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Written by Steve
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14 June 2008 |
A Critical Look at the Coens' "No Country for Old Men"The history of humanity is one of violence and cruelty, of expending enormous intellectual and emotional power toward visiting each upon one another. Man’s inhumanity to man, as it has been called, is seen in numerous episodes of our collective narrative, and if increased technology has escalated the global notification of atrocities like the gassing of ethnic Kurds, the genocide of Rwanda, the ethnic cleansings of Darfur and Kosovo, we dare not assume these things are indicative that we live in a more deadly, dangerous, eviler present than the past of our fathers and grandfathers. In the absence of surplus video archives, extant newspaper reports, or surviving photographic or illustrated representation, it is easy to forget the sweeping, comprehensive evils of our history (the effective extermination of indigenous New World peoples by colonizers, the sanctioned fury of Manifest Destiny, the witch trials of New England and the sweeping scope of the American slave trade are examples from this country alone).
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Last Updated ( 15 June 2008 )
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Written by Steve
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14 June 2008 |
From the Urban to the Pastoral in Coetzee's "Disgrace" and Proulx's "The Shipping News"
People move from the rural countryside of their youth to the city in adulthood in order to grow in knowledge, world experience, and culture; yet middle age often finds these same people, many of whom were professionals or intellectuals in their urban careers, moving back to the country in an near-animalistic effort to reclaim their roots, get closer to nature, and simplify their lives in a more pastoral setting. This migration is typified in the character studies of Professor Lurie, in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgracei, and Quoyle, in E. Annie Proulx’s The Shipping Newsii.
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Last Updated ( 15 June 2008 )
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Written by Steve
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25 April 2005 |
Sight and Blindness in Othello
“It [Othello] is Othello’s tragedy, but Iago’s play,” writes Harold Bloom in his notes on the tragedy. “Iago is a dramatist who takes over his fellow characters and plots them into the play that he desires to stage” (Bloom 5), and indeed the specific diction used by the critic in those short sentences, as well as those chosen by the author of this essay, encompass the key to understanding Othello: that Shakespeare, and his maniacal villain Iago, are obsessed with sight and seeing—a motif that is succinctly stated by Iago when he tells Desdemona that he is “nothing if not critical” (II.i.122).
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Written by Steve
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04 July 2004 |
The Bible and "Aurora Leigh"
Of writing many books there is no end;
And I who have written much in prose and verse
For others’ uses, will write now for mine (I.1-3)
So begins Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her Aurora Leigh, a poem that closely parallels the theme used throughout the Bible: notably, the Old Testament book Ecclesiastes and the New Testament works of John and Revelation. In poetry—even long works like this one—the writer does not have the luxury of wasting words, and it is no accident that the first line is a modification of Ecclesiastes 12:12b (New International Version). Browning, having been “raised in the Evangelical faith and its doctrines” (Lesch), used her knowledge of the Bible to construct a “secular scripture” (McSweeney xxxiv) by which her Victorian readers could understand their societal roles.
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Last Updated ( 14 June 2008 )
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Written by Steve
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25 March 2004 |
A Critical Look at the Poetry of T.S. Eliot
Perhaps the greatest poet to write in the English language since Shakespeare–or at least in the team photo–T.S. Eliot made an immediate impact on the genre when he was still a college student at Harvard University and later Oxford, with such inventive, philosophical odes as Prufrock and Portrait of a Lady. By the time he became a resident of London in 1915, Eliot’s reputation as one of the premier young poets of his day was already established. He cemented it further with the 1922 publication of Dial Award-winning The Waste Land, a lengthy, brilliant poem that stunned audiences with its innovative structure and bleak, despairing tone. The poem’s power gained him a large world following.
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Last Updated ( 14 June 2008 )
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