Author Archives: Peter Schmidt

Some Reasons Why Daenerys Targaryen’s Character Is Even Better in Game of Thrones Than in Song of Ice and Fire

Posted on July 21, 2012 by Peter Schmidt

  Note: this essay discusses books 1 and 2 of George R.R. Martin’s The Song of Ice and Fire and seasons 1 and 2 of HBO’s Game of Thrones.  There are no spoilers here regarding later books.   What thoughts … Continue reading →

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More Holly Golightly than Daisy Miller….

Posted on July 14, 2012 by Peter Schmidt

Am greatly enjoying reading Elaine Dundy’s comic novel about a young American in the Left Bank of Paris in the early 1950s, The Dud Avocado (1958). It’s just been reissued in paperback.  The heroine Sally Jay Gorce is much closer … Continue reading →

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Third Class Superhero

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Peter Schmidt

Depressed by seeing a not-that-great movie that everyone assured me was a Great Movie, a Pow! Wowie Zowie! Movie, I avenge myself by re-reading Charles Yu’s short story “Third Class Superhero.” The story begins as follows: “Got a letter today … Continue reading →

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On the Game of Thrones title sequence

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Peter Schmidt

a map that renders time as well as space! maps and their dangerous illusions tricky shadows: questions of power in Thrones the Song/Thrones/HBO/fandom complex fire-forged swords: GRRM and JRRT maps and literature A colleague of mine at Swarthmore, Bob Rehak, … Continue reading →

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“The Death of the Cyberflâneur” ?

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Peter Schmidt

The Death of the Cyberflâneur – NYTimes.com. Lots of good things to think about in this article.  However, as Mark Twain quipped once about a newspaper that said he had died, this particular “death” too may be somewhat exaggerated. 1. … Continue reading →

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What Should I Do With the Dead Turk in the Bedroom? Class, Sex, and Otherness in Downton Abbey

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Peter Schmidt

Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey is fun and fascinating TV for lots of reasons.   It has an excellent script and superb acting, and the detailed development it gives just about all the major and minor characters is smartly set against a … Continue reading →

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Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the Tony award-winning Broadway musical _In the Heights_, visits Swarthmore

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Peter Schmidt

The two opening cuts from the musical, Usnavi’s opening rap introducing all the characters and Nina’s first song, were featured in my English 53/ “modern American poetry” course last year, which had a 3-week module on the lyrics and music … Continue reading →

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Word Cloud of Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” section 1

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Peter Schmidt

Using “Wordle” [available at wordle.net] and pasting in the online text of section 1 of “Song of Myself” (given at the end of this post), here is the “word cloud” that was generated: (Click on the image if you’d like … Continue reading →

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Could Beowulf Have Been a Source for the Star Wars Lightsaber?

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Peter Schmidt

I’ve been reading my colleague Craig Williamson’s splendid new translation of Beowulf, the first time I’ve re-read this poem since college.  Coming across Craig’s fun discussion of compound words and “kennings” in Anglo-Saxon poetry (pp. 8-9; kennings are 2-word metaphorical … Continue reading →

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Corpus of Historical American English (COHA)

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Peter Schmidt

Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). The Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) is the largest structured corpus of historical English. The corpus was created at Brigham Young University, with generous funding from the US National Endowment for the Humanities. It is … Continue reading →

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