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Archive for the ‘Language and Literature’ Category

Words and Music

Posted in Arts, Language and Literature, tagged , , , , , on October 20, 2011 | 1 Comment »

A fascinating and wonderful article ran in the Guardian last week.  The author eloquently ruminates over the parallel evolution of literature and music in the 19th century, and laments a perceived divergence since the 20th.  His descriptions of the intertwined nature of the two media are divine: To read Molly Bloom’s great gush of resigned affirmation [...]

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Professor Huston Performs and Lectures on YouTube

Posted in Education, Language and Literature, tagged , , , , , , on October 1, 2011 | 3 Comments »

Ever since I started blogging, I’ve wanted to do some kind of podcasting: I’ve always been told I have a pretty good voice, and I try to have an energetic, engaging classroom presence.  Therefore, I thought I’d post some audio of me at work, to see if anyone else out there might like it or [...]

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The Cold Darwinian Erasers of Editorial Evolution

Posted in Education, Humor, Language and Literature, tagged , , , , , , on September 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

As writers, we wield the cold Darwinian erasers of editorial evolution.  Scrutinizing the compositional gene pool, we are a vehicle of natural selection, finding the weakest words and the unfit phrases.  We exercise the instruments of the delete keys at our fingertips, and thus remove the dead weight that threatens to hold back the success of [...]

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Crucible Joke

Posted in Education, Humor, Language and Literature, tagged , , , , on September 8, 2011 | 1 Comment »

This year, I’m starting my American Lit Honors classes with The Crucible, the classic play about the Salem Witch Trials.  I usually end my introduction to it with a joke like this: “So this is a story about desperate, repressed, stressed-out people crowded into a little village in a hostile wilderness, whose desire for excitement [...]

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Homer’s Iliad For Halloween

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged , , , , , on September 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Homer’s Iliad is great for the Halloween season.  I’ve been reading it, and I’m trying to finish so I can start on some easy, stress-relieving scary stories as summer ends, but I’m realizing now just how appropriate this ancient epic poem is for the new season. I’m in Book 15 out of 24, and several [...]

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Literature Trick Question

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged , , on August 25, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Maybe the greatest work of magic realism is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.  Marquez won the Nobel Prize after writing it, and Oprah later picked it for her classics book club.  Here’s the famous first line: Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant [...]

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Victorian Satire Teaches Us How To Live Well

Posted in Language and Literature, Living well, tagged , , , , on August 18, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

To be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, [but] to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy.  –Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland  

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Pandemonium: Place of All Demons

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged , , , on August 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

We had Panda Express tonight, and one of the packages said “Enjoy Pandamonium.” Cute. Pandemonium is one of my favorite “root word” words.  It breaks down as “Pan Demon Ium.” Greek gives us plenty of place names that end in “-ium”: gymnasium, stadium, etc.  “Pan” means “all,” as in the Pan American Games, which features athletes [...]

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Joyce On Shakespeare

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged , on August 4, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

“He reflected on the pleasures derived from literature of instruction rather than of amusement as he himself had applied to the works of William Shakespeare more than once for the solution of difficult problems in imaginary or real life.” – James Joyce, Ulysses

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Defending Internal Book of Mormon Evidence: The Lesson of Proto-Indo-European

Posted in Language and Literature, Religion, tagged , , , , , , on July 30, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Critics of the Book of Mormon often deride it for its apparent lack of archaeological corroboration.  Indeed, most of the evidence that bears on the authenticity of the Book of Mormon is “internal,” meaning evidence derived from the text of the book itself.  Those given to rejecting an ancient origin for the Book of Mormon [...]

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Two Shakespeare Quotes Dissing School

Posted in Humor, Language and Literature, tagged , , , , on July 28, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Some people may think Shakespeare is difficult, elitist, old-fashioned, or whatever else they don’t like, but nothing could be further from the truth.  Like all permanently classic works–Mozart’s music, the Bible, The Simpsons–Shakespeare endures precisely because he’s the opposite of all those things.  Shakespeare speaks the truth of real, universal human experience so powerfully and [...]

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Shakespeare, As Performed By Several Silly Celebrity Voices At Once

Posted in Humor, Language and Literature, tagged , on July 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

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Ironic Rhetoric Advances the Book of Mormon’s Thesis

Posted in Language and Literature, Religion, tagged , , , , on July 24, 2011 | 5 Comments »

3 Nephi 27:14 is one of the more rhetorically clever verses in the Book of Mormon.  It features an ironic parallelism that explains the point of the Atonement while emphasizing its apparent absurdity. And my Father sent me that I might be lifted up upon the cross; and after that I had been lifted up upon [...]

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Reviewed: James Clavell’s Noble House

Posted in Language and Literature, Politics and Society, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 23, 2011 | 2 Comments »

James Clavell’s Noble House is a novel about one week in the life of a Hong Kong business executive in 1963.  And it’s 1370 pages long. No, wait, don’t stop reading!  That wouldn’t have enticed me, either, but it’s actually one of the most fascinating and exciting things I’ve ever read.  It’s full of espionage, [...]

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Fun With Patronymics

Posted in Language and Literature, tagged , , on July 21, 2011 | 2 Comments »

I remember when Northern European patronymics was explained to me, I felt like a whole new level of reality had opened up.  Here was a system that gave us so many of the names that are still common among us today, and I’d never realized it!  Seems pretty obvious now.  In some European societies, a [...]

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