Tag Archives: Iliad

My Time at Sewanee Military Academy

By Robin Bates | Published: October 23, 2025

The latest installment of “my life in literature” series, this one involving my high school years in a military academy.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged adolescence, Catcher in the Rye, Great Gatsby, Homer, J.D. Salinger, John Milton | Comments closed

Kingsolver on Life-Changing Lit

By Robin Bates | Published: August 18, 2025

Kingsolver answering questions about the lit that shaped her can get us all reflecting on the importance of books in our lives.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Albert Camus, Barbara Kingsolver, Bean Trees, Cannery Row, Charles Dickens, Children of Violence, Demon Copperhead, Doris Lessing, Harper Lee, Homer, Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck, Les Misérables, Mark Twain, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare sonnets, To Kill a Mockingbird, Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

An Iranian Hostage Recalls Tolstoy

By Robin Bates | Published: May 7, 2025

In which one of the 1980 Iranian hostages explains why “War and Peace” meant so much to him at the time.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Emma, George Eliot, Homer, Iranian hostage crisis, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Life and Fate, Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, Vasily Grossman, War and Peace | Comments closed

Lit Packs a Powerful Punch

By Robin Bates | Published: January 3, 2025

My book “Better Living through Lit” this past year was only one of several making the case that literature can be social dynamite.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Beloved, Ben Jonson, Better Living through Literature, book bans, Christopher Marlowe, Dangerous Fictions, Harold Bloom, Hesiod, Homer, Lyta Gold, Odyssey, Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray, Plato, Toni Morrison, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Trumpism and Penelope’s Suitors

By Robin Bates | Published: December 12, 2024

Penelope’s suitors are like Trump and his supporters, looting the household and then calling other people lazy grifters asking for handouts.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged entitlement programs, Homer, kleptocracy, Odyssey, Trumpism, welfare programs | Comments closed

Why Fiction Terrifies People

By Robin Bates | Published: July 2, 2024

I announce my forthcoming book and contrast it with a similar book–“Dangerous Fictions”–coming out soon.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Beloved, Ben Jonson, Better Living through Literature, book bans, Christopher Marlowe, Dangerous Fictions, Harold Bloom, Hesiod, Homer, Lyta Gold, Odyssey, Oscar Wilde, Picture of Dorian Gray, Plato, Toni Morrison, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Literature in Time of War

By Robin Bates | Published: February 29, 2024

Poetry has always been present in times of war but with mixed success at improving conditions.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged burning books, Ernest Hemingway, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Hitler, Homer, King John, Louis Untemeyer, Modern American and British Poetry, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Osip Mandelstam, Robert Graves, Stalin, Uncle Tom's Cabin, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

How Lit Inspires Courage and Love

By Robin Bates | Published: October 19, 2023

Fletcher in “Masterworks” argues that epic narrative can boost courage and lyric disclosure can do the same for love.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Fragment 16", "He seems to me a god", Angus Fletcher, courage, Homer, literature as self help, love, Masterworks, Odyssey, Sappho | Comments closed

On Trump, Achilles, and Retribution

By Robin Bates | Published: May 8, 2023

Trump has been threatening retribution on his enemies. The Iliad shows the corrosive effects of revenge.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Donald Trump, Homer, laws of hospitality, revenge, ritual | Comments closed