Tag Archives: Sophocles

The Sexual Politics of Circe-Odysseus

Miller’s novel “Circe” engages with a long tradition of Circe and Odysseus depictions, including those of Homer, Virgil, Euripides, Sophocles, Dante, Tennyson, and Atwood.

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Seamus Heaney’s Healing Vision

Seamus Heaney’s “Cure at Troy” points toward a country’s possibility for healing, a powerful vision as America emerges from the Trump presidency and a contentious election.

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Hope for a Great Sea-Change

The Seamus Heaney poem that Biden quotes in a new ad is itself taken from Heaney’s verse translation of Sophocles’s “Philoctetes.” It’s perfect for the current moment.

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Trump & Covid: Tragedy or Farce?

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

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A Literary Survey of What Plagues Mean

A survey of how literary authors have grappled for meaning in times of pestilence bolsters our own search. I look at Sophocles, Virgil, Defoe, Porter, Camus, King, Mandel, Atwood, and Erdrich.

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What To Make of a Hero That Lies

A student wants to know what to make of Homer’s apparent approval of Odysseus’s lying. The question doesn’t admit of an easy answer.

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Why Trump Is Not a Tragic Hero

Wednesday The strangest development in the Trump Ukraine scandal may be the way that Trump himself has given us the smoking gun—which is to say, the rough transcript of a phone call where he tries to shake down the Ukrainian president for dirt on the 2020 political opponent he most fears. Jon Meacham attributes Trump’s […]

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Cataract Surgery: See Better, Lear

Thursday I am undergoing a second cataract surgery today and so am reposting the essay I wrote following my first (successful) surgery. I don’t expect to re-experience the same mixed feelings that I described two years ago, but dramas that feature sharp objects poked into people’s eyes still seem relevant. This essay is not for […]

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Through Lit, We Learn Compassion

Tuesday My brother Sam, an enthusiastic Unitarian Universalist, gave me Karen Armstrong’s Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life for Christmas, and I was pleased that the author sees literature playing a major role. In today’s post I share how she draws on the ancient Greeks. Armstrong writes, “All faiths insist that compassion is the test […]

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