literature | ZETEO

Masterpiece of a Misfit – I

March 13, 2014 by William Eaton

This is the first of three reviews of Sir Richard Francis Burton’s masterful travelogue of his journey in 1853 to Mecca and Medina, disguised as a faithful pilgrim. Read one of Burton’s masterful sentences in Misfit II Burton brings the pilrgrimage to life in Misfit III So said Tim Mackintosh-Smith, British traveler and one of today’s leading authors and students of travel writing, of Sir Richard Francis Burton’s A Secret Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. Burton was an outstanding linguist, but […]

Categories: Tucker Cox, ZiR • Tags: literature, travel

Idealized Childhoods

March 10, 2014 by Alexia Raynal

If Charles Dickens was alive today, I think he would agree: childhood doesn’t have to be the best time of life People like to think that childhood is the best time of life. They see children as being carefree and happy. This has always made me uncomfortable. As I read the first chapters of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, I couldn’t help but thinking that many people have forgotten how painful, frustrating and disempowering the life of a child can be. In the opening […]

Categories: Alexia Raynal, ZiR • Tags: Charles Dickens, childhood, children, education, Great Expectations, literature

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Childhood: the value of secrecy

January 20, 2014 by Alexia Raynal

(Or “Everybody is entitled to dream, even those who came before MLK”) Eugene Field was an American writer best known for his children’s poetry, reports Wikipedia. I, on the other hand, report that translating a poem of his can be quite a challenge. Mr. Field—no doubt—had his own understanding of what childhood meant. And in this particular case, I am sure he sensed that children value secrecy—perhaps just as much as we do. These are the last three verses of […]

Categories: Alexia Raynal, ZiR • Tags: childhood, children, dreams, literature, Martin Luther King, poetry, secrecy

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Finally, I Get It

January 7, 2014 by William Eaton

I confess that I never understood what Walt Whitman meant by “Leaves of Grass.” But, I finally get it. Or at least, I think I do. If my interpretation of the accompanying image is somewhat accurate, then “leaves” are simply “pages,” as in pages of poetry. This might seem totally obvious for many learn’d people, but it just became apparent to me. Perhaps I should have been forced to read more Whitman in high school. But reading it now, on […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: books, literature, poetry, reading, Walt Whitman, writing

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Reading: 14-20 October 2013 (ZiR)

October 15, 2013 by William Eaton

A Week of Reading from . . . Rachael Benavidez, Zeteo Associate Editor [One in an ongoing series of posts. For the full series see Zeteo is Reading.] 14 October 2013 On Loss Yesterday marked the loss of Cuban-American novelist Oscar Hijuelos, the first Latino to win the Pulitzer Prize for his 1989 novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Hijuelos wrote about the assimilation experience of immigrants to the United States. From a 2011 article in The New York Times: Despite the […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: banned books, fiction, literature, New York Times, obituary, Ralph Ellison

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Reading: 27 January-2 February 2013

January 28, 2013 by William Eaton

From Tyler Peckio, Zeteo Contributor 28 January 2013 Hollywood loses the plot Every Thursday for the past month myself, and a few friends from my undergraduate studies, meet up and discuss an agreed upon book. We always make an effort, no matter how abstract the content is, to establish connections between the material and our current lives (whether in an existential, political, economical, or societal way). Philosophical material should be read as a living, breathing, constantly evolving thing—not as something existing in […]

Categories: ZiR • Tags: Adorno, critical theory, culture, film, guns, Jorge Luis Borges, literature, media, psychology

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Literature, Empire and Region

April 11, 2012 by William Eaton

A Parallel Narrative—Literature, Empire and Region at the Turn of the Twentieth Century A Review By Stephanie Tsank [Click for pdf] Review of: Schmidt, Peter. Sitting in Darkness: New South Fiction, Education, and the Rise of Jim Crow Colonialism, 1865-1920. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008. Stecopoulos, Harilaos. Reconstructing the World: Southern Fictions and U.S. Imperialisms, 1898-1976. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008. Wesling, Meg. Empire’s Proxy: American Literature and U.S. Imperialism in the Philippines. New York: New York University Press, […]

Categories: Article, Spring 2012 Issue • Tags: education, empire, imperialism, literature

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ZETEO

Zeteo (ζητέω): to challenge, question, dispute, explore the forgotten and ignored

Tag: literature

Masterpiece of a Misfit – I

Idealized Childhoods

Childhood: the value of secrecy

Finally, I Get It

Reading: 14-20 October 2013 (ZiR)

Reading: 27 January-2 February 2013

Literature, Empire and Region