by Michael Lesiuk | Jul 4, 2017 | Language Semiotics and Rhetoric
Can dogs understand metaphor? Maybe not. Maybe that kind of symbolic reasoning is beyond them. (Maybe.) But I’d argue that dogs can absolutely understand metonymy. To rehash the difference: Metaphor: A substitution, based on some analogical link, between two...
by Michael Lesiuk | May 18, 2016 | Fiction/Lit/Movies
Dany is the villain. That is the point of her arc. She is turning into Mad King Aerys. We are explicitly told that when a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin: genius or madness. Dany’s coin is starting to land the wrong way. Like her father, who was...
by Michael Lesiuk | Jan 30, 2014 | Random Convolutes
How does art stand in relation to the tradition and history which preceded it? How is the meaning of history made, un-made, or re-made? It is not that “history is written by the victors.” No, the proper cliché to mention here is the moment in the classic...
by Michael Lesiuk | Jan 27, 2014 | Random Convolutes
Is poetry a message in a bottle? A message from the future? Does it unearth the things we know, but cannot yet say? “In March 2003, Donald Rumsfeld engaged in a little bit of amateur philosophising: ‘There are known knowns. These are things we know that we...
by Michael Lesiuk | Jan 24, 2014 | Fiction/Lit/Movies
Four years ago I wrote a post about hard to find, unpublished short stories by J.D. Salinger, including his short story “The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls.” Since then I’ve taught a few English Lit courses that have had several of Salinger’s...
