On Euripides’s Medea and the Fugitive Slave Law.
Upbuilding Discourses
“Purity of heart is to blog one thing.” -E.J. Hutchinson
“Le Munchle de Mon Oncle”: An Epigram about Hypothetical Cannibalism
An epigram on whether uncles are what’s for dinner.
Melanchthon’s Deathbed List
A new version of an old post on Melanchthon’s thoughts shortly before his death.
Lewis’s Wilder?: On Literary Masterpieces
Thornton Wilder and C.S. Lewis on reading masterpieces.
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...