In “Northanger Abbey,” Jane Austen advocates the ideal way to raise one’s kids: encourage them to read good literature and they will learn the life lessons that they need.
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Tag Archives: Twelfth Night
Reading for Fun, the Best Education
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady", Alexander Pope, Alice in Wonderland, James Thompson, Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Measure for Measure, Northanger Abbey, Othello, Reading to children, Seasons, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Viola, Lost in the Friend Zone
If literature can change our lives, then there should be something in the play that would help get these women out of their friend zones. Imagine Twelfth Night reframed as a “Dear Abby” column dispensing relationship advice to young adults.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Relgionships, She's the Man, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Republicans Need a Shakespearean Fool
William Dyce, “King Lear and the Fool in the Storm” (1851) There’s been a lot of talk about bubbles in recent years. Tiger Woods’ bubble, which cut him off from his fellow human beings, may have led to some of his self-destructive behavior. The Vatican has been living within a bubble for a while, unable […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged King Lear, politics, Republican Party, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Crossing the Great Gender Divide
In last Friday’s post on Twelfth Night, I talked about how Shakespeare uses cross-dressing to acknowledge that men and women have dimensions to them that are not acknowledged by the standard male and female categories. I understood this about the play at an early age. In a past post on Twelfth Night, I describe how […]
The Temporary Transvestite Comedy
Brown and Lemmon Film Friday Sometimes my different classes overlap in interesting ways. I am currently teaching Twelfth Night in my British Literature survey class and Some Like It Hot in my senior-level film genre class. Thanks to an article on the Billy Wilder classic by film scholar Chris Straayer, I can now label both […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Billy Wilder, gender, Some Like It Hot, Transvestism, Trevor Nunn, William Shakespeare Comments closed
The Challenges of Asking Her Out
In a discussion of Twelfth Night last Friday, my British literature survey class discussed the challenges of a first date. The scene that sparked our conversation is the one where Viola, passing as a man, carries Orsino’s love proposal to Olivia. Of course Olivia falls in love with Viola instead. We started talking about Orsino’s decision to […]