Literary Criticism

Frodo Lives

by Steve Chisnell | 26 January 2019 | ChizBlog, Literary Criticism, Mythology

It’s true that Frodo is given gifts beyond what any ordinary person could expect (swords, rings, chain mail, lights of Galadriel), but in the end it is his sheer act of will that gets him to the chasms of Mount Doom. And there he fails.

The Frumious Gallimaufry

by Steve Chisnell | 5 January 2019 | ChizBlog, Culture Criticism, Literary Criticism, Philosophy

At first, I was bemused. But I wonder if our desire to map all of the possibilities of ‘Bandersnatch’ is also one to re-acquire the illusion of control, of knowledge.

Those Who Know Not the Sea

by Steve Chisnell | 4 September 2017 | ChizBlog, Literary Criticism, Mythology

Most of us understand the term “odyssey” to be a time of adventurous journey, patterned after the classical quest of the Odyssey, the epic by the Greek Homer. Such a definition is hardly revealing, however, and it potentially misses a level of significance for all of us.

Spells of Protection

by Steve Chisnell | 30 August 2017 | ChizBlog, Literary Criticism, Politics and Ethics

We can read this deliberate ambiguity in a number of ways: the particular puzzled psychoses of repressed females, for instance, or the dysfunctional power relationships within families; the self-struggling identities of adolescent development or even the unreasonable demands of an outside world to extract simple clarity from complex humanity.

Come Back to the Raft, Jim

by Steve Chisnell | 18 January 2011 | ChizBlog, Literary Criticism

As a literature teacher and one offering my students a discussion of deconstruction these past weeks, it is impossible for me not to address the recent controversy around Huck Finn. For those of you too concerned about the real news of George Clooney in Sudan, the...