Thornton Wilder and C.S. Lewis on reading masterpieces.
E.J. Hutchinson
Wilder’s Island
A possible allusion to Aristophanes in Thornton Wilder’s The Woman of Andros.
Shelby Foote and “Sub-Creation”
What light does Shelby Foote shed on Tolkien’s “sub-creation”?
“Bloodbath”: A Limerick
A limerick about how the White House has managed to make misleading the public not just bad, but boring.
Ciceronian Eclipse
A passage on eclipses from Book 1 of Cicero’s Republic.
Shelby Foote’s Keats
In the first chapter of his novel Shiloh, Shelby Foote has Lieutenant Palmer Metcalfe of New Orleans say the following about his thoughts while falling asleep on the eve of battle: I had thought I wouldnt sleep. It seemed I ought to make some sort of reckoning, to...
“Mowing”: An Homage to Robert Frost, on the Occasion of His Birthday
Today (March 26) is Robert Frost's birthday. (This "modern" poet was born only nine years after the conclusion of the Civil War. History is bizarre.) A while back, I started working on a light-hearted homage to Frost's poem "Mowing." I share it here in honor of the...
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Thesis Defenses
On the occurrence of the Greek word φιλανθρωπία (God’s love for man).
“Stanzas Written in Dejection, on the La-Z-Boy”
Light verse on bad comedy.
Dylan’s Aristotle, Dylan’s Melanchthon?
Speculation on the classical, biblical, and theological sources of a line in “Absolutely Sweet Marie.”