Tag Archives: Goethe

Teachers as Literature’s Missionaries

If literature teaches foundational social values, then teachers can be seen as missionaries.

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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.

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The Dangers of Emotional Identification

In which I push back against an article warning about emotional identification with literary characters.

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The Christian Right’s Faustian Bargain

Spiritual Sunday Like many liberal Christians, I am baffled by Donald Trump’s popularity amongst rightwing evangelicals. How can anyone square the president’s behavior and his policies with Jesus’s teachings? A recent Atlantic article provides a compelling explanation: feeling embattled, the Christian right has traded core Christian principles for power. In a post written a year […]

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Trump’s Faustian Bargain: Stop Caring

The bargain of Goethe’s Faust includes not caring about others. Trumpists are entering into that bargain with Trump’s child separation policy.

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My “Last Lecture”

I share here my “last lecture” from my retirement ceremony. (But rest assured: I will not be retiring from this blog.)

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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.

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Women Making Sense of Their Lives

The female Bildungsroman arose to help women make sense of their lives in the feminist era.

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In Defense of the English Major

Adam Gopnik makes a spirited defense of the English major in a recent “New Yorker” article.

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