Fanny Burney
I have been having a wonderful time teaching Fanny Burney’s 1778 novel Evelina, written when she was 26. The novel was an instant success when it first appeared and it still resonates.
This in spite of the fact that it is written in letters and reflects a society far more formal than our own. Yet [...]
Norman Rockwell, “Freedom from Want”
The gathering of the Miksches for Thanksgiving yesterday was a joyous affair. Given that I attended it with trepidation, I should learn to stop worrying. I was concerned about contentious debate, but the only political conversation I had was with my wife’s nephew, and that proved to be a substantive economic talk.
This time, [...]
I write today’s post from Washington, Iowa where my wife and I are visiting her extended family. Julia (maiden name Miksch) was raised on a farm in Grace Hill, a small Moravian community outside of Washington, and her three siblings have all remained in the state. Our two sons are flying in, Darien and his [...]
Terence Winch
As we move into the flu season, here’s a fun poem that can speak to our anxieties about the H1N1 virus. It imagines a whole host of literary stalwarts involved in the illness. The poem is by the Irish American poet Terence Winch. Thanks to my father Scott Bates, himself a wonderful writer of [...]
Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle
I continue here my discussion of three works that just happened to come together during one evening last week: John Updike’s novel Terrorist, Martin Scorcese’s film Taxi Driver, and George Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man. My question is whether Shaw’s humanism is a sufficient answer to the undercurrent of [...]
Last Thursday night I had an overbooked schedule. I was moderating a book club at the local public library on John Updike’s 2006 novel Terrorist (at 7 p.m.). I was in charge of a talkback following a college production of George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man (at 8 p.m.). And I was screening Martin Scorcese’s [...]
Last night I gave a short lecture and then moderated a talkback following a college production of George Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man (1894), directed by my colleague Michael Ellis-Tolaydo. I hadn’t read the play since I was in high school, when I went on a Shaw kick. (I first became enamored [...]
William Wycherley
As I’ve been writing recently about Restoration and 18th Century couples comedies, allow me one last post on a brilliant but cold play, William Wycherley’s Country Wife (1675). I gained new insight into it when my student Stephanie Gonzalez noted that the jealousy theme in the play is one that she is very familiar [...]
Richard Sheridan
School for Scandal, which I’m currently teaching, was reportedly George Washington’s favorite play. It remains relevant today. For one thing, it gets at problems with our “image is everything” society.
Here’s the plot. Joseph passes himself off as a “man of sentiment” but in actuality is a cunning villain. He has his eyes on the [...]
Yesterday I talked about Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer (1773) and male shyness. Today I discuss another Neo-Restoration comedy, Hannah Cowley’s The Belle’s Stratagem (1780), and how it addresses an equally thorny relationship problem: low self-esteem.
In the play Letetia and Doricourt are to marry, even though they haven’t seen each other since they were [...]
