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Why might Robert Frost specify a ' long two-pointed ladder' in the poem 'After Apple Picking'?
The opening lines of Robert Frost's 'After Apple Picking' read:
My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon…
Kiteration
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In Swift's "Gulliver's Travels", Gulliver claims that 'princes seldom get their meat hot'. What does Gulliver (and Swift) mean by that?
In the the novel 'Gulliver's Travels', there is a passage in Part II Chapter 3 where the narrator "quarrels with the Queen's Dwarf". In that passage, Gulliver makes the aside that princes 'seldom get their meat hot'. Note that throughout the novel,…
Kiteration
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Why, at the begining of the tale Jealous Twins, does the storyteller frame the story?
The Verba Africana website is a fantastic website that publishes recordings, transcriptions, and analysis of African oral literature.
One of the stories published on the site is called Jealous Twins; it is an Ewe tale.
One of the interesting things…
user111
11
votes
3 answers
Why are there so many references to Moneylenders and Jews in 19th century fiction?
In 19th century fiction, there are a lot of references to moneylenders as "Jews". For example, in "Framley Parsonage", by Anthony Trollope, Lord Lufton says "the pocket-books of the Jews are stuffed full of his dishonoured papers".
What is the…
mikado
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Are the five narrators in The Fifty Year Sword more than a gimmick?
Mark Z. Danielewski's The Fifty Year Sword is told by five narrators whose parts were ostensibly collected in interviews and tightly interleaved. Quoting the first page:
Maybe because the history of any ghost story is a ghost story unto itself,…
Martin Ender
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What's the significance of Draco's reading material?
In chapter 2 of Lust Over Pendle, we see a pile of books and magazines that Draco's been using to study for pretending to be a Muggle:
Draco gestured at the window seat of the breakfast room. It was piled high with Muggle magazines; she spotted…
BESW
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Do I need to read the Redwall books in any specific order?
The Redwall series by Brian Jacques is pretty long: ~40 books, iirc. They all focus on different characters, but there are lots of people that appear in lots, such as Martin the Warrior.
Do I have to read the Redwall books in any specific order?
Mithical
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Who was (were?) the inspiration for Carrie?
The Wikipedia article on Stephen King's Carrie says that Carrie is based on two girls in King's schools. It has this quote, with a "citation needed" attached:
She was a very peculiar girl who came from a very peculiar family. Her
mother wasn't a…
muru
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Use of "pounds" instead of "roubles" in passage of "The Idiot"
In the 1st Chapter, Part I of Dostoevsky's The Idiot (Eva Martin's translation) you can find the following passage:
These men generally have about a hundred pounds a year to live on (...)
In this book, when talking about money, "roubles" is…
LLCampos
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11
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1 answer
Why is Rousseau saying that "[...] Russia was civilized too soon"?
In The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau says
[...] Russia will never be really civilized, because it was civilized too soon
What is he referring to, when saying it was civilized too soon, and why that would prevent Russia from being…
Teddy
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How does "handwriting" provide evidence for dating Beowulf's composition to "the first half of the eighth century"?
The Wikipedia article for Beowulf has this interesting bit in the "Authorship and date" section:
On the other hand, some scholars argue that linguistic, palaeographical (handwriting), metrical (poetic structure), and onomastic (naming)…
bobble
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What did the men use to destroy Sandleford Warren?
In Watership Down, Chapter 21, Holly describes what happened back at Sandleford Warren. He does not understand what the men were doing. I don't either. Here's the relevant text [with a lot of side-commentary cut out]:
They took down some big, long…
bobble
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11
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1 answer
Teenager in orphanage or prison
I am looking for a story that was part of a Reader's Digest anthology.
I read in the very early 1990s as a German translation, but I am pretty sure, the story is from the USA (and was probably written in the 1980s).
I remember neither title nor…
Arsak
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A pair of children decide that their neighbor is a witch and convince her to try flying
I believe I checked this out from our library in Kentucky somewhere between 1986 and 1995. I remember it as a short book, less than a hundred pages, maybe less than thirty. A pair of children (at least. There could have been more. And I don't…
Sean Duggan
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What is the "a-" prefix in "a-flying" and "a-getting" in Herrick's "To the Virgins"?
From Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time":
Gather ye Rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to day,
To morrow will be dying.
The glorious Lamp of Heaven, the Sun,
The…
user12179