Fantasy is nothing in and of itself but takes its character in opposition to an unsatisfactory reality.
Posted in Keats (John), Lewis (C. S.), Shakespeare (William), Tennyson (Alfred Lord), Tolkien (J.R.R.) | Also tagged "Lady of Shalott", "Lotos Eaters", "Passing of Arthur", C. S. Lewis, Eve of St. Agnes, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lord of the Rings, Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare |
The death of a beloved cousin is throwing me into the primal pain described by Tennyson and Auden.
Peyton Manning and Roger Federer, in the twilight of their careers, bring to mind Tennyson’s Ulysses.
In “The Lady of Shalott,” beauty can’t stand up against the real world. By winning the European Cup, Spain showed us this doesn’t always have to be the case.
A discussion of Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses” led a group of senior citizens to conclude that it’s about a man who is experiencing difficulties transitioning into retirement.
Memorizing poetry used to be standard classroom practice and poetry was widely popular before the snobs came in.
Posted in Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), Keats (John), Kilmer (Joyce), Kipling (Rudyard), Riley (James Whitcomb), Shelley (Percy), Tennyson (Alfred Lord), Wordsworth (William) | Also tagged "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", "Ozymandias", "Trees", Cleanth Brooks, Gunga Din, Joyce Kilmer, Memorizing poetry, Percy Shelley, Robert Penn Warren, Rudyard Kipling, Ulysses, William Wordsworth |
I share Tennyson’s wonderful poem “Crossing the Bar” in memory of an old Navy friend who died this past week.
The Sea Voyager, temporary home to St. Mary’s students after we were hit with a bad mold problem, left campus on Sunday, bringing to mind an Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem.
A wedding poem seems appropriate for June. Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s lovely “Marriage Morning” draws me, maybe because it captures some of the anxieties of the wedding day and not just the joys.
I understand more with each passing year what Tennyson means when he says his love “is vaster passion now” and how Hallam is thoroughly mixed with God and nature. Tennyson goes on to say that the moral will of humankind—the “living will” that is the best part of ourselves as a people—can finding footing on this spiritual rock. And that the living water that springs from this rock will “flow through our deeds and make them pure.”
Sports Saturday Something memorable occurred last Sunday in Dallas in addition to the Green Bay Packers bringing “Vince Lombardi home” in their Super Bowl victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers. Quarterback Aaron Rogers stepped out of the shadow of a legend. The literary equivalent that comes to mind is Homer’s Telemachus, but Rogers is Telemachus with [...]
Having taught British Fantasy Literature for the first time last semester, I need to think back on it before it becomes a distant memory. By reflecting publicly, I can share some of the insights I gained from the course. Two major things I learned are that (1) fantasy is an oppositional genre—by which I [...]
Posted in Andersen (Hans Christian), Barrie (J. M.), Carroll (Lewis), Chaucer (Geoffrey), Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), Dickens (Charles), Grahame (Kenneth), Grimm Brothers, Haggard (Rider), Keats (John), Kipling (Rudyard), Rossetti (Christina), Shakespeare (William), Sir Gawain Poet, Tennyson (Alfred Lord), Tolkien (J.R.R.) | Also tagged "Kubla Khan", "La Belle Dame sans Merci", "Lady of Shallot", Alice in Wonderland Alice through the Looking Glass, Carl Jung, Charles Dickens, Christina Rossetti, fantasy, Geoffrey Chaucer, Goblin Market, Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, Hard Times, Hero with a Thousand Faces, Idylls of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Barrie, John Keats, Joseph Campbell, Jungle Books, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carol, Man and His Symbols, Midsummer Night's Dream, Rider Haggard, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Rudyard Kipling, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, She, teaching, The Lord of the Rings, The Wind in the Willows, William Shakespeare |
Edvard Munch, The Sick Child Imagine the following situation. A couple has been married for decades but now he has contracted a terminal illness and is dying. His wife has always prided herself on being there for him when he needed her, but now she feels helpless. Meanwhile he is scared and angry and is [...]
Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon in Invictus Since the World Cup is underway in South Africa, I watched Clint Eastwood’s Invictus last week, about the 1995 World Cup Rugby Tournament held in South Africa. Based on a true story, the film notes that, while in prison, Nelson Mandela, like many black South Africans, would root against [...]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Invictus", Apartheid, Clint Eastwood, Faisal Shahzad, John Milton, Nelson Mandela, Paradise Lost, politics, Sports, Timothy McVeigh, Ulysses, William Ernest Henley |
David Copperfield (1935) “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show,” writes narrator David Copperfield at the beginning of the great Charles Dickens novel. But why the uncertainty? Can’t we just decide to be the hero of [...]
I am writing to you from the home of my parents in Sewanee, Tennessee, where I figure I have spent around 48 of my 58 Christmases. In this I differ from the Tennyson in the third Christmas passage of In Memoriam. For the first time since Hallam’s death, he is not celebrating the season in [...]
Otey Parish, my childhood church Alfred Lord Tennyson’s three Christmas passages in In Memoriam are reminiscent of the way that my own family celebrates Christmas. My ancestry is British and the ceremonies that we observe date at least as far back as my great grandmother Eliza Scott Fulcher, born in the 1850’s. Christmas in [...]
Thinking about my dead son in this Christmas season brings to mind Alfred Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam, the lengthy poem that he wrote over the course of 17 years lamenting the death of his close friend Arthur Henry Hallam. Hallam was a young man when he died unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage, and Tennyson describes [...]
Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus What have I learned about literature and pain this past week? First, that writers have taken up the topic, just as they take up every aspect of human existence. They imagine what it is like to feel pain and, through poetic images and fictional stories, convey that experience to readers. By entering [...]
Posted in Marlowe (Christopher) | Also tagged Christopher Marlowe, death of a child, Death of Ivan Ilych, Doctor Faustus, Heart of Darkness, In Memoriam, John Milton, Joseph Conrad, Leo Tolstoy, Name of the Rose, Pain, Paradise Lost, Rachel Kranz, Suffering, Umberto Eco |
Colleagues of my friend Alan Paskow held another one of our salons Monday night. Alan is a former professor of philosophy at St. Mary’s College, now retired, who currently has cancer in his lungs. We have been meeting once a month or so to show our support and to generally reaffirm how important community is. Monday [...]
In yesterday’s post I began giving an account of a car conversation I had with my two sons regarding stories that explore father-son relationships, as well as my desire for a story in which fathers and sons collaborate to handle the world’s challenges. Darien, my older son, felt that the archetypal conflict as it [...]
“But maybe stories and poetry can help open our minds to possibilities that are very real but extremely hard to see; and in that sense, they can be very practical.” – Rachel Kranz in a response to yesterday’s post I love the two responses to yesterday’s post (from the two major women in my life) [...]
Posted in Behbahani (Simin), Nafisi (Azar), Stowe (Harriet Beecher), Tennyson (Alfred Lord) | Also tagged Azar Nafisi, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herbert Marcuse, Martin Luther King, politics, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Simin Belbahani, Ulysses, Uncle Tom's Cabin |
