Tag Archives: Egypt

Hope and Disillusion in Egypt

Wordsworth’s “Prelude” captures both the hopes and disillusion that many have felt about the Egyptian revolution.

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Egypt’s Coup Is Like Moliere’s “Tartuffe”

The sudden turnabout in Egypt is like the ending of Moliere’s “Tartuffe”–for good and for ill.

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Calling on Beowulf in the Middle East

Middle Eastern leaders could learn from Beowulf–and so could Mitt Romney–as they deal with anti-American riots.

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Egypt’s Glorious Phantom Bursts Through

I’ve been looking for literature that can speak to the earth-shaking events going on in Egypt. Poetry seems almost unable to do justice to the joy that people are feeling as they revel in a vision of liberty. Maybe this sonnet by Percy Shelley gets at their breakthrough. On August 16, 1819, a large but […]

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Poetry Unleashed in the Streets of Cairo

The Daily Beast website has an article about poetry that is being chanted in the streets of Tunisia and Egypt. (Thanks to the Daily Dish for alerting me to it.) It shows once again that language well used has the power to move mountains—or at any rate, to give historical players a firm place upon […]

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Egypt’s Mubarak, Colossal Wreck

As Egypt, following the lead of Tunisia (see my post here), teeters on the verge of revolution, everyone seems to be looking to different historical pasts to predict the future. My former Carleton classmate Kai Bird fears that Barack Obama will repeat the mistakes that Jimmy Carter made with the Shaw of Iran but adds […]

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