Tag Archives: Madame Bovary

History’s Arc Bends Towards Kafka

The late Kundera has fascinating insights into how the novel has intersected with history.

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Austen on the Simple Country Life

In the strawberry picking scene in “Emma,” Austen wields her satiric pen to take apart social climber Mrs. Elton.

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The Classics as Teen Survival Guides

Vietnamese immigrant Phuc Tran uses various classics to survive American adolescence.

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Great Literature Shifts Expectations

In which I sum up Reader Reader Response theory as formulated by Hans Robert Jauss, who believes that great lit expands horizon of expectations.

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Flaubert Would Have Had Trump’s Number

“Madame Bovary” gives us insight into why Trump botched the Covid response.

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Why I Think the Way I Think

I survey my intellectual history, especially the evolution of my thinking about literature’s impact on human behavior.

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What Lit Is Good For–A Debate

Thursday Tim Parks has written a provocative essay for The New York Review of Books, asking, Is literature wise? In the sense, does it help us to live? And if not, what exactly is it good for? If you follow this blog, you already know my answers: –Yes, literature is wiser than we are (and […]

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Great Lit Changes Expectations Horizons

Hans Robert Jauss’s believes that great literature changes horizons of expectation whereas lesser lit simply confirms them. If “Madame Bovary” was brought to trial, Jauss says, it is because it charted a new course in literary history that people didn’t understand.

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Fed’s Little Cat Feet, Rafa’s Bullish Force

The Federer and Nadal era may be over. Here they are described in Flaubert, James Patterson, and Carl Sandburg terms.

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