Category Archives: Reference

These are materials for teachers and parents, and you’ll find, in this category, teachers copies and answer keys for worksheets, quotes related to domain-specific knowledge in English Language Arts and social studies, and quotes on issues of professional concern. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Term of Art: Metonymy

Posted on July 19, 2018 | Leave a comment

“The figurative or symbolic use of the name of one thing for that of another with which it is associated, or of an attribute for the whole, e.g., ‘brass’ for military officers. Adjective: metonymic, metonymical; adverb: metonymically; noun: metonym.

‘A full set would also have included the brazen Perelman pun (‘My choler wilted’ for ‘My anger subsided’)…the Perelman micro-metonymy (‘Hanna listened to the veins throbbing in my temple’ for ‘I was speechless with anger at Hanna’) and the Perelman extrapolation of cliché into metaphor (‘The whole aviary in my head burst into song’ for ‘I was bird-brained’).’” Tom Wolfe, The New York Times

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Term of Art: Adaptation

Posted on July 18, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Broadly speaking, the recasting of a work to fit another, such as the recasting of novels and plays as film or television scripts. For example, Stephen Hero, A Passage to India, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and Les Liaisons dangereuses as stage plays; The Forsythe Saga, Daniel Deronda, War and Peace, Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown as television dramas. Sometimes a cycle or sequence is adapted: for instance, the dramatization of some of the Canterbury Tales as a musical comedy (1967). Short stories and poems are often equally suitable.

As an extension there are works like the Peyton Place and Colditz of which episodes continued to be presented long after the original stories had been used up.”

Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.

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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Posted on July 18, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A dystopian novel (1932) by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963). Its portrayal of an imagined future state in which men and women are processed into standardized batches by genetic engineering and lifelong conditioning was originally conceived as a challenge to the claims of H.G. Wells (1866-1946) for the desirability of eugenics. The title derives from Miranda’s exclamation in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611):

‘O brave new world,

That has such people in’t!’

V.i”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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The Four Hundred

Posted on July 17, 2018 | Leave a comment

“’The Four Hundred’ is the nickname for the social elite of New York, an alliance of old landed families, financial speculators, manufacturers and entrepreneurs who had assimilated European social manners and snobbery in the late nineteenth century. The overlooked the divisions of the Civil War, delighted in transatlantic marriages with the nobility of Europe, and guarded themselves from ‘new money’ coming in from the West, especially those who put too much crushed ice in their wine. The concept of the Four Hundred was popularized by Ward McAllister, the Beau Brummel of Manhattan, who coined the expression from the number who could be comfortably entertained, and felt at ease, in Mrs. Astor’s ballroom.”

Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.

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Rotten Reviews: An Aldous Huxley/Brave New World Omnibus

Posted on July 17, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A lugubrious and heavy-handed piece of propaganda.”

New York Herald Tribune

“… a somewhat amusing book; a bright man can do a good deal with two or three simple ideas.”

Granville Hicks, New Republic

“There are no surprises in it; and if he had no surprises to give us why would Mr. Huxley have bothered to turn this essay in indignation into a novel?”

New Statesman and Nation

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

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The Brooklyn Bridge as Metaphor and Object

Posted on July 17, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A long poem (1930) by the US poet Hart Crane (1899-1932). The work is a Whitmanesque celebration of America, its culture and history, and the image of Brooklyn Bridge acts as a link between past and present, a symbol of imagination and striving:

‘O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.’
Hart Crane, The Bridge, proem ‘To Brooklyn Bridge’

Brooklyn Bridge is a suspension bridge in New York City, spanning the East River and so linking Brooklyn and Manhattan Island. It was built in 1869-83, and incorporates a number of impressive technical innovations. With its tough, angular, futuristic structure, it became something of an icon for American modernists, being the subject of semi-abstract paintings by, for example, John Marin (1910-1932) and Joseph Stella (1917-1918). More recently, David and Victoria (‘Posh Spice’) Beckham chose to call their son Brooklyn because he was conceived while they crossed the bridge.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

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On Education and Civil Society

Posted on July 16, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A liberal education is at the heart of civil society, and at the heart of a liberal education is the act of teaching.”

A. Bartlett Giamatti

“The American Teacher” in Harper’s (1980)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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The Devil’s Dictionary: Pantheism

Posted on July 16, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Pantheism: The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000. 

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Book of Answers: Cotton and Increase Mather

Posted on July 16, 2018 | Leave a comment

How was Cotton Mather related to Increase Mather? Increase (1639-1723) was the father of Cotton (1663-1728). Both were clergymen, theologians, and prolific writers in Puritan New England.

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

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Term of Art: Blank Verse

Posted on July 13, 2018 | Leave a comment

“In prosody, unrhymed verse. In English, the term usually means unrhymed iambic pentameter. In classical prosody, rhyme was not used at all; with the introduction of rhyme in the Middle Ages, blank verse disappeared. It was reintroduced in the 16th century and in England became the standard medium of dramatic poetry and frequently of epic poetry. Shakespeare’s plays, for example, are written mostly in blank verse.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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