, Madame Bovary, Mark Twain, New Criticism, Norman Holland, Percy Bysshe Shelley, racism, Reader Response Theory, reception theory, Sigmund Freud, Terry Eagleton, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tobias Smollett Comments closed
Overcoming the Siren Call of Domination
A reader suggests that the island enchantresses in “Odyssey” help the hero in his quest for integration.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged emasculation fears, Homer, individuation, Joseph Campbell, Odyssey, Sigmund Freud Comments closed
Fantasy and the Problem of Violence
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 […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Beowulf, Beowulf poet, fantasy, J. R. R. Tolkien, Joseph Campbell, Lord of the Rings, Sigmund Freud, violence Comments closed
The Journey of the Reader Hero
Reading literature can be compared to Joseph Campbell’s “Journey of the Hero.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Hero with a Thousand Faces, hero's journey, individuation, Joseph Campbell Comments closed
“Harry, I Am Your Father” – Voldemort
Voldemort can be interpreted as the father in Harry Potter’s primal scene.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Brothers Karamazov, fathers, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling, Joseph Campbell, Maturation, Oedipus complex, Sigmund Freud Comments closed
At 60, a Comfortable Old Scarecrow
Having just turned 60, I’ve been thinking of Teiresias. Wise though the blind seer may be, his advice doesn’t help others that much. Aging, in other words, appears to require humility.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Aging, Bacchae, Euripides, Homer, Odyssey, Oedipus, Sophocles, T. S. Eliot, Wasteland Comments closed
