Tag Archives: Shakespeare

On Election Night 2024, The Tempest

By Robin Bates | Published: January 1, 2025

On Election Night 2024, I turned to a subplot in Shakespeare’s “Tempest” to understand what was going on.

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Caliban Defeats Prospero

By Robin Bates | Published: November 6, 2024

It’s Prospero vs. Caliban in America, with Caliban having a very good chance of triumphing.

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Soliloquies Changed Us Fundamentally

By Robin Bates | Published: December 10, 2023

Hamlet’s soliloquies changed the way we see ourselves and others and led the way to the novel.

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Black Lives Matter Changes the Canon

By Robin Bates | Published: July 1, 2020

Black Lives Matter is getting some professors to rethink works they had previously defended

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KC Royals Storm into World Series

By Robin Bates | Published: October 18, 2014

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.

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Debating Whether Lit Is Useless

By Robin Bates | Published: December 5, 2013

I take issue with a “New Yorker” blog on whether or not literature can be considered “useful.”

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Lincoln’s Reliance on Literature

By Robin Bates | Published: November 23, 2012

Spielberg’s “Lincoln” captures the president’s extensive reliance on literature.

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Sons Must Kill Their Fathers, Alas

By Robin Bates | Published: January 18, 2012

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.

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Is Father-Son Conflict Inevitable?

By Robin Bates | Published: July 22, 2009

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 […]

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