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Why is Gravity’s Rainbow considered postmodern, yet Finnegans Wake is not?
Why is Gravity’s Rainbow considered postmodern, yet Finnegans Wake is not?
Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) has been received as a canonical instance of postmodernism.
See
Pynchon, postmodernism and quantification: an empirical content…
fundagain
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A scientist tries to make a man more intelligent
I'm looking for a short story written in the first person where a scientist takes an unintelligent man and gives him a wonder drug. The man steadily gets more intelligent throughout the story, but then relapses. His rise and fall is detailed in a…
Rob Harding
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Does C. S. Lewis support annihilationism in The Last Battle?
C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle includes a scene of what amounts to the Last Judgment (I don't recall the exact chapter, but it's toward the end of the book):
The creatures came rushing on, their eyes brighter and brighter as they drew nearer and…
EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine
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Looking for a short story about eating, being "sent back in time", and samurai?
I read a short story several years back. I remember most of the plot, but I can't figure out the title. Anyways, this is what I remember from the story, can someone help me find the title?
There are two men who are traveling somewhere, I think one…
Silvermidnight
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Does Eli Mandel's poem about Auschwitz contain a rare word, or a typo?
I read in The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English (1982)
Eli Mandel's poem On the 25th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz: Memorial Services, Toronto, January 25th, 1970 YMHA Bloor and Spadina.
One of the last lines runs as…
Barnaby
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Who are the Mephistophelians?
In Mark Dunn's "progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable" Ella Minnow Pea, the populace of a small island are forbidden the use of certain letters of the English alphabet in speech and writing as they fall off of a sign. The story develops as…
Shokhet
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Why did T.S. Eliot compare “waiting for death” with “a feather on the back of the hand"?
A Song for Simeon
Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight…
user175
11
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What is a pisserroo?
What is a "pisserroo" in the following passage?
(Boys in the slum see a girl piss for the first time)
She stoops over. We watch her close.
"Wow!"
"Ain't that something, Harry?!" Ding Dong says.
"It sure is! I never seen nothing like that…
kaoru
11
votes
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What is the planet that "leads men straight on every road" in Dante's "Inferno"?
At the beginning of Inferno, Dante comes across a hill, which is being lit by the rays of a "planet":
But at the far end of that valley of evil
whose maze had sapped my very heart with fear!
I found myself before a little hill
and lifted up my…
Mithical
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Dystopian short story read in US high school: boy and man travel through ancient ruins which are actually our modern-day civilisation
I can't remember if the boy and the man are father and son or perhaps teacher and student. I seem to remember that the boy is in training to be a kind of priest, and that this is why he is being shown these ancient relics. They walk among the…
IreneGamine
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Would the chorus leader typically speak/sing along with the chorus in classical Greek plays?
I had assumed that the chorus leader would speak along with the chorus. He is a part of it, after all. However, when I asked my literature professor on a whim he wasn't completely sure. Doing my own research I found this:
the tragic poet Agathon…
bobble
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What does Dream's ruby represent?
In Volume One of The Sandman (Preludes and Nocturnes), Dream is held captive for 70 years. After escaping and taking vengeance on his (only surviving) captor, he returns home, to the Dreamworld. Finding it in disarray, he realizes that he needs to…
Shokhet
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Who "dribbled a lot and wasn’t allowed anything sharp" in "Good Omens"?
While reading Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, I stumbled across the following quote, in which Aziraphale’s calculations are described:
But these other calculations were of a kind no computer could ever do. Sometimes he would scribble…
Tita
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Meaning of "Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe" in To Kill A Mockingbird
I fail to understand the following sentence:
Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me.
"Out of what I knew not" = "Out of what I do not know".
How exactly…
Gowtam Chandrahasa
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"There are three sorts of people: those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea." Did Aristotle really say this?
The famous sentence "There are three sorts of people: those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea" is often attributed to Aristotle.
However, I was unable to find an actual reference in Aristotle works for this sentence. Did…
Pascal
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