Tag Archives: Carl Jung

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, Carleton College, Hans Robert Jauss, Harper Lee, Huckleberry Finn, intellectual history, J. Paul Hunter, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jerome Beaty, Karl Marx, Literary Theory, Madame Bovary, 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

Overcoming the Siren Call of Domination

By Robin Bates | Published: February 9, 2020

A reader suggests that the island enchantresses in “Odyssey” help the hero in his quest for integration.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged emasculation fears, Homer, individuation, Joseph Campbell, Odyssey, Sigmund Freud | Comments closed

Fantasy and the Problem of Violence

By Robin Bates | Published: June 5, 2019

Thursday Today I will be delivering the following talk as part of Sewanee’s Lifelong Learning series, delivered in a venue that used to be my high school and where I spoke 50 years ago. It may sound strange to some of you that a literary scholar such as myself would talk about fantasy. Aren’t we […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Beowulf, Beowulf poet, fantasy, J. R. R. Tolkien, Joseph Campbell, Lord of the Rings, Sigmund Freud, violence | Comments closed

The Journey of the Reader Hero

By Robin Bates | Published: April 27, 2015

Reading literature can be compared to Joseph Campbell’s “Journey of the Hero.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Hero with a Thousand Faces, hero's journey, individuation, Joseph Campbell | Comments closed

“Harry, I Am Your Father” – Voldemort

By Robin Bates | Published: April 16, 2012

Voldemort can be interpreted as the father in Harry Potter’s primal scene.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Brothers Karamazov, fathers, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling, Joseph Campbell, Maturation, Oedipus complex, Sigmund Freud | Comments closed

At 60, a Comfortable Old Scarecrow

By Robin Bates | Published: June 22, 2011

Having just turned 60, I’ve been thinking of Teiresias. Wise though the blind seer may be, his advice doesn’t help others that much. Aging, in other words, appears to require humility.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Aging, Bacchae, Euripides, Homer, Odyssey, Oedipus, Sophocles, T. S. Eliot, Wasteland | Comments closed

What Fictional Fantasy Means

By Robin Bates | Published: January 6, 2011

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 Uncategorized | Also tagged "Kubla Khan", "La Belle Dame sans Merci", "Lady of Shallot", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Alice in Wonderland Alice through the Looking Glass, 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 | Comments closed