Tag: Literary criticism
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Jacobean Gossip Girl: Mary Wroth’s Urania
“[2/5 stars] I died and seriously started contemplating why I’m in the English program.” – Goodreads reviewer “I don’t think I want you to pass that one along to me.” – my mom One day I might use this space to talk about popular Renaissance literature, but today is apparently not that day. But in…
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“That Best of Men”: Virgil, Horace, and a Friendship in Verse
As usual, I spent most of the past couple of days being completely stymied as to what to talk about this week, but then I remembered that today (October 15th) is Virgil’s birthday (he’s turning 2,091). So in his honor, I thought we’d talk a little about ancient Rome’s most famous poet. But since Virgil…
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More Gods Behaving Badly: Ancient Mythology & Cultural Narrative (Part 2)
Last week, we talked about myths as half-remembered histories and cultural origin stories through the lens of Egyptian myth. This week we’re going to shift more thoroughly to the Greeks and dissect Plato’s idea that myths-as-stories that are based on the gods having passions and struggles — what he calls false myths — and try…
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Gods Behaving Badly: Ancient Mythology & Cultural Narrative (Part 1)
Because I spend too much time (i.e., any time) lurking on classical-centric social media, and in this case, especially Twitter, I’ve been thinking a lot about mythology, third-wave feminism, and contemporary scholarship. Mostly, I love the direction of modern academia in the classical world and history in general, where it’s moving towards being more inclusive…
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Greek Tragedy, Courtly Love, and Renaissance Satire: The Changing Face of Troilus & Cressida
“Lechery, lechery, still wars and lechery! Nothing else holds fashion.” — Thersites, Troilus & Cressida Before we start this week, I want to apologize to all of you for a very stupid blunder on my part. Mainly that all of my notifications for this blog were being sent to a filler email account to which I…
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The OG MC: Homer and the Evolution of Art in the Ancient World
I was reading a really interesting article about Egyptian art and its depictions of unknown and extinct animals. The particular example the article is exploring are so-called “Meidum Geese,” a plaster painting in the tomb of the Fourth Dynasty (2600s – 2400s BC) prince, Nefermaat. Aside from its great beauty and realism, the painting depicts…
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A Macedonian, a Roman, and a Frenchman Walk into India: History and Theatre in Alexandre le Grand
“Your work is puerile and under-dramatized. You lack any sense of structure, character, and the Aristotelian unities.” – Wednesday Addams, Addams Family Values When I started blogging again, I had intentions of talking about what I was reading from time to time, but had never really gotten around to something that might make a good…
