Can Shakespeare Save Civilization?
Perhaps an apology might be necessary for the sheer audacity of beginning any essay with such a question and with such a seemingly absurd claim. Of course,…
Shakespeare and Social Justice Ideology: “Othello” Is Not About Racism
A few years ago, students at the University of Pennsylvania removed a large Shakespeare portrait from a staircase that students and faculty members in the English department walk…
Redemption: The Third Act of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”
“Without being compatriots, they were all Romans. When everyone became a Roman citizen, Rome ceased having any citizens; and when being a Roman citizen became equivalent to…
Politics and Women in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” Act 2
Act 2 of the Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar[1] opens with a reference to Act. 1.2.140. According to Brutus, Cassius is wrong about blaming men for fateful events (2.1.2-4).[2]…
Dangerous Thoughts: The First Act of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”
“[I]f Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less.” As a dramatic account of the origins and limits of political authority, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar…
Shakespeare on Tyranny: Reading the Roman Plays
William Shakespeare, that great bard of Stratford-upon-Avon, was not a political theorist. But he had much to say about politics. Or, at least, his plays are often…
Shakespeare, Bard of Christianity: A Review of Lee Oser’s “Christian Humanism in Shakespeare”
Lee Oser. Christian Humanism in Shakespeare: A Study in Religion and Literature. Washington DC: Catholic University Press, 2022. “Shakespeare may or may not have been a Christian…
Fear and Loathing in Shakespeare Studies
In a 2021 essay for Shakespeare Survey 74, “Counterpublic Shakespeares in the American Education Marketplace,” Notre Dame’s Jillian Snyder raises questions about the state of Shakespeare studies,…
Czeslaw Milosz: Tradition Confronts Postmodern Nihilism
Czeslaw Milosz issues from a time and place when making a distinction between the ethos of a poet, essayist or philosopher seemed an unnecessary and imprudent indiscretion.…
Eric Voegelin Autobiographical Lecture: Escaping the Nazis and French Intellectual Culture
Eric Voegelin describes the political environment that made possible the Nazi occupation of Austria (Anshluss) in 1938 and his subsequent escape from the Gestapo into Switzerland and…
Easter and Passover: A Reflection
This year, the climactic commemorative celebration days for each religion actually did overlap. Which raised questions about their possible relationship, or at least how they stand today…
Is Rachmaninoff’s Music Too Schmaltzy?
Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Op 18 is the kind of music that grips you by the collar and draws you into its world instantly, with…
Plato and the Poets
“Beauty is a manifestation of Nature’s secret laws, which would otherwise remain forever hidden.” — J. W. von Goethe[1] Socrates notoriously advocated for the expulsion of the…
Christopher Nolan: Artist of Trauma, A Review of Stuart Joy’s “The Traumatic Screen”
Stuart Joy. The Traumatic Screen: The Films of Christopher Nolan. Chicago, IL: Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 2020. 185pp. $26.50. It is no shocking revelation…
Resurrection
I am already a dead man: I have broken faith With the life entrusted to my treasuring, and Not once, but again and again, as if at…