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1500 questions
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Does Thomas the Tank Engine have free will?
In the story Thomas Comes to Breakfast, from Branch Line Engines by the Rev. W Awdry, Thomas's driver tells him:
"You know just where to stop, Thomas! You could almost manage without me!"
Thomas, conceited, thinks this is literally true and that…
Batperson
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What is close reading?
What exactly is "close reading"? How does it relate to the study of literature? Are there any instructions about how to do a close reading of a text/passage?
user111
14
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1 answer
How much of "The Adventure of the Second Stain" did Conan Doyle have planned when he wrote "The Naval Treaty"?
The first paragraph of the Holmes story The Naval Treaty, from Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, reads as follows (emphasis mine):
The July which immediately succeeded my marriage was made memorable by three cases of interest, in which I had the…
Rand al'Thor
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How did they cover 1,000 miles in 110 days at a speed of 5 miles per day?
In the beginning of Chapter Four of King Solomon's Mines we are given the distance travelled:
Now I do not propose to narrate at full length all the incidents of our long travel up to Sitanda's Kraal, near the junction of the Lukanga and Kalukwe…
Alex
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How did Madeline Usher survive without food or water?
In The Fall of the House of Usher, Madeline Usher is put in the vault for a week, without food or water, in a coffin. This is in addition to the fact that she had been sick, and so wasn't at her healthiest then.
How did she survive without food and…
Mithical
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Help me identify an old children's picture book featuring anthropomimetic arthropods
The book in question was written prior to 1990. The pages probably had no words — I was able to read at the time, so either it was not narrated or the words were not memorable. Each page, or pair of pages, featured a scene in some fictional town…
can-ned_food
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In Wind in the Willows, why is Mole's garden full of Italian heroes?
I recently noticed the passage in Wind in the Willows where Mole comes back to his old home contains this extraordinary quote.
On the walls hung wire baskets with ferns in them, alternating with
brackets carrying plaster statuary - Garibaldi, and…
Matt Thrower
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14
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Why did the stars throw down their spears?
William Blake's poem “The Tyger” from Songs of Experience contains one couplet whose meaning has always puzzled me, lines 17–18, the first two lines of the fifth stanza:
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their…
Torisuda
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Why couldn't Mr Dobbins become a doctor in "Tom Sawyer"?
In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, it's mentioned that the schoolteacher had an anatomy book in his desk due to wanting to be a doctor at one point.
The master, Mr. Dobbins, had reached middle age with an unsatisfied ambition. The…
EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine
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Is this fictional event of a ship becoming airborne because of a storm based on a real event?
In the book Nation, by Terry Pratchett, a sailing ship becomes airborne from the force of a storm, and is pushed inland quite a distance, before becoming lodged in trees. Is this possible? If so, are there records of it happening to other sailing…
NiceOrc
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Do the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh really contain the same rare proverb about the strength of a triple-stranded rope?
According to the Wikipedia article The Epic of Gilgamesh,
Several scholars suggest direct borrowing of Siduri's advice by the author of Ecclesiastes.[41]
A rare proverb about the strength of a triple-stranded rope, "a triple-stranded rope is not…
Tsundoku
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What are the challenges in translating a work of literature?
I'm currently in the process of reading Cyrano de Bergerac (translated by Charles Renauld). There, an introduction is made by Adolphe Cohn, said to be the Professor of the Romance languages and Literatures in Columbia University. You can find a copy…
Conor O'Brien
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Does Théoden actually say that he misses Gríma (his "old advisor") at one point in The Two Towers?
At roughly page 155 of The Two Towers, assuming that the English original follows roughly the same page numbers as my rather sloppy Swedish translation from 1970, king Théoden mentions that he now misses "both my old and new advisor", as Gandalf is…
Pater D.
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How old was Tatiana during the main events of "Eugene Onegin"?
Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse, by the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. The main characters are Eugene Onegin, a young and bored man, and Tatiana, an even younger girl who falls in love with Onegin.
Onegin is said to be in his twenties…
Gallifreyan
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Were all of Shakespeare's plays fully in iambic pentameter?
Were the plays within The Complete Works of Shakespeare entirely in iambic pentameter? I seem to recall singing bits (when there were lyrics) from Twelfth Night and definitely from Much Ado About Nothing, which were not in that metric form. …
Mikey
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