Michael A. Winkelman, grammaticorum equitum doctissimus @TotalGrammarCop18 November 2019The New Trans-Mediocrity in Literary Studies;or, The Sovereignty of Salierization Abstract: What’s curtailing greatness in the study of literature at present? It seems likenowadays the discipline’s been engulfed by a perfect storm of troubles. This think-pieceseeks to connect fundamental weaknesses underlying most scholarly publications to whatis increasingly […]
Author: Michael
Michael A. Winkelman, grammaticorum equitum doctissimus @TotalGrammarCop18 November 2019The New Trans-Mediocrity in Literary Studies;or, The Sovereignty of SalierizationPart 2 IV. Terms for Our TimesL’hypocrisie est un vice à la mode, et tous les vices à la mode passent pour vertus.—Molière, Dom Juan, ou le Festin de pierreWhat rhetorical devices best delineate the ethos of typical […]
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.—Perez, in The Mourning Bride by William Congreve, III.ii (1697) Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto.[I am a man: I consider nothing human alien to me.]—Terence, Heauton Timorumenos (163 BCE) ProlegomenonThroughout her wild career, Medea’s climactic, fateful decisions […]
June 27, 2023 You speak Eclogue!—Musidorus in Head over Heels PrologueIn The Defence of Poesy, Sir Philip rails at length against the “defectuous,“faulty,” and frequently “absurd” English drama of his day, confessing that in hisexasperation he has “lavished out too many words of this play matter.”1 Something thatsends him into a particular apoplexy, one from […]
Michael A. WinkelmanReview: Immeasurable Outcomes: Teaching Shakespeare in the Age of the Algorithm by Gayle Greene (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023) What’s Shaking on Campus? In a crowded field of non-fiction lamentations and manifestoes about higher education, Immeasurable Outcomes: Teaching Shakespeare in the Age of the Algorithm by Gayle Greene stands out (author website: gaylegreene.org). […]
Memento Amoris Two fossil flies, still mated, found in amber:Like Nature planted a poetic conceit;Both cloistered till Doom in their golden chamber,With one well-wrought bond, a nexus compleat. There long before that bee in amber tombSparked beamish Martial to imagine itInterred by Fate in its own honey-comb,Or in frozen tears of nymphs—et luxit! Afore Herrick […]
I write for the girl who responds to her sweetheart,and the boy in love for the first time.I want every young man wounded like me by Cupid’s bowto recognize the symptoms of his feverand ask himself in amazement “How does this poet knowabout me and my personal problems?”—Ovid, Amores, II.i.5-10 (translated by Guy Lee) When […]
Denique FAMILIAREM dico, quae res tangit nostras aut circa nos, quaeque in assidua vita.[Finally I call “familiar” a letter which touches our affairs or the affairs of those around us, or whatever is unremitting in life.]—Justi Lipsi Epistolica Institutio(Principles of Letter-Writing by Justus Lipsius, 1591), c.V, pp. 20-21 I have written thrice to thee, and […]
“Luckes” Lesson PlanMichael WinkelmanJune 23, 2026 This lesson on “Luckes My Fair Falcon” by Sir Thomas Wyatt would form part ofa longer unit on poetry, so students would have some familiarity with things like rhymescheme and figurative language already. At the beginning of class, the old blues song“Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” […]
DON ARMADO: Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet. Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio. —Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost (1.2.189-91) If he writes her a few sonnets, he loves her. If he writes her 300 sonnets, he loves sonnets. —English professor […]