Tag Archives: Tom Jones

Laughter in the Presidential Campaign

Trump and Vance’s jokes are designed to beat down, not include. They elicit Hobbesian laughter, not Shaftesburian.

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On Comedy, Seinfeld, and Tom Jones

Seinfeld has complained that wokeness is ruining comedy. Similar complains show up in Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones.”

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Trump as a Sadistic Steinbeck Bully

As bully, Trump resembles Curley in “Of Mice and Men.” Recently Biden, like Lennie, struck back.

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Austen’s Revolutionary Style

Austen may have innovated a way to blend satire with romance as a way to protect us from heartbreak.

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Rom-Coms, Defense against Heartbreak

One way of seeing “Tom Jones” is as “valentine armor,” alternating between romance and light satire. As such, it saves us from broken hearts.

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Dying of a Broken Heart

The husband of a Uvalde shooting victim died of a broken heart. Henry Fielding mentions the sickness in “Tom Jones.”

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A Christian Attack on Toxic Masculinity

In “Sir Charles Grandison,” Richardson attacks toxic masculinity in ways that feel very modern.

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Johnson: Read the Bard, Not Tom Jones

I share the Samuel Johnson chapter from my book-in-progress.

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Will Trump Pay? Literature Is Unsure

Will Trump escape all accountability? Literature weighs in.

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