Tag Archives: D. H. Lawrence

How to View Prejudice in the Classics

By Robin Bates | Published: April 14, 2015

How to handle instances of prejudice in the classics? Let the values battles fly.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Dion Boucicault, Heidi, Johanna Spyri, John Milton, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Octoroon, Paradise Lost, Prejudice, Rabelais, racism, Sexism, To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf | Comments closed

It’s Not Always More Blessed to Give

By Robin Bates | Published: June 30, 2014

Trollope, Shaw, and Lawrence can be seen as wrestling with the merits of self sacrifice.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Anthony Trollope, Doctor Thorne, George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Man Who Died, self sacrifice | Comments closed

Top 10 Hellish Child-Parent Relationships

By Robin Bates | Published: March 26, 2014

Top 10 Literary Parent-Child Relationships from Hell.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "All that Rises Must Converge", "Daddy", "Letter to a Dead Father", Aeschylus, Brothers Karamazov, Euripides, Flannery O'Connor, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Hamlet, King Lear, Medea, Midsummer Night's Dream, Oedipus, Oresteia, parents and children, Phillip K. Roth, Portnoy's Complaint, Richard Shelton, Romeo and Juliet, Sons and Lovers, Sophocles, Sylvia Plath, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

College Reunions: Feeling Understood

By Robin Bates | Published: June 25, 2013

College reunions won’t necessarily bury you in regret. They can make you feel less alone.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged college reunions, Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Nostalgia, Piano, Thomas McGrath | Comments closed

Like a Cat Asleep on a Chair, O Lord

By Robin Bates | Published: April 29, 2012

In “Pax,” D. H. Lawrence echoes the 23rd Psalm only substitutes a cat for a sheep.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Pax", Psalm 131, Psalm 23, Religion | Comments closed

Poetry to Read at a Hippy Wedding

By Robin Bates | Published: June 8, 2011

Today is my wedding anniversary so you get to hear how I wove poetry into the ceremony. W. B. Yeats, Archibald MacLeish, D.H. Lawrence, and the Song of Solomon all made appearances. Get ready for time travel back to a very different era.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Ars Poetica", "Prayer for My Daughter", "Tortoise Shout", Archibald MacLeish, Marriage, Song of Solomon, Weddings, William Butler Yeats | Comments closed

Which Is Deeper, Love or Self?

By Robin Bates | Published: August 19, 2010

I haven’t talked in a while about my friend Alan, who has experienced cancerous tumors in his neck, eyelid, lungs and brain. In each case they were either removed or radiated, allowing us to go on hoping that all would be well. Alan, after all, has already lived a year and a half longer than […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged death and dying, John Knowles, Separate Peace | Comments closed

Breaking through Pain’s Solitude

By Robin Bates | Published: October 7, 2009

I’ve had a chance to revisit the two classics that immediately came to mind the other day when I thought about literary depictions of pain. Both were as powerful as I remember. In D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, the death of the mother goes on and on, page after page. As her son […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Body in Pain, Canticle for Leibowitz, death and dying, Death of Ivan Ilych, Elain Scarry, Euthanasia, Leo Tolstoy, Pain, Sons and Lovers, Suffering, Walter Miller | Comments closed

Can We Imagine Another’s Pain?

By Robin Bates | Published: October 5, 2009

In Friday’s post I mentioned how we read and discussed the first few pages of Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World in our most recent salon, held to support colleague Alan Paskow as he battles with cancer. Scarry claims that language is inadequate when it comes to physical pain so […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Body in Pain, Book of Showings, cancer, Death of Ivan Ilych, Elaine Scarry, Julian of Norwich, Leo Tolstoy, Midsummer Night's Dream, Sons and Lovers, Suffering | Comments closed