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 […]
Tag Archives: Sophocles
Through Lit, We Learn Compassion
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Prelude", Aeschylus, compassion, Eumenides, Euripides, Heracles, Homer, Iliad, Oedipus at Colonus, Oresteia, Tintern Abbey, William Wordsworth Comments closed
France vs. the Little Engine That Could
Which World Cup story do we root for? The little engine that could or redemption after humiliation?
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Casey's Revenge, Croatia, France, Grantland Rice, Little Engine that Could, Oedipus at Colonus, Watty Piper, World Cup Comments closed
Act in All Things as Love Will Prompt
My lectures on Flannery O’Connor, James Baldwin, Shakespeare and Sophocles all seem to track back to Lent these days.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Flannery O'Connor, Good Man Is Hard to Find, James Baldwin, King Lear, Lent, Oedipus at Colonus, Sonny's Blues, Suffering, William Shakespeare Comments closed
My Dinner with Mladen
An account of a dinner with an old Slovenian friend and intellectual.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged intellectual conversations, Ion, King Lear, Mladen Dolar, Oedipus at Colonus, Pierre de Marivaux, Plato, Republic, Samuel Beckett, Wayne Booth, William Shakespeare, Worstward Ho Comments closed
Anger in Ancient Greek Works
A new book looks at how the ancient Greeks approached the issue of anger in works such as “Iliad,” “Ajax,” and “Hecuba.
My Cataract Surgery Recalls Oedipus, Lear
Recent cataract surgery had me recalling all those literary passages where sharp objects get poked into people’s eyes. The real drama, however, was renegotiating my professional identity.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged cataract surgery, eyes, King Lear, Medicine, Oedipus, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Lit Opens Minds to Suffering of the Other
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that literature is essential for creating good citizens in a diverse society, turning to Sophocles’s “Philoctetes” and Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” to make her point.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Invisible Man, Marcus Aurelius, Martha Nussbaum, Philoctetes, racial justice, racism, Ralph Ellison Comments closed
