Today being Hilaire Belloc’s birthday, I share one of his darkly comic “Cautionary Tales for Children.”
Tag Archives: Thomas Hobbes
Obey Your Parents or Face the Lion
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "How Doth the Little Crocodile", "How Doth the Little Busy Bee", Alice in Wonderland, Cautionary Verses for Children, Children, Heinrich Hoffman, Hilaire Belloc, Isaac Watt, Leviathan, Lewis Carroll, Struwwelpeter Comments closed
Odysseus’s Authoritarian Power Play
Homer shows the dynamics of authoritarianism at work in an “Iliad” incident where Odysseus disciplines a critic of the Greek mission.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged authoritarianism, Fascism, Homer, Iliad, John Stoehr, Laughter, police violence, white supremacy Comments closed
Why Tyrants Hate Laughter
Tuesday In a recent essay on Arthur Koestler’s theory of comedy, the New York Review of Books’ Liesl Schillinger cites a passage from Koestler’s Darkness at Noon to explain Donald Trump’s attacks on Saturday Night Live. In his fictional account of Stalin’s show trials, Koestler shows that authoritarian personalities lack a sense of humor. Loyal […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift", Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, Jonathan Swift, Leviathan Comments closed
Comedy & Sentiment, a Potent Mixture
Literature that moves the heart seems opposed to comedy, but sometimes they work together.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Charles Dickens, Clarissa, Comedy, couples comedy, Henry Fielding, Henry MacKenzie, Jane Austen, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Man of Feeling, Old Curiosity Shop, Oscar Wilde, romantic comedy age of sensibility, Samuel Richardson, Sense and Sensibility, Tom Jones Comments closed
Why Do We Laugh? Various Theories
Whether you see laughter as benign or hostile may come down to what kind of person you are.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Anthony Ashley Cooper, Comedy, Laughter, Leviathan, Mikhail Bakhtin, Sigmund Freud Comments closed
