Search Results for: tennyson may queen

Chaucer’s Squire Meets Tennyson’s May Queen

By Robin Bates | Published: May 6, 2015

Love is in the May air. As I look at the College students hand in hand, I think of the men as Chaucerian squires, the women as Tennysonian May queens.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "May Queen", "May", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, maypole dances | Comments closed

Homer, Virgil, Dante and the Afterlife

By Robin Bates | Published: November 1, 2023

Literary afterlives, such as we encounter in Homer, Virgil, and Dante, are as much about this world as the next.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Aeneid, Afterlife, Dante, death, Divine Comedy, Homer, Inferno, inner doubts, midlife crisis, Odyssey, Paradiso, Samuel Johnson, Virgil | Comments closed

Let Love Clasp Grief Lest Both Be Drown’d

By Robin Bates | Published: January 2, 2022

When death strikes, poetry is there to sustain us.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alfred Lord Tennyson, death and dying, grieving, In Memoriam, Jeanette Winterson, Lost Children, Mary Oliver | Comments closed

Looking Back at a Year of Covid

By Robin Bates | Published: February 23, 2021

Wednesday Last July I collected all the essays I had written on Covid into a single post, with the first appearing almost exactly a year ago. This week, as we mark the once-inconceivable 500,000th official Covid death, I update that list. It has all been too tragic for words, but words are what we have. […]

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Looking Back at Past Covid Posts

By Robin Bates | Published: July 5, 2020

I look back at previous post on Covid-19. There are a lot of them.

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Fantasy Frees Us from Narrow Thinking

By Robin Bates | Published: March 14, 2019

Friday I share today a new insight that I gained from my recent Lifelong Learning class about “Wizards and Enchantresses.” To set it up, I first share my theory of fantasy. As I see it, fantasy is always oppositional in its invocation of magic and the supernatural. If it flourished in the wake of the […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Enlightenment, fantasy, Fundamentalism, Geoffrey Chaucer, scientism, Wife of Bath | Comments closed

Guinevere over the Centuries

By Robin Bates | Published: November 1, 2017

In her senior project, my student is applying feminist political theory to understand why depictions of Guinevere evolved as they did, from Chrétien de Troyes to Tennyson to modern Arthurian novels.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alice Borchadt, Arthurian tradition, Carole Pateman, feminist theory, Guinevere, Gwenhwyfar, Idylls of the King, Judith Butler, Knight of the Cart, Mercedes Lackey, Simone de Beauvoir, Tales of Guinevere, Wendy Brown. Linda Zerilli | Comments closed

Mustering Courage To Become Jane Eyre

By Robin Bates | Published: July 17, 2016

I’m convinced that “Jane Eyre” helped give my great-grandmother the courage to leave her home and launch herself into the world as a governess.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Charlotte Bronte, governesses, Jane Eyre, Lizzy Scott, memoirs, restless women | Comments closed

My Great Grandmother Read for Courage

By Robin Bates | Published: July 14, 2016

Reading over the memoirs of my great grandmother, I have been impressed by how reading literature helped her get through the hard times. The authors included Tennyson, George Eliot, Susan Warner, and Charlotte Yonge.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "May Queen", Alfred Lord Tennyson, ancestors, Charles Kinglsey, Charlotte Yonge, Daisy Chain, family memoirs, George Eliot, Heir of Redcliffe, Mill on the Floss, Oscar Wilde, Susan Warner, Wide Wide World | Comments closed