In City of God , Augustine condemns Rome for passing the Voconian law during the period between the second and third Punic war. This “forbade anyone to make a woman, not even an only daughter, an heir.” He adds, “I do not know of any law that could be said or thought to be more unjust.” Read more
Peggy Noonan puts it this way in today’s Wall Street Journal online: “Bill Clinton, with his trembly, red faced rage, makes John McCain look young. His divisive and destructive daily comportment—this is a former president of the United States—is a civic embarrassment. It is also an education, and there is something heartening in this . . . . (more…) Read more
Augustine points out that the eclipse during Jesus’ death was not a natural occurrence, since Jesus’ death took place at Passover and eclipses normally take place only in the “last quarter of the moon.” So, why did the Lord rearrange the cycles of the heavens for this purpose? The symbolism on one level is obvious: The Sun/Son is being eclipsed in His death, only to rise on the third morning. But if it was indeed an eclipse, the symbolism deepens.... Read more
Jim Rogers of Texas A&M writes in response to my earlier post on Bill and Hillary: Re your question: ‘Why run a candidate who immediately alienates a large proportion of the voting population?’ Answer: Because the median voter determines elections. If you alienate 49.99% of the voting population, you still win if you’re acceptable to the barest of majorities. “That being said, most of the polls I’ve seen to date cap Hillary Clinton’s vote at around 48 percent. (more…) Read more
Nuttall describes Love’s Labour’s Lost as manifesting an “hysteria of style” like the hysteria of Titus , but with a concentration on a “feast of languages.” The setting for the play is a humanist academy, but one that also follows a medieval rule of renunciation of the flesh in favor of the mind, the replacement of nature by art and philosophy. He suggests that “we are dealing with profound, simple antinomies: action and contemplation, nature and art, body and mind,... Read more
The notion that the Democrats would select Hillary Clinton as their candidate has always seemed suicidal to me. Why run a candidate who immediately alienates a large proportion of the voting population? Bill Clinton’s prominence in the race makes Hillary’s candidacy seem all the more suicidal. His legacy as President is, even for Democrats, a mixed bag, and his conduct in the campaign has been off-putting in the extreme. Find the web video of Clinton responding to a question about... Read more
Patterson provides a neat summary of three popular theories of festive comedy. All attempt to locate the play socially, in some setting of festivity. First, some suggest that Shakespeare paid a compliment to Elizabeth since she was in the original audience, an audience for a noble wedding, alluded to in 5.1.369-72. Second, CL Barber famously linked the comedies to popular festivities of inversion and misrule. Theseus makes a passing reference to Maytime celebrations (4.1.135-6 – odd in a “Midsummer” play),... Read more
A historicist angle comes out in Patterson’s discussion of the passage in 2.1.155-64, where Theseus describes the origin of the flower that Puck squeezes into the eyes of the lovers. Since the late 19 th century, critics have seen here a veiled reference to Elizabeth, who escaped Cupid’s arrow and continued in “maiden meditation, fancy-free.” Patterson notes, “As the moon goddess, Diana, Cynthia, or Phoebe, she was celebrated as the Belphoebe of Spenser’s Fairie Queene, and the Cynthia of Ben... Read more
In an essay on MSND entitled “Bottom’s Up: Festive Theory,” Annabel Patterson lays a historicist treatment of the play that relies in equal parts on Barber’s theory of festive comedy, Victor Turner’s studies of ritual, and Bakhtin’s theory of comedy and subversion. Here are some notes on her main themes: She opens with the famous quotation from Pepys: “To the King’s Theatre, where we saw ‘Midsummer’s Night’s Dream,’ which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it... Read more
In his recent commentary on Daniel, Jim Jordan notes that the goat of Alexandrian Egypt (Daniel 8) is something new in Israel’s history – a power coming from the West: “Israel has always been the west-most power, with the Mediterranean Sea at her edge. All previous history has been involved with north, south (Egypt), or east.” What does it mean in the Bible for a power to come from the West? So far, I haven’t found that Jordan develops this,... Read more
Leithart
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