Thursday My colleague Jeff Hammond, a national authority on Puritan poetry and a much lauded writer of reflective essays, recently gave a stirring defense of the liberal arts for our parents-alumni weekend. Jeff’s observations dovetail very nicely with Percy Shelley’s Defence of Poetry, which I happen to be teaching at the moment. Watching poetry getting […]
The horrific bombing of a 31-truck aid convoy brought an end to the painstakingly negotiated ceasefire between Russian and the United States in Syria. The incident resembled how Hera and Athena break up the truce that the Greeks and Trojans are trying to negotiate in “The Iliad.”
Lily Bart, Bertha Mason, Achilles, Ishmael and Queequeg all go on vacation. Where do they go?
Donald Trump is making regular use of “the Homeric epithet.” He doesn’t use it as well as Homer, however.
While literature can seem helpless in the face of history’s cataclysms, it proves far more durable than the events that seem to overwhelm it.
Plato’s complaints about literature show up in censorship battles today. They testify to power of literature to invite imitation.
NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof recently sang the praises of the liberal arts and talked about the vital importance of literature.
Suggestions that certain classics come with “trigger warnings” leads of the following reflection.
Ancient Greek literature provides us with a power lens through which to examine the John F. Kennedy assassination.
