Abstract This essay is a comparison of the concept of retribution in two plays: Hanoch Levin’s “Murder and Ariel Dorfman’s “Death and the Maiden”. It explores the injustices suffered by two characters: a Palestinian father who has his son murdered by Israeli soldiers and a Chilean woman who is kidnapped and tortured during the military... Continue Reading →
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been portrayed in many pieces of art from both perspectives of the conflict. In 2015, the Palestinian playwright Dalia Taha wrote a play from the Palestinian perspective called “Fireworks”. It follows the harsh lives of two Palestinian families in an apartment block who deal with the gravity of their situation by... Continue Reading →
In the first half of the 20th century, Latin America was going through a dynamic change. Social movements were taking control of their national destinies, advancing democracy along with economic equality in countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. But the United States, through its coup in Guatemala, initiated the Cold War which saw both the... Continue Reading →
The Spanish conquest of America is a morally complex topic. Like any conquest, it involved brutality and violence. But this is not the whole story: to understand the conquest, one has to understand the logic of the conquerors’ world and their situation. The Spanish, having developed a Christian zeal in the long Reconquista, juxtaposed themselves... Continue Reading →
This source is a passage from Book 3, Chapter 30 of Polybius’ Histories on the causes of the Second Punic War. It argues that both sides are to blame for the war, giving reasons why. The Spanish city of Saguntum had placed itself under Roman protection since they had turned to the Romans to solve... Continue Reading →
In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the Squire is one of the characters who gets to tell a tale. His tale is an interlaced romance, a common form in the Middle Ages which was very long. The exotic and fantastical setting of the Squire’s Tale reflects his ambition, talents and imagination, and while he does... Continue Reading →
One of the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer’s most famous poems is Troilus and Criseyde, a retelling of the classic love tragedy poem. It is set amid the background of the Trojan War, but in a 14th century environment. In it, the Trojan prince Troilus falls in love with the Trojan noblewoman Criseyde. Criseyde is a... Continue Reading →
Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher who pushed back against the narratives of progress and the rationalistic ordering of society in nineteenth century Europe, seeing these along with the societal traditions as hypocritical and repressive. In “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense”, Nietzsche strongly critiques the idea of rationality and classification in a... Continue Reading →
The French structuralist writer Roland Barthes wrote a short essay called “The Death of the Author” in 1967. In it, he argues that writing is the destruction of every voice, and that while this has not been recognized before, writers are now starting to take this into account and critics should focus on the reader... Continue Reading →
Plato’s Republic is a Socratic dialogue on justice, how the perfect city-state should be ordered, and how the virtuous man should behave. In “Book X”, Glaucon and Socrates explore the nature of poetry. They argue that Poetry must be excluded from a well-ordered state, as it is an imitative art form, thrice removed from the... Continue Reading →
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