Time is sometimes depicted as an ouroboros, a serpent eating its tail, a symbol of cyclical recurrence. History is like a bask of crocodiles: they are related to snakes, but have extra features that may distract us, to our peril.
Texts in Context: The Crocodile of Chronology Read More »
A romantic English patriot and devout Catholic convert; a friend of Shaw and Orwell and an enemy of modernity; an opponent of socialism and a staunch foe of capitalism: the paradoxes of Chesterton make an elegant closing flourish for our series on the Author Bank.
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DanteAn Author ProfileSecond Canto: Vita Nuova By Gabriel Blanchard From the depths of political, personal, and spiritual defeat, Dante went on—”God knoweth how”—to write one of the great
Dante: An Author Profile, Continued Read More »
The canon of literature is like a lofty tower, composed by hands that seem superhuman (for “there were giants in the earth in those days”). Yet one poet surpassed storied Babel; for he did “reach unto heaven, and make a name.”
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The Renaissance was a pivotal historical period which did not exist, and lasted for one century that began in 1300 and ended in 1650, give or take fifty years in both directions. These, at least, are the impression one might take away from reading a randomly-chosen handful of modern historians.
Boccaccio: An Author Profile Read More »
Few figures in our Author Bank have life stories as dramatic as Olaudah Equiano’s—an “interesting narrative” indeed …
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Tolstoy:An Author Profile By Gabriel Blanchard One of the pivotal figures of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and radicalism, Tolstoy was (as we must surely expect by now) vocally
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St. BernardAn Author Profile By Gabriel Blanchard The academy, the battlefield, the royal court, and the chapel of twelfth-century Europe all bore the mark of St. Bernard’s hand.
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There is no greater master of the ghoulish among American authors than the tragic figure of Edgar Allan Poe.
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The tall, lean shape of Sojourner Truth strode tirelessly across the North, carrying the law and the gospel of freedom in its mouth.
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