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Curtis Weyant

Literature. Language. Liberty. Life.

criticism

Some Force Awakens reviews myth the point

December 24, 2015 by Curtis Leave a Comment

Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been out for a week of public consumption now, and there have been reviews, a lot of them very positive. I’ve even written my own spoiler-free review, and I’m planning to write a more spoilery one after I see the movie again tomorrow. Incidentally, this review will likely contain spoilers and … [Read more…]

Posted in: Life Tagged: criticism, movies, sci-fi, Star Wars

Epic Pooh-Pooh

February 6, 2015 by Curtis 3 Comments

Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea is a story about a boy, Ged, and his experiences as he becomes a wizard. At one point during his education, Ged accidentally releases a shadow-spirit from the underworld and spends the rest of the novel alternately hiding from, running from, and chasing after it. It’s not until the end of … [Read more…]

Posted in: Literature Tagged: books, criticism, essays, Tolkien

L’esprit de l’escalier sur Le Guin

January 12, 2015 by Curtis Leave a Comment
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin

So, I’m home from Mythmoot III, where yesterday I presented my paper on Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Overall, I think it went pretty well. Twenty minutes always goes by fast. I spent a little too much time on the setup rather than my argument and examples, but I was at … [Read more…]

Posted in: Literature Tagged: conferences, criticism, Le Guin, literature, Mythgard, Mythmoot, scholarship

The Problem of Beth

December 2, 2014 by Curtis Leave a Comment

In the midseason finale of The Walking Dead, Beth dies after Rick and the gang had (they thought) successfully managed a hostage negotiation with Dawn. After hostages are traded – Beth and Carol for two of Dawn’s police officers – Dawn predictably and despotically demands that Noah, the ward whom Beth had replaced and who … [Read more…]

Posted in: Life Tagged: criticism, TV

De Casseres indicts the novel-reading public

June 26, 2014 by Curtis Leave a Comment

In my last post I noted that Ruth Graham’s argument distinguishing young adult fiction from more weighty stories is a perennial lamentation made by stalwarts of Literature. In a previous iteration last December, Terry Teachout descried the critical attention being given to “pop culture” over “high art,” and in my response I showed that such … [Read more…]

Posted in: Literature Tagged: criticism, De Casseres, literature

Unliterary criticism

June 8, 2014 by Curtis Leave a Comment
The Reader, by Jean-Honoré Fragonard

Everything new is old, as evinced by Ruth Graham’s recent Slate article admonishing adults who read “young adult” (YA) fiction. Her basic argument is that books like The Fault in Our Stars “could plausibly be said to be replacing literary fiction in the lives of their adult readers,” and that such replacements are inferior to … [Read more…]

Posted in: Literature Tagged: books, criticism

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