David Copperfield and the Timelessness of the Classics
By Alex Himebaugh
I finished reading Dickens’ classic, David Copperfield, for the first time and was struck by its ideas of gender equality, especially in regards to marriage. It surprised me to see Dickens’ respect towards women and the criticism of an unequal marriage in a book written in 1850. But maybe it shouldn’t have. Equality isn’t a new idea; it’s a timeless truth. The classics are considered great because of the truths they hold, so it makes sense to find true ideas, even the idea of equality, in them. Because of this, we should listen to the classics instead assuming we know better than them.
Funeral Women
By Michael Lind
As we noted last week, we’re proud to be featuring Michael Lind’s work at Liberty Island. This is the second of eight poems.
Moby Dick: Allegory of the First Order
By David Churchill Barrow
Why Howard Butcher, you old subversive, you, teaching Moby Dick or, The Whale – a scriptural allegory that makes C.S. Lewis and John Bunyan read like Joel Osteen – to our impressionable youth. Fortunately for you, the story is so compelling and the characters so riveting and well-drawn, you will get away with it year after year.
Melville puts the reader in a biblical frame of mind straight off, before he even gets to the story, with his bizarre Extracts (Supplied by a Sub-Sub- Librarian) citing from the books of Genesis, Job, Jonah, Psalms, and Isaiah, among other quotes; which include lines from Pilgrim’s Progress and Paradise Lost. To keep us in a King James Bible mood, characters such as the ship owners Bildad and Peleg, first mate Starbuck, and it is presumed, Ahab himself, are Quakers all, keeping in their dialogue the formal “thee and thou” for which that sect was famous.
Howard Butcher at National Review: Homer Meets Generation Z
The author of Jonah: A Novel of Men and the Sea reveals his literary insights from his teaching experience
By Liberty Island Links & Excerpts
Is technology killing students’ ability to read classical literature?
