“National Velvet: A novel (1935) by Enid Bagnold (1889-1981). Velvet, a butcher’s daughter, win a piebald horse in a raffle. Disguised as a boy, she rides it in the Grand National, Britain’s premier steeplechase. Although she is past the winning post, she is disqualified for dismounting before the weighing-in. A popular film version (1945), directed by Clarence Brown, starred a 14-year-old Elizabeth Taylor.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“Rotten Reviews: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
‘I have never seen frogs in Virginia ‘shout and glare’…”
Loren Eiseley, Washington Post Book World
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
“Figurative Language: Language which uses figures of speech; for example, metaphor, simile, alliteration (qq.v). Figurative language must be distinguished from literal (q.v.) language. ‘He hared down the street’ or ‘He ran like a hare down the street’ are figurative (metaphor and simile respectively). ‘He ran very quickly down the street’ is literal. See HYPERBOLE; METONYMY; SYNECHDOCHE.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, poetry, readings/research
“A Fortiori From the stronger: with greater reason, or being logically a more obvious truth if a preceding assertion is true; by inference; all the more so.
‘Marlow’s interrupting voice also deepens our admiration for Conrad’s narrative technique. That is, it is an artifice which intermittently calls attention to itself. So also, a fortiori, is the obtrusive and disjunctive surface treatment of Molly Bloom’s maundering mind.’ Annie Dillard, Living by Fiction”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Of Mice and Men: A novella (1937) by John Steinbeck (1902-68). It centers on two casual labourers, Lennie, a simple, sentimental giant who loves small animals but does not know his own strength, and his friend George. In a tragic ending, George’s efforts are not enough to keep Lennie out of the trouble that he has unwittingly brought upon himself. The title is from ‘To a Mouse’ by Robert Burns (1759-96):
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
And lea’e us nought but grief and pain,
For promised joy.
A film version (1939) was directed by Lewis Milestone.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
“Aeschylus * Sophocles * Euripides
The apogee of Classical Athens’ two-century-long golden age of literature was the generation who thought and wrote between 461 and 431 BC. Theatre-going Greeks of this time witnessed the high-minded and complex tragedies of Aeschylus, the graceful, measured characterization of Sophocles and the more emotional and passionately charged creations of Euripides.
It is fitting that they are remembered as a trio, for each year three tragic playwrights produced a trilogy of tragedies (and a farcical comedy) that was performed over three consecutive days to honor Dionysus. These festivals were held around the time of the spring equinox. No more than three actors were permitted on the stage at any one time, their faces and that of the chorus covered in masks. At the end of the festival, one of the playwrights was voted the winner and given the prize of a goat, for the word ‘tragedy’ derives from ‘goat song.’”
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.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“When and for what work did Winston Churchill win the Nobel Prize in Literature? In 1953 for The Second World War.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
“Allusion A seemingly incidental but often significant reference, as to a writer, event, or figure from literature or mythology; passing or implicit mention. Adj. allusive; adv. Allusively; n. allusiveness; v. allude.
‘I said that to tease Widmerpool, feeling pretty certain he had never read a line of Gogol, though he would rarely if ever admit to failure in recognizing an allusion, literary or otherwise.’ –Anthony Powell, The Soldier’s Art”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, poetry
“James Laughlin: (1914-1997) American publisher, editor, and poet. The son of a wealthy Pittsburgh steelmaker, Laughlin was best known as the founder and guiding force behind New Directions Press. After an extended stay in Italy, where he studied with Ezra Pound, he founded New Directions Press at the age of twenty-two. He published then-unknown writers, commissioned the translation of a vast array of foreign books, and reprinted older books that Laughlin felt deserved attention. His excellent judgement is attested to by a survey of the New Directions catalogue, which included early books by Tennessee Williams, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Borges, and Nabokov. Laughlin is also a respected poet. In Another Country: Poems 1935-1975 (1978) showcases his spare style and precise, vibrant imagery, reflecting the precedent of the modernist writers he once published.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“Affective Fallacy The fallacy of judging the worth of a literary work by its emotional effect on the reader.”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
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