This is not a story with a complicated moral ambiguity at its core. The lines are drawn clearly. And that clarity is not a weakness. It's the point…
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This post is about language — specifically, the language of Burton Raffel's translation of Beowulf. Aristotle named diction as one of his six elements of tragedy and comedy.…
Why does Beowulf open with 'Hear me'? Because it was never meant to be read — it was meant to be performed. Jimmy explains oral tradition, the poet-narrator,…
Beowulf has survived over a thousand years — and most people have never really read it. Jimmy opens a five-part analysis with translations, the challenge of Old English,…
What is the truth in this story? We know it because the narrator told us: Hauchecorne picked up a piece of string. The wallet was found by a…
Jimmy tells you this in every analysis: Aristotle identified six elements of tragedy in his Poetics — plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song — and ranked plot…
Maitre Hauchecorne of Breauté picks up a piece of string. He did not steal a wallet. He was not duplicitous in this particular instance. He was simply a…
Jimmy analyzes the Wife of Bath's Tale — the rapist knight, the old woman's bargain, and what sovereignty really means. Includes Aristotle's plot theory and why the Wife…
Jimmy examines the specific passages of the Wife of Bath's Prologue — the organs speech, the Venus and Mars confession, the colt's tooth — and what Theodore Morrison's…
The Wife of Bath opens with one word: experience. Jimmy's analysis unpacks her empiricist philosophy, the rubber band theory of power, and how she turns scripture against itself…
Jimmy's analysis of the Wife of Bath's Prologue explores why Alison tells the pilgrims about her five marriages — and what Chaucer's layered narration reveals about power, truth,…
What Maslow has to do with a Greek comedy — and what Aristophanes understood about human nature that most serious writers miss.