Two 18th century items: Henry Fielding believed that it was possible to die from a broken heart, which some speculate explains actress Debbie Reynolds’s death after her daughter Carrie Fisher died. And prankster Jonathan Swift has a characteristic list of New Year’s resolutions.
Plato’s attacks on Homer have to do with the bard’s focus earthly concerns rather than higher ones. Following Plato’s prescriptions, however, will not produce very interesting poetry.
After John Boehner compared Sen. Ted Cruz to Lucifer, I went looking through “Paradise Lost” to find passages that would apply. I found a particularly good one but, if you ask me, Cruz more resembles Blifil, Tom Jones’s nemesis.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Bram Stoker, Dracula, John Boehner, John Milton, Julius Caesar, Lucifer, Paradise Lost, Peter King, politics, Presidential Primaries, Satan, Senate, Ted Cruz, Tom Jones, William Shakespeare | What we find when we look for the person behind the literary work.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged authorial criticism, Charles Dickens, death of the author, intentional fallacy, James Joyce, Lucille Clifton, New Criticism, Roland Barthes, Structuralism, Tom Jones, Ulysses, Wimsatt and Beardsley | I have fallen out of love with “Tom Jones.” One reason may be because of the author’s sense of entitlement.
“Tom Jones” teaches how to raise adolescents. And how not to.
Literature is filled with fetish objects that take on outsized significance to various characters.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Alexander Pope, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Emma, Great Expectations, Jane Austen, Marcel Proust, Prophet's Hair, Rape of the Lock, Salman Rushie, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Tell-Tale Heart, Tom Jones | A sexual misconduct course required of all employees got me thinking of problematic situations in the books that I teach.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "The Lover: A Ballad", "Written in a Lady's Prayer Book", Aphra Behn, Bacchae, Charlotte Bronte, Euripides, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, John Wilmot, Lucille Clifton, Rape, Rover, Sense and Sensibility, sexual assault, sexual harassment, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Tom Jones | Literature that moves the heart seems opposed to comedy, but sometimes they work together.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Charles Dickens, Clarissa, Comedy, couples comedy, Henry MacKenzie, Jane Austen, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Man of Feeling, Old Curiosity Shop, Oscar Wilde, romantic comedy age of sensibility, Samuel Richardson, Sense and Sensibility, Thomas Hobbes, Tom Jones | 
