Literary allusions are flying fast and free in this primary season.
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Tag Archives: Lewis Carroll
Campaign 2012: Assorted Lit Allusions
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Alice in Wonderland, Herman Melville, John Bunyan, Moby Dick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Pilgrim's Progress, Presidential campaign, Scarlet Letter, William Blake Comments closed
The Presidential Candidates in Wonderland
Should we dismiss all the rhetoric coming from the Republican presidential candidates as the gryphon in “Alice in Wonderland” dismisses the “off with their heads” commands of the Queen of Hearts?
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Golf Links", "Hollow Men", Alice in Wonderland, Cleghorn (Sarah), politics, Republicans, Sarah Cleghorn, T. S. Eliot Comments closed
Reading for Fun, the Best Education
In “Northanger Abbey,” Jane Austen advocates the ideal way to raise one’s kids: encourage them to read good literature and they will learn the life lessons that they need.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady", Alexander Pope, Alice in Wonderland, James Thompson, Jane Austen, Measure for Measure, Northanger Abbey, Othello, Reading to children, Seasons, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Rightwing Rewrites Reality
Today’s Republican right are practitioners of the Humpty Dumpty approach to communication: “I said it very loud and clear. I went and shouted in his ear.” Like Lewis Carroll’s Humpty, they also believe that they can make reality, as Humpty makes words, mean whatever they want it to mean.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Alice through the Looking Glass, politics, Rasselas, Republican Party, Samuel Johnson, Tea Party Comments closed
Tweedledum, Tweedledee, and Medi(s)care
I, however, find all the posturing over Medicare depressing. When the Democrats respond with their own scare tactics, they just become Tweedledee to the Republicans’ Tweedledum.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Tweedledum and Tweedledee", "Walrus and the Carpenter", Alice through the Looking Glass, Medicare, politics Comments closed
Believing 6 Impossibilities before Breakfast
Slate Magazine recently had a Jacob Weisberg column that invoked Alice through the Looking Glass in talking about the current Republican Party. Lewis Carroll’s Alice books seem indeed to be works for our times.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Alice in Wonderland, Alice through the Looking Glass, politics Comments closed
It’s Been a Mad Tea Party
Tuesday’s election gave us a chance to assess the effectiveness of the American Tea Party movement, which has fascinated not only the American media but people around the globe. For liberals like me, at times Tea Partiers have seemed to resemble less the American colonialists dumping tea into the Boston Harbor and more Lewis Carroll’s […]
Subversive Nonsense Poetry
Mother Goose I was highly critical of Stanley Fish last week for attacking those who are “instrumental” about the humanities. My claim that the classics can change your life attributes an instrumental dimension to literature. But when I look at how certain parents have tried to foist preachy moralistic tales on their children, I find […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "How Doth the Busy Crocodile", "You Are Old Father William", Childhood, Morality, Mother Goose Comments closed