Tag Archives: Masque of the Red Death

Trump & Covid: Tragedy or Farce?

By Robin Bates | Published: October 4, 2020

Was the Rose Garden event for Trump’s new SCOTUS pick–which became a Covid superspreader event–a Shakespearean tragedy? How about a farce?

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged COVID-19, Donald Trump, Game of Thrones, George Martin, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Richard III, Sophocles, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Not Poe’s Red Death but Still Dangerous

By Robin Bates | Published: March 16, 2020

Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death” captures the belief that we can wall out epidemics and then dance the night away.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged coronavirus, COVID-19, Edgar Allan Poe, emergency measures | Comments closed

Poe: Trapped in the Prison of the Self

By Robin Bates | Published: December 1, 2016

Two Chinese students have brought home to me, from their collectivist perspective, how Edgar Allan Poe went against the grain of American individualism. He exposed its dark side, even as Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman were unabashedly celebrated it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Cask of Amontillado, death and dying, Edgar Allan Poe, Fall of the House of Usher, marcissism, Sigmund Freud, uncanny | Comments closed

Responding to Intruder Death

By Robin Bates | Published: October 13, 2010

As we do every week, Julia and I visited our friends Alan and Jackie this past Sunday evening, Julia to administer Reiki massage and I to talk. Alan was tired from his chemotherapy treatments and in pain from a cracked rib (he doesn’t know how that happened). Nevertheless we talked about literature, including Sir Gawain […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged cancer, death and dying, Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight | Comments closed