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Abigail and John Adams exchanged tender and thoughtful letters, from 1762, during their courtship, throughout his political career to 1803, during the colonial period and the formative years of America becoming a nation. These epistles reflect their warm companionship as well as her profound and historical influence upon him during his time at the ContinentalContinue reading “Portraits by Catherine Ezell”

Editors Cindy Chopoidalo is the Assistant Editor of the Canadian Review of Comparative Literature and a member of Editors Canada. Her publications include Shakespeare’s First Tetralogy, Epic Poetry, and Historiography: How a Dramatist Creates a Fictional World (2014) and Shakespeare’s Possible Worlds (2018), and she also contributed to The Definitive Shakespeare Companion: Overviews, Documents, andContinue reading “Biographies”

Yunfeng Ruan Photographing Cambridge is my way of making myself hate this place less. Unlike what people may expect, I found Cambridge a cold and stressful place soon after I moved here. This is a wonderful academic place full of world-famous universities and research institutes, but maybe it is too full: strangers at the nextContinue reading “Photographing Cambridge”

Henry Stratakis-Allen Formerly, men’s minds were animated with that which they now feel no longer, which conquered all the opulence of Persia, maintained the freedom of Greece, and triumphed over the powers of sea and land: but now that it is lost, universal ruin and confusion overspread the face of Greece. What is this? Demosthenes’Continue reading “Response to the Third Philippic”

Iosif M. Gershteyn Ivan Bunin (1870-1953) is a celebrated and respected contributor to the Russian literary canon, yet, either due to an accident of history, difficulty of translation, or nuances of his sentiment, his genius is not widely known in the contemporary English-speaking world. Despite such accolades as a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1933,Continue reading “Translating Bunin’s Conjuring”

Ivan Bunin, translated by Iosif M. Gershteyn A freshly cut cross stands in the country graveyard. It is of sturdy oak, heavy, yet smooth. Cold wind rings far through the unobstructed distance of gray April days’ bare trees-ringing as a porcelain wreath in the breeze-carried to the foot of the memorial cross. Inlaid in thatContinue reading “Barely a Breath”

Anne Knechtges Beowulf remains a haunting echo from out of a past both pagan and Christian. Many critics have attempted to separate the Christian from the pagan within Beowulf. None have succeeded. What they desire necessitates a butchery of the poem itself. This poem is neither fundamentally pagan, nor fundamentally Christian; it is fundamentally both.Continue reading “Beowulf Reflections”

David Franks Death takes everything. It is left us to win and maintain an enclave against a chaos that presses in. That theme pervades Beowulf, as Tolkien1 shows in his excellent essay, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” Hrothgar, king of the Danes, constructs the fantastic meadhall Heorot, a besieged “circle of light.” There aContinue reading “A Little Circle of Light”

Alfred Alcorn, ’64 A considerable turnout milled around in the spacious library of the Center for Criminal Justice. It was an incongruous mix. Among the word-stricken, bleared-eyed, unkempt types who frequent poetry readings, were a good sprinkling of cops, some still in uniform, as well as lawyers and other worthies from Seaboard’s criminal justice establishment.Continue reading “A Poetry Reading”