It’s Prospero vs. Caliban in America, with Caliban having a very good chance of triumphing.
Tag Archives: Shakespeare
Caliban Defeats Prospero
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Donald Trump, Election 2024, Kamala Harris, Tempest Comments closed
Soliloquies Changed Us Fundamentally
Hamlet’s soliloquies changed the way we see ourselves and others and led the way to the novel.
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, Robinson Crusoe, soliloquies, Sorrows of Young Werther, To Kill a Mockingbird, transcendentalism, Wonderworks Comments closed
Black Lives Matter Changes the Canon
Black Lives Matter is getting some professors to rethink works they had previously defended
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Dante, Harold Bloom, Heart of Darkness, Homer, Joseph Conrad, literary canon, Virgil Comments closed
KC Royals Storm into World Series
The way the Kansas City Royals upended conventional wisdom in making it to the World Series is not unlike the chaos caused by Ariel in “The Tempest” to restore another royal to power.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Baseball, Kansas City Royals, Sports, Tempest, world series Comments closed
Debating Whether Lit Is Useless
I take issue with a “New Yorker” blog on whether or not literature can be considered “useful.”
Lincoln’s Reliance on Literature
Spielberg’s “Lincoln” captures the president’s extensive reliance on literature.
Sons Must Kill Their Fathers, Alas
There’s is no easy way for son’s to find their identities apart from their fathers, but they have no choice but to try.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Denis Diderot, fathers and sons, Henry IV, Homer, Odyssey, Stendahl, The Scarlet and the Black Comments closed
Is Father-Son Conflict Inevitable?
I had an interesting conversation with my two sons yesterday as we drove them and my daughter-in-law to the Portland airport, marking the beginning of the end of our summer vacation. The conversation began with me wondering why there weren’t works of literature that accurately capture the kind of father-son relationship that I feel that […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Defoe, David Copperfield, fathers and sons, Great Expectations, Hamlet, Henry IV, Homer, Human Stain, Lawrence Sterne, Nicholas Nickleby, Odyssey, Oedipus, Oliver Twist, Philip Roth, Road, Robinson Crusoe, Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison, Tristram Shandy Comments closed
Biology and Poetry Love Gender Diversity
After a week of discussing how literature can help us handle anger and violence, I return to Twelfth Night and the slippery issue of gender identity. This too is grabbing national headlines these days (what a time we find ourselves in!) as Americans battle over same sex marriage, “don’t ask don’t tell,” and other concerns […]
