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The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and Wayfarers All
In The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame's magisterial work, the first half of the book is mostly given over to the adventures of Mole and Ratty (although we are introduced to Badger and Mr. Toad). It ends quietly in chapter 5 (Dulce Domum), with…
Mick
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Are there any species that are not sentient?
The Redwall series is full of talking animals. The main characters are usually mice or badgers. We see many examples of animals that are sentient; there are mice, shrews, sparrows, crows, cats, owls, hawks, ferrets, stoats, weasels, rats, rabbits,…
Mithical
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Did Stevenson really claim to have been inspired by brownies?
Jorge Luis Borges claims, in his Book of Imaginary Beings, that the author Robert Louis Stevenson attributed some of the stranger ideas in his writing to fantastical creatures such as brownies who inspired him. This quote from Borges can be found…
Rand al'Thor
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Had people related the work of Gogol before "The Nose"?
In The Nose, an opera by Demitri Shostakovich, Shostakovich combines many of Nikolai Gogol's stories, including The Nose, for which the opera is named, into a single story. Had previous critics or writers analyzed the works of Nikolai Gogol as a…
Benjamin
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Why does Piggy's accent not matter?
In Lord of the Flies,
...Piggy was an outsider, not by accent, which did not matter, but by fat, and ass-mar, and specs, and a certain disinclination for manual labor.
My understanding has always been that England is an intensely accent-conscious…
crmdgn
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In Great Expectations, who is the man at the pub in Chapter Ten?
In Chapter 10 of Dickens's Great Expectations, Pip goes to the pub to find Joe, as told by his sister. When he enters the pub, Joe and Mr. Wopsle are sitting at a table next to a mysterious man:
He was a secret-looking man whom I had never seen…
Fabjaja
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Why is there so little character to the character of Shadow in American Gods?
I recently finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Among the criticisms I felt fair to level at it was that Shadow, the central protagonist, is very much a blank slate. We rarely get any insight to his inner thought processes, and his speech and…
Matt Thrower
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What is meant to be gleaned from Patrick Bateman's love of specific musicians in American Psycho?
I've just finished reading American Psycho, and I'm confused why the book took the time to devote entire chapters to Bateman's love of different 80's artists. Specifically, Bateman spends upwards of ten pages just talking about why he loves Phil…
GGMG-he-him
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Why does the narrator of "Master and Margarita" say that Caribbean are fiction?
Bulgakov describes the appearance of the Archibald Archibaldovich (chief of the security of the MASSOLIT restaurant) in quite a peculiar way:
At midnight there appeared a vision in this hell. On to the verandah
strode a handsome, black-eyed…
Yasskier
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Is there a canonical map of Thomas Hardy's Wessex?
Most if not all of Thomas Hardy's novels are set in the fictional(ish) English region of Wessex. He uses many real towns and locations as settings, but gives them fictional names: for instance, Oxford becomes "Christminster" and Dorchester becomes…
Rand al'Thor
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A crime/detective story where the protagonist tells his murder story in great detail and still roams free
I read this story almost ten years ago and forgot its name. Google search isn't helping me to find it.
The story goes like this:
The murderer kills his ex, not out of spite, but for love; not love for his ex, but for his poultry farm that he so much…
Jahid
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What are chapter summary phrases called?
Is there a name for the literary technique of opening a chapter with a series of summary phrases? An example from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome:
Chapter II
Plans discussed.—Pleasures of “camping-out,” on fine nights.—Ditto, wet…
Brian Koser
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How did Mama and Papa bear know someone was sitting in their chairs?
Goldilocks sits in Mama and Papa bears' chairs, but does not break them:
After she'd eaten the three bears' breakfasts she decided she was feeling a little tired. So, she walked into the living room where she saw three chairs. Goldilocks sat in…
Owen
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What is the relationship between Heart of Darkness and The Hollow Men?
T.S. Eliot's poem The Hollow Men, unusually, opens with a quote from a Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness:
Mistah Kurtz— he dead.
In most printings of the poem that I've seen, this single quote is given an entire page which is otherwise blank. If…
Matt Thrower
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Do authors who translate their own works tend to do accurate translations?
Closely related: Accuracy of a translation: how to forge an opinion?
Several authors, such as Samuel Beckett, periodically translated their own works. Are their translations generally regarded as accurate? Do people tend to find them more - or less…
EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine
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