“Abroad, adj. At war with savages and idiots. To be a Frenchman abroad is to be miserable; to be an American abroad is to make others miserable.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities
“History is the sum total of all the things that could have been avoided.”
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, philosophy/religion
“The tediousness of continued allegory, and that too seldom striking or ingenious, has also contributed to render the Faerie Queen peculiarly tiresome…Spenser maintains his place upon the shelves, among our English classics; but he is seldom seen on the table.”
David Hume, in The History of Great Britain 1759
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 humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion, poetry, readings/research
“1066 and All That: A classic humorous survey of British history (1930) by W.C. Sellar (1898-1951) and R. J. Yeatman (1898-1968), comprising ‘a subtle mixture of schoolboy howlers, witty distortions, and artful puns.’ The book was designed to satirize the smugness of the English and the teaching of history by rote, but ironically itself became a cultural icon. A typical definition is ‘The Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right but Repulsive).’ 1066, as the date of the Norman Conquest, probably still remains the best known date in British history, ‘all that’ being the blur of dates and events that occurred before and after it.
Ten for 66 and All That is the title of the autobiography of the Australian leg-spin bowler Arthur Mailey (1886=1967), punning on the title of Sellar and Yeatman’s books and celebrating his feat of taking ten wickets for 66 runs for the Australians against Gloucestershire in 1921. In 2001 England’s World Cup hat-trick hero, Sir Geoff Hurst, published an autobiography with the punning title 1966 and All That.”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged games/sports, humor, literary oddities, readings/research
“The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.”
The Twelve Seasons: A Perpetual Calendar Country “February: The One We Could Do Without” (1949)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion, readings/research
“…absolute raving…his principles are ludicrously wicked, and his poetry a mélange of nonsense, cockneyism, poverty and pedantry.”
Literary Gazette
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 humor, literary oddities, poetry
Here’s a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Dorothy Parker, the great Algonquin Wit and (in my opinion) an under-recognized figure in American letters. If you or your students have an interest in Dorothy Parker, this blog contains numerous entries on her: just search her name on the homepage search bar.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Attending an unsuccessful revival of the Maeterlinck play Aglavaine and Selysette, Tallullah Bankhead commented to Aleck Woollcott, ‘There is less to this than meets the eye.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
“Aberration, n. Any deviation in another from one’s own habit of thought, not sufficient in itself to constitute insanity. “
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000.
OK, pushing forward to blog post 3,000, here is a lesson plan on the Crime and Puzzlement case “A Matter of Delicacy.”
I open this lesson, to get young minds focused and working, with this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Langston Hughes. This scan of the illustration and questions of and for the case drives the lesson. Finally, here is the typescript of the answer key to solve the case.
Incidentally, I am just about to post a trove of supporting materials for the Crime and Puzzlement units over on the About Posts and Texts page, the link to which is just below the banner of this website.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
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