Revealing his prejudices, Aristotle tries to limit those whose suffering can be labeled tragic.
Tag Archives: Mark Twain
Hell Is Empty and All the Devils Are Here
“Sandy” conjures up for me a traumatic childhood reading experience along with a passage from “The Tempest.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Hurricane Sandy, Nature, Tempest, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Summertime and the Living Is Easy
An afternoon spent in a friend’s boat brought to mind Huck and Jim watching the Mississippi River.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Huckleberry Finn, Mississippi River, Nature, summer Comments closed
The Myth of Slaves as Faithful Companions
A visiting lecture on “Slaves as Loyal Confederates” reminded me of the complex relationships between black and white as they are explored by Twain and Stowe.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Harrieet Beecher Stowe, Huckleberry Finn, racism, slavery, Uncle Tom's Cabin Comments closed
Schools Cowed by the Religious Right
Holly Blumner had a vision. A member of the St. Mary’s theater department, Holly wanted to stage Susan Zeder’s Mother Hicks, a adolescent girl’s identity quest, and then take it into area schools. This post is the story about how rightwing groups have so terrified our schools that the vision died.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged adolescence, censorship, Huck Finn, Mother Hicks, Song of Solomon, Susan Zeder, Toni Morrison Comments closed
Why Does Everyone Hate Duke?
Sports Saturday Once again, one of the most hated teams in the country resides atop the NCAA basketball rankings: Duke University. In today’s post I find literary equivalents for the general animus against the Blue Devils. For the life of me I can’t understand why Duke is so disliked. Granted, I myself dislike Duke, but […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Basketball, Booth Tarkington, Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, Oliver Goldsmith, Penrod, Sports, Tom Sawyer Comments closed
Twain and Libya’s Bloody Endgame
The slaughter continues on in Libya, with the number of dead now in the thousands as Qaddafi turns his mercenaries, machine guns and tanks on his own people. While other parts of the country are in the arms of the resistance, he is holed up in Tripoli. It appears that he will indeed fight to […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Libya, Middle East, politics, violence Comments closed
