A Wall Street Journal columnist argues that Rousseau is responsible for today’s lost youth. That and not reading classic lit.
Tag Archives: Jean Jacques Rousseau
Is Rousseau Ruining Today’s Youth?
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Classicism, Emile, Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Narnia, Paul and Virginia, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Romanticism, Secret Garden, Triumph of Life, young adult literature Leave a comment
The Dangers of Emotional Identification
In which I push back against an article warning about emotional identification with literary characters.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Age of Sensibility, Anne Radcliffe, Goethe, Hannah Arendt, Homer, Iliad, Jane Austen, Namwali Serpell, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Sorrows of Young Werther Comments closed
Lit and Life: My Intellectual Trajectory
I’ve long held that great literature impacts history harder than lesser literature. I trace the evolution of my ideas in today’s post.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Charles Dickens, Denis Diderot, Discourse on Inequality, Feminism, Hans Robert Jauss, Letter on the Blind, Martin Chuzzlewit, Marxism, post-colonialism, queer theory, reception theory Comments closed
Food Is More Than Food for Esquivel
Esquivel captures the greater significance of food in “Like Water for Chocolate.” I also share a whiskey cake recipe and reflect on the magic in magical realism.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged 100 Years of Solitude, cake recipe, Confessions, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Haruki Murakami, Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate, magical realism, Marcel Proust, Midnight's Children, Remembrance of Things Past, Salman Rushdie, whiskey cake, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Comments closed
Comedy & Sentiment, a Potent Mixture
Literature that moves the heart seems opposed to comedy, but sometimes they work together.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Charles Dickens, Clarissa, Comedy, couples comedy, Henry Fielding, Henry MacKenzie, Jane Austen, Man of Feeling, Old Curiosity Shop, Oscar Wilde, romantic comedy age of sensibility, Samuel Richardson, Sense and Sensibility, Thomas Hobbes, Tom Jones Comments closed
Lit’s Role in the Decline of Violence
The empathy fostered by novel reading may have played a role in the decline of violence.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Daniel Defoe, Elaine Scarry, Henry Fielding Tom Jones, Moll Flanders, Pamela, Samuel Richardson, Steven Pinker, violence Comments closed
The Classics, Better than Business Guides
The Republic, The Art of War, The Social Contract, The Prince, and the Tao Te Ching gave me a way of understanding the broader implications of the business choices I was making. They helped me look beyond the immediate challenges to find a greater purpose. My individual efforts seemed part of a legacy of thinkers and doers who had come before.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Art of War, Business, Darien Bates, Education, Liberal Arts, Machiavelli, Plato, Prince, Republic, Social Contract, Sun Tzu, Tao Te Ching Comments closed
