The Humanities Index

Notes on “Babylon Revisited” I have finished re-reading, again, what is arguably F. Scott Fitzgerald’s best short story, “Babylon Revisited.” It merges the past with the present as Charlie Wales returns to Paris to try and recapture his life literally by taking custody of his daughter Honoria, and figuratively by exploring the Paris of his [...]

Much of what is uncomfortable about Silko’s “Yellow Woman” and Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” stems from a clash between our traditional societal values and those presented within the stories. I have heard many students condemn the unnamed narrator of “Yellow Woman” as an irresponsible and immoral whore that should be punished accordingly. The [...]

There’s something just satisfying about reading Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps it’s the visceral freeing of the id to do what it wants vicariously though characters like Montressor, Usher, and the Red Death. Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” takes the reader on a psychological journey through the mind of Montresor; his and Fortunato’s descent in to the catacombs [...]

Shelley, in his A Defense of Poetry, begins by making a distinction between reason and imagination: “Reason is the enumeration of quantities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of those quantities, both separately and as a whole” (109). Shelley likens reason to analysis and imagination to synthesis; reason examines the workings of particulars, [...]

‘Arnold attempts in this speech, “On the Modern Element in Literature,” a “general survey of classical literature” in an effort to deliver his age from its current imperfection, i.e., to comprehend man’s present and past. He suggests that for an epoch to be great, it must have a significant spectacle to contemplate and one who [...]