If literature teaches foundational social values, then teachers can be seen as missionaries.
Tag Archives: Goethe
Does Lit Lead to Illicit Sex?
Dante’s beautifully tragic account of Paolo and Francesca captures–as many great works do–the dangers of total absorption in a relationship.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Adultery, Charlotte Bronte, Christopher Marlowe, Dante, Doctor Faustus, Inferno, Jane Eyre, Paolo and Francesca, passionate love, Romeo and Juliet, Samuel Johnson, Sorrows of Young Werther, Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, William Shakespeare Comments closed
The Dangers of Emotional Identification
In which I push back against an article warning about emotional identification with literary characters.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Age of Sensibility, Anne Radcliffe, Hannah Arendt, Homer, Iliad, Jane Austen, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Namwali Serpell, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Sorrows of Young Werther Comments closed
My “Last Lecture”
I share here my “last lecture” from my retirement ceremony. (But rest assured: I will not be retiring from this blog.)
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Aristotle, Bertolt Brecht, Chinua Achebe, Divine Comedy, Heart of Darkness, Horace, Huckleberry Finn, integration, Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, Martha Nussbaum Wayne Booth, Matthew Arnold, Percy Shelley, Plato, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Samuel Johnson, segregation, Sir Philip Sydney, Terry Eagleton, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wayne Booth Comments closed
Nazis and the Classics
Do the classics make us better people. F. R. Leavis thinks so while Terry Eagleton disagrees and cites as an example concentration camp commandants who read Goethe.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged book burnings, Fascism, Nazis, Terry Eagleton, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Women Making Sense of Their Lives
The female Bildungsroman arose to help women make sense of their lives in the feminist era.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged bildungsroman, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, female bildungsroman, Franny and Zooey, J. D. Salinger, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship Comments closed
In Defense of the English Major
Adam Gopnik makes a spirited defense of the English major in a recent “New Yorker” article.
