If Chaucer’s created a timeless and transcendent character in the Wife of Bath, it is because he listened–really listened–to women.
Tag Archives: Defence of Poetry
A Woman 600 Years Ahead of Her Time
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Beowulf, Christian misogyny, Feminism, Geoffrey Chaucer, Harold Bloom, Percy Shelley, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Wife of Bath, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Read Lit, Then Fight for Freedom
While literature may seem irrelevant to our political battles, it provides (as Shelley points out) an invaluable human compass.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged abortion debates, Azar Nafisi, Percy Shelley, Reading Lolita in Tehran Comments closed
Lit & Nature Light Up Same Parts of Brain
The brain doesn’t distinguish between reading about something and actually experiencing it. This has interesting implications for lit.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged language, MRI imaging, neurocriticism, Percy Bysshe Shelley Comments closed
13 Books That (Kind of) Changed America
I review Parini’s “13 Books That Changed America” and find his view of change to be limiting. For one thing, he excludes most of American literature.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged !3 Books That Changed America, Betty Friedan, Feminine Mystique, Jay Parini, Percy Shelley Comments closed
In Defense of The Merchant of Venice
Percy Shelley believes that great art transcends the prejudices of its time, even when it is cloaked in them. If he is right, then “Merchant of Venice” is less of a problem play than many people consider it.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged anti-Semitism, Merchant of Venice, Othello, Percy Shelley, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare Comments closed
The Liberal Arts Will Not Die
Thursday My colleague Jeff Hammond, a national authority on Puritan poetry and a much lauded writer of reflective essays, recently gave a stirring defense of the liberal arts for our parents-alumni weekend. Jeff’s observations dovetail very nicely with Percy Shelley’s Defence of Poetry, which I happen to be teaching at the moment. Watching poetry getting […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Henry V, Iliad, Jeffrey Hammond, Liberal Arts, Odyssey, William Shakespeare Comments closed
How Poets Are the Legislators of the World
Shelley saw great literature as changing the way we see reality. Sometimes, however, it takes hundreds of years for this to be evident.
Poetry Enlarges the Moral Imagination
Shelley’s “Defence of Poetry” makes one of the strongest cases in history for how poetry changes the world.
