Tag Archives: Rudyard Kipling

Respect Soldiers, Keep Them Safe

By Robin Bates | Published: November 12, 2012

In a number of his poems, Kipling honors the common soldier by giving us his perspective.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Tommy", Soldiers, war | Comments closed

Elated? Depressed? This Lit’s for You

By Robin Bates | Published: November 7, 2012

Lit to caution election night winners and bolster election night losers.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Mother to Son", "War Song of Dinas Vawr", Barack Obama, Election 2012, Everything that Rises Must Converge, Flannery O'Connor, Flies, If, Jean Paul Sartre, Langston Hughes, Martin Dressler, Mitt Romney, politics, Steven Milhauser, Thomas Love Peacock | Comments closed

Calling on Beowulf in the Middle East

By Robin Bates | Published: September 15, 2012

Middle Eastern leaders could learn from Beowulf–and so could Mitt Romney–as they deal with anti-American riots.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Beowulf, Egypt, Libya, Muslim riots | Comments closed

Don’t Underestimate Midsummer Madness

By Robin Bates | Published: June 20, 2012

The summer solstice and Shakespeare’s famous play appear sentimental to us today. They were not always so.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged A. S. Byatt, Children's Book, fairies, Geoffrey Chaucer, Midsummer Night's Dream, Puck, Puck of Pook's Hill, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, summer solstice, Wife of Bath, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Once We Memorized Poetry

By Robin Bates | Published: February 14, 2012

Memorizing poetry used to be standard classroom practice and poetry was widely popular before the snobs came in.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", "Ozymandias", "Trees", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Cleanth Brooks, Gunga Din, Joyce Kilmer, Memorizing poetry, Percy Shelley, Robert Penn Warren, Ulysses, William Wordsworth | Comments closed

Peyton Manning as Moby Dick?!

By Robin Bates | Published: January 7, 2011

Sports Saturday In anticipation of football’s “Wild Card Weekend,” which begins today, I see that a sports writer has invoked Herman Melville’s masterpiece. Dan Graziano believes that Indianapolis Colt quarterback Peyton Manning has become Rex Ryan’s Moby Dick. He has beaten the New York Jets coach so many times that Ryan has become obsessed with […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Fuzzy-Wuzzy", Alfred Lord Tennyson, East of Eden, Football, Herman Melville, John Steinbeck, Jungle Books, Moby Dick, Sports, Ulysses | Comments closed

What Fictional Fantasy Means

By Robin Bates | Published: January 6, 2011

Having taught British Fantasy Literature for the first time last semester, I need to think back on it before it becomes a distant memory. By reflecting publicly, I can share some of the insights I gained from the course. Two major things I learned are that (1) fantasy is an oppositional genre—by which I […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Kubla Khan", "La Belle Dame sans Merci", "Lady of Shallot", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Alice in Wonderland Alice through the Looking Glass, Carl Jung, Charles Dickens, Christina Rossetti, fantasy, Geoffrey Chaucer, Goblin Market, Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, Hard Times, Hero with a Thousand Faces, Idylls of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Barrie, John Keats, Joseph Campbell, Jungle Books, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carol, Man and His Symbols, Midsummer Night's Dream, Rider Haggard, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, She, teaching, The Lord of the Rings, The Wind in the Willows, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

The Tea Partiers Who Would Be Senators

By Robin Bates | Published: July 12, 2010

I was rereading Rudyard Kipling’s entertaining story The Man Who Would Be King the other day, and it got me thinking about some of the Tea Party candidates for Senate, like Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky. Allow me to explain. Kipling’s 1888 work is about two enterprising good-for-nothings, Dravot and Carnehan, […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Man Who Would Be King, politics, Tea Party | Comments closed

Environmental Revenge Fantasy

By Robin Bates | Published: March 5, 2010

Film Friday Henceforth I will devote my Friday posts to something I like almost as much as literature–which is to say, movies. Film is, after all, a narrative art form, and I teach film history and theory as well as literature at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Although I may, at times, look at intersections between […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Avatar, Environmentalism, James Cameron, James Fenimore Cooper, Jungle Books, Last of the Mohicans, Nature | Comments closed