This is the conclusion of the oyster chapter I am working on for Book 2. I haven’t shared the opening pages with you, but I…
The second book of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon opens by considering the problem of “þe ordre of þe story.” To illustrate the principle of good structure,…
This week in oyster thinking, a chunk of a chapter for Book2. In Descartes, Plato, Boethius, Ficino, in the whole of this tradition, the oyster…
Sae mec feede, sundhelm þeahte, Ond mec yþa wrugon eorþan getenge, feþelease; oft ic flode ongean muð ontynde. [1] [ The sea fed me; the…
For MLA 2017 session: #208. Ecological Catastrophe: Past and Present: Friday, 6 January, 8:30–9:45 a.m., 411-412. Seasonality is that quality of being at the right…
The tale of the mouse and the frog appears in all the major medieval British Fable collections: Marie de France (37-39), Berechiah ha-Nakdan (9-11), Walter…
The King of Tars is story about proof. So is Guy de Cambrai’s Barlaam and Josephat. And likewise an account of a divining ape at the early 17th-century…
Today, my “Problems in Posthumanism” graduate seminar worked on Alexander and Dindimus, Montaigne on Cannibals, Petrarch on the Canary Islands (well, we at least read it),…
Every literature academic has an origin story, the book or poem that captured them & ruined them for other study. Mine’s ‘The Hollow Men.’ I…
Nearly two years ago, I announced: For several years I’ve wanted to write an essay on the way that ‘mute beasts’ communicate through gesture in…
