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Death and dying Euthanasia Literary Treatment Literary Treatment

Frank Zapatka on “The Other Room” by Zbigniew Herbert

Here are some relections from Frank Zapatka (Emeritus, American U.) on “The Other Room” by Zbigniew Herbert. Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998) was a highly regarded Polish poet, dramatist, and essayist. Praised by Nobel Literature prize laureates, Czeslaw Milosz and Wislawa Szymborska, Herbert has been favorably compared to T.S. Eliot.  Among Herbert’s dramatic works is a play in […]

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Death and dying Literary Treatment Literary Treatment

comments on the life issues in John Updike’s last book

Here, courtesy of Frank Zapatka, are some reflections on passages in John Updike’s last book that address the life issues. Richard M. Here are Frank’s comments– The late John Updike (1931-2009) makes several casual references to life issues in five stories in his last book, My Father’s Tears and Other Stories (NY: Knopf, 2009). As […]

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Literary Treatment Literary Treatment

Linguistic use of Ngram

Colleagues involved in linguistic study may find Google’s Ngram feature helpful as a starting point for discussion about the use of words over the centuries.  A word of caution, though: entering the words “abortion,” “infanticide,” and “euthanasia” results in a graph which may be misleading. As pro-life scholars know, “abortion” was often called “infanticide” by British […]