“Thesis: Three meanings may be distinguished: a. a long essay or treatise presented for a degree; b. a proposition to be proved; c. the unstressed syllable of a metrical foot (e.g. thesis itself is a trochaic word on which the second syllable is unstressed).”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
“Bessie Smith: (originally Elizabeth) U.S. blues and jazz singer, one of the most distinctive stylists of classic blues and the most successful black entertainer of her time. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Smith sang popular songs as well as blues on the minstrel and vaudeville stage. She began recording in 1923 and appeared in the 1929 film St. Louis Blues. Her interpretations represent the fully realized tradition of the rural folk tradition of the blues to its urbane structure and expressiveness. A bold, supremely confident artist with a powerful voice and precise diction, she became known as ‘Empress of the Blues.’ She died from injuries sustained in a car crash, having apparently been refused treatment for reasons of racial prejudice.”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave.”
Muhammad (571?-634?)
Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged philosophy/religion
“Commit Suicide. Instead if ‘He committed suicide,’ say, He killed himself, or, He took his life. For married we do not say ‘committed matrimony.’ Unfortunately most of us do say ‘got married,’ which is almost as bad. For lack of a suitable verb we just sometimes say committed this or that, as in the instance of bigamy, for the verb to bigam is a blessing that is still in store for us.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
“Rhetorical Irony: A form of irony in which the attitude and tone of the speker or writer is the exact opposite of what is expressed. Such irony is common in the work of Swift, Voltaire, Samuel (Erewhon) Butler, and Antatole France.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
“Linear: Stylistic term used to describe a work of art in which contour, rather than masses of colors and tones, is the primary means of compositional definition. Compare painterly.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“On television I see Mary McCarthy taking about her Vassar friend, the poet Elizabeth Bishop. I notice Mary’s instant icy smile, so often present when I interviewed her in Paris in 1966 for a book. George Grosz saw the same smile on Lenin’s face. ‘It doesn’t mean a smile,’ he said. I am fascinated by it. It represents, I think, an unsuccessful attempt to soften a harsh, bluntly stated judgement. Last summer, twenty-two years after the book I wrote about her, which she so disliked, appeared, I encountered Mary for the first time in an outdoor market in Blue Hill.
‘Hello Mary,’ I said. ‘Do you remember me?’
Her smile flashed and then, like a worn-out bulb, disappeared instantly.
‘Unfortunately,’ she said.
It didn’t mean a smile.”
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
“The Thin Man: A comedy-mystery film (1934), starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as the ever-bantering and happily tippling husband-and-wife team Nick and Nora Charles, who, with the aid of their wire-haired terrier Asta, investigate the disappearance of the tall, eccentric inventor Clyde Wynant (Edward Ellis), who is the ‘Thin Man’ of the title. The screenwriters Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich based their sparkling script on the novel The Thin Man (1932) by Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), who is said to have based the wisecracking and mutual teasing of Nick and Nora on his own relationship with the playwright Lillian Hellman (1905-84). There were several more Thin Man films, generally less successful than the first.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“Rhetorical Figure: An artful arrangement of words to achieve a particular emphasis and effect, as in apostrophe, chiasmus, and zeugma. A rhetorical figure does not alter the meanings of words as a metaphor may do. The repetitions in these lines from Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “St Winefred’s Well” are rhetorical in their emphasis and echoing:
‘T. What is it, Gwen, my girl? Why do you hove and haund me?
W. You came by Caerwys, sir?
V. I came by Caerwys
W. There
Some messenger there might have met/met you from my uncle.
T. Your uncle met the messenger-/met me; and this is the message:
Lord Bueno comes to night./
W. To night, sir!'”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
“Tropic of Cancer: A semi-autobiographical novel (1934) in experimental form by the US writer Henry Miller (1891-1980). Unashamedly exhibitionistic, the book reflects Miller’s bohemian life and sexual activities during the 1920s and 1930s. Tropic of Capricorn (1939) is a companion volume, recalling his childhood and earlier life in the United States. Both books were banned in the United States until the 1960s. Of Tropic of Cancer, the poet and critic Ezra Pound (1885-1972) commented: ‘At last an unprintable book which is readable.’ The Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are two parallel lines either side of the Equator between which the sun can be directly overhead at noon. Miller commented that
‘Cancer is separated from Capricorn only by an imaginary line… You live like a rock in the midst of the ocean; you are fixed while everything about you is in turbulent motion.’
A film version (1970) was directed by Joseph Strick.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
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