Tag Archives: Child rearing

What Your Mum and Dad Do to You

Adrian Mitchell claps back against Philip Larkin’s “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.” While he lacks Larkin’s bite, he captures my own upbringing much better.

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Bridging the 18th-Century Generation Gap

Yesterday my 18th Century Couples Comedy class concluded our discussion of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. We spent a lot of time talking about how it was popular with youthful readers in the 18th century, an idea I owe to J. Paul Hunter, my dissertation director at Emory University. Paul explores the issue in Before Novels: […]

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Mocking Adult Anxieties about Novels

“Before,” by William Hogarth (1736) What can happen to your daughters if they read novels? According to William Hogarth, something like the above. Check out the lower left hand corner where a side table is falling over. The drawer has been left casually but deliberately open so that one can see the book that is […]

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