Tag Archives: Marxism

Lit and Life: My Intellectual Trajectory

By Robin Bates | Published: December 12, 2019

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, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Letter on the Blind, Martin Chuzzlewit, post-colonialism, queer theory, reception theory | Comments closed

Conrad and White Male Panic

By Robin Bates | Published: March 18, 2019

Tuesday This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post about how Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness provides special insight into white terrorism. At one point I mentioned Conrad’s own racism and sexism, which leads to an interesting literary question: can we consider a work a literary masterpiece if it has one-dimensional depictions of women and Africans? […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Colonialism, Feminism, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, white terrorism | Comments closed

Does Lit Crit Make Lit Less Fun?

By Robin Bates | Published: December 14, 2018

Friday My Ljubljana colleague Jason Blake alerted me to a Chronicle of Higher Education article that wrestles with the question of whether studying literature should be fun. It’s a fairly confused piece, with Baruch College’s Timothy Aubry conflating a number of issues better treated separately. Nevertheless, it’s worth a response because Aubry addresses questions that non-academics […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Feminism, formalism, ideology, John Keats, New Criticism | Comments closed