Author: Kathryn S.

Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: a modern take on the motifs of the weird nineteenth century.

5,476 words

It’s ill to loose the bands that God decreed to bind;
Still we be the children of the heather and the wind.
Far away from home, O it’s still for you and me
That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie. [1]

Even below the Missouri-Compromise Line, the mornings now have a delicious coolness, faltering on the edge of a “chill,” and I found myself yearning for an old-fashioned, nineteenth-century ghost story. (more…)

Johann Peter Krafft, The Siege of Szigetvár, 1825.

5,125 words

The bad news is the bad news — the stories we’ve seen and heard in the past few months, years, decades that all keep warning us of more to come. The good news is that these times of transition provide us with opportunities for clarity and fresh perspectives on historical and social phenomena (more…)

Don’t mess with Hindoostan. [1]

It began with whispers. In what should be a familiar script, false narratives and unsubstantiated rumors about white treachery ignited nonwhite hysteria—murders, riots, and fires consumed the countryside. It was the most traumatic episode for the British in the nineteenth century, and it took place thousands of miles and oceans away from Europe. While not exactly obscure, it has become a historical footnote with which many educated people have next to no familiarity (at least on this side of the Atlantic).

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Promotional image from the UK’s Almeida Theatre production of The Duchess of Malfi (performed from November 30, 2019 through January 25, 2020)

5,736 words

I. Classical Western Thought on Justice and Revenge

One of the most fascinating discussions to emerge from our collective Western inheritance concerns the definition of justice and the double-sided nature of justice or vengeance (personified memorably in pop culture through the literal “two-faced” character of Harvey Dent and his Janus-faced coin). Aristotle (384-322 BC) determined that “justice” had at least two different meanings: (more…)

Voyager 2, loading into a Centaur rocket.

2,806 words

I suspect most people have particular topics that affect them profoundly and cause a welling up of emotion that most other people would find a bit strange. For me, the topic is space probes. When I watch documentaries or read articles about them, I tear up the way we all tear up at a piece of heartbreakingly beautiful music or a cynic-proof rendition of the national anthem. After the unmanned spacecraft Cassini completed its mission in 2017 and sent back its stunning images of Saturn, the probe’s creators issued (more…)

3,242 words

You preachers of equality, thus from you the tyrant-madness of impotence cries for “equality”; thus your most secret tyrant-appetite disguises itself in words of virtue. [1]

We are living through one of those periodic bursts of madness and irrationality that have always afflicted civilized societies. (more…)