Punch and Judy
Let’s declare another comedy Friday and celebrate again the wit of Henry Fielding. My first passage is a continuation of the mock epic encomium (expression of praise) to the book’s heroine that I posted yesterday:
Reader, perhaps thou hast seen the statue of the Venus de Medicis. Perhaps, too, thou hast seen the gallery of beauties [...]
The Princess Bride, True Love Triumphant
In my Tom Jones class earlier this week, one of my students (Erin Hendrix) noted that one of the passages made her think of a scene in the movie The Princess Bride. This led to a discussion of how both works employ irony to help us hold on to our [...]
Rumi
Rumi seems to be everywhere these days and has been for a while. This past weekend I was at the wedding of Micah Vote, the son of a family friend, and a Rumi poem served as the foundation of the ceremony. Here it is:
May these vows and this marriage be blessed.
May it be sweet milk,
this [...]
Daniel Defoe pilloried
Poetry comes to our aid in all kinds of situations. Including when we’ve been condemned to the pillory.
That, at any rate, is one of the ways poetry was used by Daniel Defoe, subject of yesterday’s post.
Here’s what happened. Defoe was a Dissenter (or Puritan), which is to say, a fundamentalist Protestant at odds [...]
Daniel Defoe
My daughter-in-law sent me a wonderful poem by Daniel Defoe, “A True Born Englishman,” posted by Andrew Sullivan in response to a Patrick Buchanan editorial. Buchanan’s column was one of those hateful “they’re taking our country away from us” pieces, and Sullivan rightly asks who this “us” is.
As Sullivan’s translates it, Buchanan is panicked now [...]
William Hogarth, “Morning.”
I’ve just written a series of serious posts about literature and virtue, but since it’s Friday, let me go out of the week on a light note. Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones is not admired the way it once was, but one would be hard pressed to find any novel that is funnier. I [...]
William Hogarth, “The Harlot’s Progress,” plate 4.
Continuing our discussion of whether literature can teach virtue, I present as an interesting case study Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, which I am currently teaching in my 18th Century Couples Comedy class. I’ve mentioned in a past post that moralist Samuel Johnson attacked Tom Jones for corrupting young people. Furthermore, the Bishop of London accused it [...]
Hansel and Gretel
In honor of the film release of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, I’ve been writing about children’s literature, when it’s truly moral and when it’s merely pious. It’s bad enough that the Victorians required their children to recite Issac Watt poems or that Christian fundamentalists rail against In the Night [...]
Mother Goose
I was highly critical of Stanley Fish last week for attacking those who are “instrumental” about the humanities. My claim that the classics can change your life attributes an instrumental dimension to literature. But when I look at how certain parents have tried to foist preachy moralistic tales on their children, I find [...]
Illustration from Where the Wild Things Are
I see that Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (1963) has been turned into a film, which has led Slate columnist Jack Shafer to revisit a controversy about the book. Apparently Sendak still can’t let go of a critique by psychologist Bruno Bettelheim.
I was surprised to learn that [...]
