I share here my “last lecture” from my retirement ceremony. (But rest assured: I will not be retiring from this blog.)
Tag Archives: Huckleberry Finn
My “Last Lecture”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Aristotle, Bertolt Brecht, Chinua Achebe, Divine Comedy, Goethe, Heart of Darkness, Horace, 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
A Cradle Yet Shall Save the Earth
Mark Twain has fun in “Huckleberry Finn” with today’s New Testament reading, which is about Moses being discovered in “the bushrushers.” Victor Hugo also has a charming poem about the incident.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Moses on the Nile", Exodus, Mark Twain, Moses, Victor Hugo Comments closed
How Trump Is Changing the Discourse
Adam Gopnik of “New Yorker” and Andrew Sullivan of “New York” are very, very frightened by the rise of Trump. As they explain why, they quote Tom Stoppard, Sinclair Lewis, Mark Twain, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Plato.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Donald Trump, Fascism, GOP, It Can't Happen Here, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jumpers, Lord of the Rings, Mark Twain, politics, Presidential politics, protofascism, Sinclair Lewis, Tom Stoppard Comments closed
Cruz as Beowulf? Try Grendel
Thursday Normally I would be delighted with a New York Times article that matched up presidential candidates with works of literature, such as Ted Cruz with Beowulf, Hillary Clinton with Persuasion, and Bernie Sanders with Around the World in 80 Days. This piece, however, strikes me as so uninformative that it’s all but useless. I’ve tried […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Around the World in 80 Days, Beowulf, Bernie Sanders, Carla Fiorina, Charles Dickens, Democrats, Donald Trump, Election 2016, GOP, Hillary Clinton, Jane Austen, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne, Mansfield Park, Marco Rubio, Mark Twain, Mike Huckabee, Oliver Twist, Persuasion, politics, Rand Paul, Tale of Two Cities, Ted Cruz Comments closed
Trump as the Duke of Bilgewater
Although a couple of recent articles have compared Donald Trump to Pap in “Huckleberry Finn,” I find him to be much more akin to the Duke and the Dauphin. Which is to say, an ace con artist.
The Complex Inner Life of Teachers
Lily King’s “The English Teacher” is filled with literary lllusions, most of them thematically important.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Voice", Annabelle Lee, Beowulf, Edgar Allen Poe, Homer, Love Song of J. Alfred Pruforck, Mark Twain, Odyssey, Othello, Rose for Emily, T. S. Eliot, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Superstition & Power Relations
To honor Friday’s 13th, here’s how Mark Twain handles superstition in “Huck Finn.”
#CancelColbert, #CancelMarkTwain
Carl Rosin, a high school teacher I admire tremendously, shares below how he will be using a recent public dust-up about a Stephen Colbert tweet to help his students understand the power and danger of satire, especially as it applies to Huckleberry Finn. I love the tweet that Carl imagines could have emerged out of Huck […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Mark Twain, offensive tweets, racism, Stephen Colbert Comments closed
