Tag Archives: Ivan Turgenev

Illness in 19th Century Lit

By Robin Bates | Published: March 24, 2020

19th century literature is filled with images of illness. Reading it should make us grateful to the advances in medical science.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Bleak House, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, epidemics, fathers and sons, Francis Hodgson Burnett, George Eliot, Illness, Jane Eyre, Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, Middlemarch, North and South, pandemics, Secret Garden | Comments closed

Federer and Father Time

By Robin Bates | Published: September 5, 2018

In which I compare Federer’s upset loss to the final stage of an up and down disease, such as that described in Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged fathers and sons, Roger Federer, tennis | Comments closed

Poems To Mourn a Russian History Prof

By Robin Bates | Published: September 11, 2016

When a Russian history professor died at our college, his colleagues turned to poetry as they wrestled with his premature death. Ovid, Alexander Pushkin, Ivan Turgenev, and Walt Whitman provided powerful words.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Song of Myself", Alexander Pushkin, death and dying, Metamorphoses, Ovid, Walt Whitman | Comments closed

Great Political Novels Not Agenda Driven

By Robin Bates | Published: September 27, 2012

Great political novels are rich in spiritual attitude. Poor ones are agenda driven.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Easter 1916", American Pastoral, Berger's Daughter, fathers and sons, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Literary Theory, Nadine Gordimer, Natalia Ginzburg, Orhan Pamuk, Philip Roth, political novel, snow, Stendahl, V.S. Naipaul, Vargas Llosa, William Butler Yeats | Comments closed