D.H. Lawrence Meets Jacques Lacan
When I read the following summary of D.H. Lawrence’s Final Fictions: A Lacanian Perspective, I knew that the history of psychoanalysis and the trendiest type of literary…
Forgive the Trees: A Meditation on the Coming of Spring
The first day of spring was just a few days ago, but it never truly feels like spring to me until the leaves return. I am always…
We Shall Not All Sleep: Legacy and Resurrection in “The Once and Future King”
I may have grown up on Disney’s The Sword in the Stone and Mary Pope Osborne’s Magic Tree House series, but that does not make me an…
Eugene Onegin: The Challenge of Love in an Age of Acedia
Everyone has heard of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, but readers of Russian literature in English translation may not be as familiar with Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), who is commonly…
Spirit and Essence in The Prelude of William Wordsworth
My heart leaps up when I behold A Rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So it is now I am a Man;…
Hemingway and Me: Or How I Learned to Love Hemingway and Stop Worrying About His Hopelessness
I did not always like Ernest Hemingway. In some ways I still don’t. Among the post-Great War American writers, I consider F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Steinbeck…
Existential Subjects in Sinister Situations
Providence and chance, how these relate to appearance and reality, are staple themes of Eric Ambler’s (1909-1998) novels. Ambler resists the modern and postmodern urge to intellectualize…
The Recovery of Wonder in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451
“Imagination should be the center of your life.” — Ray Bradbury Is philosophy a special privilege for a scholarly few—too complicated, jargon-laden, and impractical for an…
A Tale of Two Revolutionaries
I recall being somewhat bored reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment in my AP English class in high school the first time I read that great work,…
Poetry and the Self
The notion of self is vitally central to conceptions of poetry. Poems are commonly described as self-expression — an expression of feeling (being an energy inherent to…
Russell Kirk and Reenchanting the Political Imagination
In his final collection of essays, the Italian philosopher Umberto Eco describes the current social climate as “liquid.” In using this term, he meant that postmodernism is…
The Tension Between Good and Evil in “My Father’s House”
The continued fascination with Nazi Germany in every form of art and media is, in part, rooted in the mystery and allure of evil. It is so…
Cormac McCarthy’s Coda: The Last Breath Of An Agnostic Materialist
The greatest living author in the United States passed away last month on June 13. Cormac McCarthy died of natural causes at the age of 89, having…
Dante in the Digital Inferno
T.S. Eliot famously said that “Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.” If people know Dante, it’s probably related to his poem…
Beowulf and Redcrosse: The Evolution of Heroism
Having mighty but humble heroes has long been a part of Western culture, but they weren’t always the way they are seen now. For years, long before…