I survey my intellectual history, especially the evolution of my thinking about literature’s impact on human behavior.
Tag Archives: Tobias Smollett
Why I Think the Way I Think
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Antonio Gramsci, Beowulf, Carl Jung, Carleton College, Hans Robert Jauss, Harper Lee, Huckleberry Finn, intellectual history, J. Paul Hunter, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jerome Beaty, Karl Marx, Literary Theory, Madame Bovary, Mark Twain, New Criticism, Norman Holland, Percy Bysshe Shelley, racism, Reader Response Theory, reception theory, Sigmund Freud, Terry Eagleton, To Kill a Mockingbird Comments closed
Smollett: Country Water over City Water
My mother is finding a necessary switch from lake water to city water psychologically difficult. Smollett’s “Humphry Clinker” helps me understand why.
How Smollett Would React to Flint Water
Matthew Bramble in Tobias Smollett’s “Humphry Clinker” unloads about the supposedly medicinal water of Bath. Just think how he would react to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Flint, Flint water crisis, Humphry Clinker, water contamination Comments closed
Falling Out of Love with Tom Jones
I have fallen out of love with “Tom Jones.” One reason may be because of the author’s sense of entitlement.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged class entitlement, class resentment, Henry Fielding, Peregrine Pickle, Roderick Random, Tom Jones Comments closed
Into the Depths with Smollett (Don’t Ask)
My upcoming colonoscopy has me thinking about Tobias Smollett’s “Humphry Clinker.”
Everyone Has a Place at the Table
Tobias Smollett’s depiction in “Humphry Clinker” of different perspectives on social change is relevant today.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Election 2012, Humphry Clinker, multicultural electorate Comments closed
Random Reading: Intoxicant, Tranquilizer
A. S. Byatt describes narrative as “one of the best intoxicants or tranquilizers.”
On Literary Names and Destinies
Reynold, “Portrait of Sterne” Just as I was born into a literary name, so were Darien and Toby. Before telling the story, I will follow up on the allusion in my last post to Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged fathers and sons, John Keats, Laurence Sterne, names, Tristram Shandy, Upon First Looking into Chapman's Homer Comments closed
