The Gritty Realism of Thomas Hardy
It is a commonly held opinion that Thomas Hardy, the prolific Victorian poet and novelist, is a pessimist. This perspective is documented well in a…
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Facing the Darkness III: Monstrous Ontology, Part I
The previous two pieces in this series have attempted to use the figure of the monster to draw out some of the flaws and…
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Facing the Darkness II: The Gaps in the System
In my previous post, I introduced the epistemic shifts occurring across the theological, political and philosophical landscape of the early 1800s which gave rise…
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Review: “Dark Faith: New Essays on Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away”
“Dark Faith: New Essays on Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away,” Edited by Susan Srigley, University of Notre Dame Press, 2012, 232 pps…..
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Surviving the Sahara: On Being Bored
In his 1989 address to the graduating class of Dartmouth College the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky decided to forego the platitudes that comprise such…
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Creativity as a Call to Virtue?
Sooner or later, the writer of creative fiction seems bound to ask just how free are my characters? Good writers strive to make their…
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The Joy of Being Blindfolded: Or Why You Should Read Thomas Pynchon
Everyone has at least one piece of literature they are congenitally afraid of picking up. Be it the fear and trembling of page count,…
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