Dr. Robert Zaller

Essays, Reviews & Commentary

Robinson Jeffers and the American Sublime
“The best single critical book about Jeffers…”
Albert GelpiCoe Professor Emeritus, Stanford University
The Discourse of Legitimacy
“Massive and massively learned . . . [an] enormous achievement.”
Janelle GreenbergThe Journal of Modern History
The Discourse of Legitimacy in Early Modern England
“Monumental…a vast exercise in the history of ideas.”
Alexandra GajdaJournal of British Studies
Robinson Jeffers and the American Sublime
“Sure to become a mainstay of Jeffers studies…”
Josh WeinsteinJournal of American Literature
The Cliffs of Solitude
“A triumph of great criticism.”
Whitney HothFanshawe College Ontario
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Home2017June

Month: June 2017

Politics

How Long Must the Charade Go On?

June 30, 2017 Robert Zaller 0

Five months into the Trump presidency—or five hours, for that matter—it was clear that the White House had been occupied by a charlatan, somewhere between a buffoon and a demagogue and competent in neither role. [ Read Article ]

Politics

Free Speech, Propaganda, and the Right To Be Heard

June 12, 2017 Robert Zaller 0

Free speech is the most important right we have. The Founding Fathers, understanding it as the prime element in a free society, wrote it into several amendments of the Constitution. The First Amendment guarantees it [ Read Article ]

Music Review
Music

Calling in the Closer: Mahler’s Third Concludes the Philadelphia Orchestra’s Season

June 12, 2017 Robert Zaller 0

It’s been a big year for Yannick Nézet-Séguin: negotiating a new contract to lead the Philadelphia Orchestra into the next decade while assuming the position of Music-Director Designate of New York’s Metropolitan Opera and conducting [ Read Article ]

Music

Heroism, Romantic Style: The Curtis Orchestra Plays Brahms and Strauss

June 12, 2017 Robert Zaller 0

The idea of the hero goes back in Western literature to Homer’s Achilles, and, in mythology, to Samson and Hercules. Alexander the Great fit the mold as a conqueror, and so did Napoleon, the original [ Read Article ]

Music Review
Music

To Fugue Or Not To Fugue: PCMS Presents the Juilliard Quartet

June 12, 2017 Robert Zaller 0

Long-lived chamber ensembles are like fine wines: the vintage keeps coming back, sometimes with the flavor slightly altered, but the bottles occasionally need changing. The Juilliard Quartet is seventy years old, and its cellist of [ Read Article ]

Film

You Can’t Go Home Again: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia at International House

June 12, 2017 Robert Zaller 0

Andrei Tarkovsky, the exact contemporary of the French filmmaker Francois Truffaut (1932-1986), made only seven feature films in his thirty-year career, but their prestige has elevated him to almost mythical status. Ingmar Bergman called him [ Read Article ]

Academics

When a University Loses Its Soul

June 12, 2017 Robert Zaller 0

More than six decades ago, the sociologist C. Wright Mills warned of a “new universe of management and manipulation” that had entered American life, and that threatened to fundamentally alter its character and undermine its [ Read Article ]

Music Review
Music

Two Warhorses and a Goddess of the Night: The Orchestra Performs

June 12, 2017 Robert Zaller 0

Principal Guest Conductor Stéphane Denève led this week’s Orchestra concerts, and the theme was Scandinavia. Europe’s Northern cluster of states was relatively late to enter the Classical music sweepstakes. Although musicological research has unearthed some [ Read Article ]

Politics

War, Anyone? The Commander-in-Chief Wants To Pick a Card

June 12, 2017 Robert Zaller 0

It’s clear that Donald Trump’s first hundred days haven’t turned out to be the walk in the park he envisioned. The most spectacularly unqualified and intellectually disabled leader ever freely chosen by any people on [ Read Article ]

Politics

F for Fake: The Alternative Presidency of Donald Trump

June 12, 2017 Robert Zaller 0

Orson Welles, the great American filmmaker, loved a good joke. He began his career with a radio broadcast about a Martian invasion of New Jersey that threw the whole country into a panic, and ended [ Read Article ]

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About the Author

Dr. Robert Zaller is an American author, playwright, and professor of history at Drexel University. An authority on British political history and constitutional thought, he writes extensively on politics, modern literature, film, music and art. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

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