Hamlet’s soliloquies changed the way we see ourselves and others and led the way to the novel.
Tag Archives: Robinson Crusoe
Soliloquies Changed Us Fundamentally
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Angus Fletcher, Charlotte Bronte, Hamlet, Harold Bloom, Harper Lee, Huckleberry Finn, humanism, Jane Eyre, Le Cid, Pierre Corneille, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Shakespeare, soliloquies, Sorrows of Young Werther, To Kill a Mockingbird, transcendentalism, Wonderworks Comments closed
Crusoe and the American Work Ethic
A Pakistani student looks at Americans and notes their obsession with time. One can see that same obsession in Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Daniel Defoe, Dickory Cronke, Max Weber, Pakistan, prosperity theology, Protestant work ethic, R. H. Tawney, Time, Work Comments closed
Marx & Engels on the Usefulness of Lit
Marx and Engels see literature as playing a role in class conflict, just not the major role.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Daniel Defoe, Friedrich Engels, Honoré de Balzac, Karl Marx Comments closed
Reading Montaigne While Confined
In “Gentleman in Moscow,” the count turns to “Robinson Crusoe” to figure out how to survive. Reading Montaigne is a mixed bag.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Alexander Dumas, Amor Towles, Count of Monte Cristo, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, Gentleman in Moscow, Michel de Montaigne, Miguel de Cervantes, quarantine Comments closed
Robinson Crusoe Has ALL the Answers
In Wilkie Collins’s “Moonstone,” the wonderfully realized house steward resorts to “Robinson Crusoe” to face all difficulties.
The Origins of Crazy U.S. Work Ethic
New interpretation of “Robinson Crusoe” suggests that maybe Puritans not quite so much to blame for America’s insane work ethic as once thought.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Daniel Defoe, Max Weber, Puritan work ethic, tobacco Comments closed
Trump’s Crusoe Wall Goes Up in Airports
This past weekend so a flurry of illegal and unconstitutional executive orders that created chaos in airports and elsewhere as travelers from certain countries found themselves in detention. Defoe captures versions of such dramas in “Robinson Crusoe.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Daniel Defoe, Donald Trump, executive orders, immigrants, Steve Bannon Comments closed
When Christianity Becomes a Money Cult
A new book, “The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream,” brings to mind Howard Nemerov’s poem “Boom!” The book’s author argues that prosperity theology is not an aberration but was present from the beginning of American Puritanism.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Boom!", Adam Bede, Calvinism, Capitalism, Daniel Defoe, George Eliot, Howard Nemerov, Ian Watt, Max Weber, prosperity theology, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, theology of abundance Comments closed
