Areo - Literature

Culture & Media

Dostoevsky’s Campaign Against Rationalism and Progress

Fyodor Dostoevsky was defeated by history. A man who viciously attacked and satirized the ideologies of rationalism and communism and defended traditional religious and family structures, Dostoevsky died just decades…

View Post

View Post

5 min

Culture & Media

Being Human Is A Quest: A Review of Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte

Inspired by Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Salman Rushdie’s Booker Prize-nominated novel Quichotte (pronounced in the French way, key-SHOT) is a work of postmodern picaresque with a metafictional narrative…

View Post

View Post

19 min

Culture & Media

Politics vs. Aesthetics: Why Great Art Cannot Conform to Our Political Views

Percy Bysshe Shelley proclaimed poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Today, that distinction belongs to Twitter mobs. Dispensing mob justice in brief and brutal 280-character decrees, these sneering Solons…

View Post

View Post

8 min

Culture & Media

Why We Need Fantasy Literature

J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has sold around 150 million copies worldwide, which makes it one of the bestselling fiction novels of all time. Some even…

View Post

View Post

11 min

Culture & Media

The Ugly Truth About Not Seeing Beauty

To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it come into…

View Post

View Post

7 min

Culture & Media

Literature, Authenticity and Race

As Cathy Young observes in a recent essay, the media has not given J. D. Salinger a warm welcome into his centennial year. Two days before the celebrated author’s birthday, the Washington…

View Post

View Post

8 min

Battle of Ideas

Excuse Me, You Appear to Have a Broken Moral Compass

Helen Dale will be speaking at the Battle of Ideas on “Cultural Appropriation in Literature: Whose voice is it anyway?” on Sunday 14th October Sunday 7 October was the 1-year…

View Post

View Post

4 min

Culture & Media

Why You Should Read (More) Poetry

“Poetry,” wrote a jaded WH Auden, “Makes nothing happen.” The creative energy that had bloomed amid the ashes of the First World War had been snuffed out by the horrors…

View Post

Literature

Dostoevsky’s Campaign Against Rationalism and Progress

Being Human Is A Quest: A Review of Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte

Politics vs. Aesthetics: Why Great Art Cannot Conform to Our Political Views

Why We Need Fantasy Literature

The Ugly Truth About Not Seeing Beauty

Literature, Authenticity and Race

Excuse Me, You Appear to Have a Broken Moral Compass

Why You Should Read (More) Poetry

New to Areo

Join the Discussion

Read by Category

Read from our Vault