Tag Archives: Madame Bovary

History’s Arc Bends Towards Kafka

By Robin Bates | Published: July 13, 2023

The late Kundera has fascinating insights into how the novel has intersected with history.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Art of the Novel, authoritarianism, Castle, Don Quixote, Franz Kafka, Gustave Flaubert, Honoré de Balzac, Jane Austen, Miguel de Cervantes, Milan Kundera, sexuality, Slowness, Trial | Comments closed

Austen on the Simple Country Life

By Robin Bates | Published: May 22, 2022

In the strawberry picking scene in “Emma,” Austen wields her satiric pen to take apart social climber Mrs. Elton.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged class anxiety, Emma, Gustave Flaubert, indirect style, Jane Austen | Comments closed

The Classics as Teen Survival Guides

By Robin Bates | Published: September 21, 2021

Vietnamese immigrant Phuc Tran uses various classics to survive American adolescence.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged adolescence, assimilation, Franz Kafka, George Bernard Shaw, great books, Gustave Flaubert, Homer, Iliad, immigrants, Metamorphosis, Pygmalion | Comments closed

Great Literature Shifts Expectations

By Robin Bates | Published: July 11, 2021

In which I sum up Reader Reader Response theory as formulated by Hans Robert Jauss, who believes that great lit expands horizon of expectations.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Gustave Flaubert, Hans Robert Jauss, Reader Response Theory | Comments closed

Flaubert Would Have Had Trump’s Number

By Robin Bates | Published: May 19, 2021

“Madame Bovary” gives us insight into why Trump botched the Covid response.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged COVID-19, Donald Trump, Gustave Flaubert | Comments closed

Why I Think the Way I Think

By Robin Bates | Published: March 23, 2021

I survey my intellectual history, especially the evolution of my thinking about literature’s impact on human behavior.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Antonio Gramsci, Beowulf, Carl Jung, Carleton College, Hans Robert Jauss, Harper Lee, Huckleberry Finn, intellectual history, J. Paul Hunter, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jerome Beaty, Karl Marx, Literary Theory, Mark Twain, New Criticism, Norman Holland, Percy Bysshe Shelley, racism, Reader Response Theory, reception theory, Sigmund Freud, Terry Eagleton, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tobias Smollett | Comments closed

What Lit Is Good For–A Debate

By Robin Bates | Published: August 16, 2018

Thursday Tim Parks has written a provocative essay for The New York Review of Books, asking, Is literature wise? In the sense, does it help us to live? And if not, what exactly is it good for? If you follow this blog, you already know my answers: –Yes, literature is wiser than we are (and […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Charles Dickens, Herbert Marcuse, King Lear, Little Dorrit, Tempest, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Great Lit Changes Expectations Horizons

By Robin Bates | Published: September 1, 2017

Hans Robert Jauss’s believes that great literature changes horizons of expectation whereas lesser lit simply confirms them. If “Madame Bovary” was brought to trial, Jauss says, it is because it charted a new course in literary history that people didn’t understand.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged censorship, Gustave Flaubert, Hans Robert Jauss, reception theory | Comments closed

Fed’s Little Cat Feet, Rafa’s Bullish Force

By Robin Bates | Published: June 29, 2013

The Federer and Nadal era may be over. Here they are described in Flaubert, James Patterson, and Carl Sandburg terms.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Fog", Carl Sandburg, Gustave Flaubert, James Patterson, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Sports, tennis | Comments closed