Through the writings of Adorno, finding echoes of Hegel in the music of Beethoven.

In my house live a literary critic and a historian. They do not always get along. Aside from differing views on paint colors, dinner choices, and departure times, a regular dispute erupts concerning verb tenses: present tense or past tense? When you write about a book, do you describe its action in the present tense (Hamlet whines) or in the past tense (Hamlet whined)?

A student and a reader recently asked me: why is essentialism bad? Uhg, I thought, how do you answer that? But it is a fair and reasonable and nagging question, and I will give it a try.

Want some writer to have said something, but having trouble finding it in her texts?  Not a problem!  Just add a dash of oudelogistics.

So the funny thing about Shakespeare, you will have noticed, is that there are a lot of editions of his plays. A lot. A LOT.

David Pogue, who miraculously manages to remain both an enthusiast for all things technological while, at the same time, starting a small insurrection against cell phone companies, has now convinced me not to worry about which edition of Shakespeare my students use.

Who says close reading is only for English professors?  How improbable is it that I would write an update to my slog about “Total Eclipse of the Heart”?  Apparently, not very improbable at all.  Criticism, it seems, can be interesting and useful and not boring.  My friend VW stopped reading Greek long enough  to send me “Total Eclipse Of the Heart” made into a flow chart.

One of those little lies you tell undergraduates is that Romanticism-its obsession with unique inner feeling, its obsession with nature-emerged as a result of the Industrial Revolution.

With the help of Bonnie Tyler's 1983 #1 hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” I'm still trying to figure out what differentiates Adorno from what he calls cultural critics in "Cultural Criticism and Society."