Tag: Humor
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
CATEGORIES
August 16, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
The Summer Quarterly Discussion on Erasmus covered a lot of territory. Participants brought a wealth of knowledge which we used to explore Erasmus’ language, satire, use of myth and religion, and social critique.
One of the questions that continues to interest me is why Erasmus uses a mythological figure to discuss religion. Folly goes through great pains to link herself to the Greek pantheon.
July 26, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
I recently picked up Rollo May’s The Courage to Create. In it, he wrote a line that struck a chord with the current blog discussion of satire. May wrote, “Certainly Dionysian periods of abandon are valuable, particularly in our mechanized civilization where creativity and the arts are all but starved to death by the routine of punching clocks and attending endless committee meetings,
July 19, 2024
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Last week, I took a look at some of the uncomfortable humor in Aristophanes’ The Wasps. I wondered why (or how) a play can poke fun at the very group that it also needs to please. How does this type of humor please an audience? It’s pretty widely known that sometimes we like to laugh at ourselves,
June 23, 2023
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
To all the “honest drinkers” – as Rabelais would have it – congratulations! We made it to the final post in this series on Rabelais. Hopefully the various connections have enriched your experience of what is often considered difficult reading. Today’s blog concludes with Book Four, which means that it is up to you to make modern-day connections for Book V.
June 16, 2023
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
For me, reading Rabelais was slow going. Crawling through the text, however, brought moments of joy as I saw strains of other, later works. The past few blogs attempted to highlight some of those connections as a way to bridge the gap between Rabelais and contemporary students. I’m not sure what the best way might be to introduce students to his work,
June 9, 2023
Thanks to Chad Greene, a 2023 Fellow in Ideas recipient, for today’s blog.
Depending on your concentrations, perhaps you have read enough about probability and statistics to dissuade you from playing the types of lotteries states tend to sponsor, such as MegaMillions or Powerball. But, in my own reading of one of the Great Books this spring, I have discovered a delightful lottery that I encourage all lovers of epic poetry to try out.
» Read more about: Have a Difficult Decision to Make? Have a Copy of Virgil or Homer Handy? »
June 2, 2023
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Last week’s blog (https://hmu.edu/2023-5-26-reading-rabelais-part-ii/) concluded with a suggested connection between Book Two of Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel and Monty Python skits. We cannot stop at the end of Book Two, however. Moving into Book Three, we find a lengthy discussion between Pantagruel and Panurge about the pros and cons of marriage. Panurge wants to know whether or not he should marry.
» Read more about: Considering the Cuckold, Rabelais Continued »
December 9, 2022
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
As we enter the season of Scrooge, I couldn’t resist a comparison of Molière’s The Miser with David Hume’s musings on wealth. In A Treatise of Human Nature, published in 1740, David Hume explains that wealth provides humans with a unique sort of pleasure. He also notes that money involves both pleasure and power,
August 19, 2022
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
By this time of the summer, I am always awash in fruit. I love it…and I hate it. Harvesting your own produce is time sensitive, messy, and exhausting. Yet there is nothing that I love better in this world than homemade peach pie and homemade peach jam. Overflowing trees leads to an overflowing kitchen, for which I am blessed.
October 29, 2021
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
When Gulliver travels to Brobdingnag, he describes many things with disgust. Therefore, it seems fitting, for a Halloween treat, to revisit some of Swift’s grotesque elements from the world of Brobdingnag. If you find this overly terrifying, keep in mind that Gulliver survives Brobdingnag and also that Swift revels in the hilarity of his tale (as do his readers).