Here’s a post that has been awaiting a moment when I thought this website could use a comic interlude. I’m not suggesting in any way that Hugh Hefner’s forthcoming marriage (check out Timothy Egan’s horrified response) is as newsworthy as, say, Egypt’s uprising (Monday’s post) or America’s problem with guns (yesterday’s post). But we […]
Tag Archives: Geoffrey Chaucer
Palin, Mama Grizzlies, and the Wife of Bath
There was a lot of talk about Sarah Palin’s “Mama Grizzlies” this past election season. The image, which conjures up mothers fiercely defending their threatened young, has never made logical sense to me as a rightwing symbol. After all, shouldn’t mothers be fighting fiercely for social safety net programs (which Sarah Palin attacks) and against […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Canterbury Tales, politics, Sarah Palin, Wife of Bath Comments closed
Blasphemy + Laughter, Not All Bad
Spiritual Sunday I was teaching Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale on Friday and had a sudden insight: laughter, even blasphemous laughter, is not an enemy to spirituality. In fact, it can be a means of deepening our connection with the divine. I will make my case through Chaucer. The Miller’s Tale is about as bawdy as it […]
Chaucer’s Answer to Catholic Corruption
Like many, I have been appalled at the non-stop stories of abuse coming out of the Catholic Church and depressed by the Church’s response. The latest egregious example of the latter is the pope’s personal preacher comparing newspaper accusations of the pope to the persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust. Calling Geoffrey Chaucer, to […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Canterbury Tales, Catholic Church, Child Abuse, Religion Comments closed
