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The Radical Politics of A Christmas Carol
Originally published on the Ploughshares blog on 24th December 2021. When Charles Dickens set out to write A Christmas Carol, he was not concerned with distilling the essence of the Christmas spirit in a tale of redemption and festive cheer that
Uncanny Masculinities
This post originally appeared on the Ploughshares blog in December 2019 The dark side of contemporary British masculinity is explored through superstition and folklore in two recent novels by British authors, Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss and The Devil’s Footprints by John Burnside. Moss’s
The Woman in “The Woman in the Dunes”
This post originally appeared on the Ploughshares blog in November 2019 Kobo Abe’s 1962 novel, The Woman in the Dunes, translated into English by E. Dale Saunders in 1964, delineates in simple yet evocative prose one man’s experience of unjust capture and
Preludes to Lady Macbeth: Shakespeare’s Scheming Women
Shakespeare’s early scheming women—Joan of Arc, Eleanor Duchess of Gloucester, and Margaret of Anjou—share a set of overlapping traits. They are each driven by their ambition for ever greater power, which distorts their femininity into something unnatural.
Imagination and the American West
This post originally appeared on the Ploughshares blog in August 2019. The Old West is a place of myth as well as of history. Popularized through the Western genre, the mythological West is commonly associated with the activities of cowboys, gunslingers,
