Tag Archives: Geoffrey Chaucer

Chaucer & a Trump-Enabling GOP

By Robin Bates | Published: December 5, 2019

For a story that captures GOP readiness to believe all that Trump says, there’s Chaucer’s “Merchant’s Tale.”

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Is Old Age Becoming Overrated?

By Robin Bates | Published: November 26, 2019

A “New Yorker” article on aging turns to literature to debunk the notion that aging is a good thing.

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When Fiction Trumps Truth

By Robin Bates | Published: May 28, 2019

Wednesday Writing last week for the New York Times’ “What Is Power?” series, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari argued that fiction is a more powerful force than truth in politics. I extend the discussion to literature (which Harari does not discuss) because of its reliance upon fabrication in the service of a higher understanding. Camus, […]

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Fantasy Frees Us from Narrow Thinking

By Robin Bates | Published: March 14, 2019

Friday I share today a new insight that I gained from my recent Lifelong Learning class about “Wizards and Enchantresses.” To set it up, I first share my theory of fantasy. As I see it, fantasy is always oppositional in its invocation of magic and the supernatural. If it flourished in the wake of the […]

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Chaucer’s Friar and Abusive Clergy

By Robin Bates | Published: February 26, 2019

Wednesday Like many, I had hopes that Pope Francis’s Vatican meeting on clergy sexual abuse would yield something substantial, and like many I have been disappointed. The pope, according to the New York Times, decided that the best way for the church to address the problem lay not in issuing an edict from Rome but […]

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How I Make Literary Connections

By Robin Bates | Published: January 30, 2019

Wednesday A friend the other day asked where my ideas come from, especially when I apply a passage from one century to incidents in another. Yesterday, for instance, I said that Trump confidant Roger Stone reminded me of a passage in Herman Melville’s Confidence Man. So how did that enter my head? To answer, let […]

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The L. A. Rams and Chaucer’s Miller

By Robin Bates | Published: January 22, 2019

Tuesday I’m experiencing déjà vu after seeing the Los Angeles Rams in the playoffs. When I was a teenager and just becoming interested in football, my beloved Minnesota Vikings were always encountering the Los Angeles Rams in playoff games. Then the Rams became the St. Louis Rams, but now they’re the Los Angeles Rams again, […]

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Teach Chaucer to Address Sexual Assault

By Robin Bates | Published: January 17, 2019

Thursday I’ve been talking with Idaho English teacher Glenda Funk, who is proposing a panel for the upcoming NCTE convention (National Council of Teachers of English) on teaching literature in ways that make a tangible difference in students’ lives.  After I mentioned how The Wife of Bath’s Prelude and Tale foreground issues of sexual assault, […]

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Spirituality in Nature

By Robin Bates | Published: October 13, 2018

John Gatta’s “Spirit of Place in American Literary Culture” explains why we find certain places, in nature and in civilization, to be infused with spirit.

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