Tag Archives: Horace

Austen’s Revolutionary Style

By Robin Bates | Published: November 20, 2023

Austen may have innovated a way to blend satire with romance as a way to protect us from heartbreak.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Emma, Emma Bovary, free indirect style, Geoffrey Chaucer, Gustave Flaubert, Henry Fielding, ironic romance, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Tom Jones | Comments closed

Johnson: Read the Bard, Not Tom Jones

By Robin Bates | Published: May 3, 2021

I share the Samuel Johnson chapter from my book-in-progress.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Aristotle, Clarissa, Henry Fielding, Plato, Republic, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Richardson, Tom Jones, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Dreaming of a Saturnalian Golden Age

By Robin Bates | Published: December 31, 2019

Wednesday – New Year’s Day Reader Letitia Grimes sent me a poem by Horace so seasonally appropriate that I’m turning my New Year’s post over to her. The Romans celebrated Saturnalia, a time of merrymaking that has inspired our New Year rituals. At the same time that we celebrate the return of the sun, we […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Golden Age of Saturn, Hegel, Horatian Satires, New Year's Day, Saturnalia | Comments closed

My “Last Lecture”

By Robin Bates | Published: April 16, 2018

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, Goethe, Heart of Darkness, 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

Theories about Lit’s Impact

By Robin Bates | Published: March 12, 2018

A transcript of a talk given at the University of Ljubljana on “how literature changes lives.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Aristotle, Bertolt Brecht, Chinua Achebe, Frederick Engel, Karl Marx, Martha Nussbaum, Matthew Arnold, Percy Shelley, Plato, Rachel Blau du Plessis, Samuel Johnson, Sir Philip Sidney, Wayne Booth | Comments closed

Johnson: The Bard Instructs by Delighting

By Robin Bates | Published: November 3, 2015

Although today we are sometimes suspicious when literature seeks to instruct us, Samuel Johnson considered this to be literature’s primary aim. He held up Shakespeare as proof.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged consumer capitalism, King Lear, Preface to Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, utilitarianism, William Shakespeare | Comments closed