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1500 questions
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What is the narrative device that involves using inconsequential elements in the story?
I’m looking for the narrative device that, as opposed to Chekhov’s gun, involves purposely including accounts of events or things in the narrative that are inconsequential to the main story. This serves merely to add an extra sense of realism to the…
Andrew Peter Prifer
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What are the "lovely tales" in Keats' "Endymion"?
What is Keats saying in the last three lines here?
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the…
A. Goodier
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Trying to remember a junior fiction story about boys who go back to medieval times
The two main characters are around age 13. They find? steal? a time machine from someone and end up back in Medieval England. But it's not them exactly - their consciousnesses get put into other bodies. The protagonist finds himself in some knight's…
Nathaniel Irvin
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Was J.R.R. Tolkien building on a past tradition when relying heavily on languages he made up?
It is a uncontested and well known fact that Tolkien was a linguist, and he wrote Middle-Earth as a setting for his languages.
However, what interests me is whether the approach he took was out of the blue, or was he building on existing literary…
DVK
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Why doesn't Hamlet like improvisation?
In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Hamlet has a famous monologue about how to properly perform a play. During one portion of the monologue, he has some harsh words for people who improvise:
O, reform it altogether. And let those that play
your…
No Fear Shakespeare
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Seeing the world through green-tinted glasses
people thus situated, who have warm imaginations, generally amuse themselves by conjuring up an idol of perfection to which they attach all kinds of merit, probable or improbable. They invest the first face or figure that takes their fancy, with…
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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What does "And others, whose breasts love the feel of scapulars," mean in Baudelaire's "Damned Women"?
Baudelaire's poem "Femmes damnées" / "Damned Women" contains the following lines (fifth stanza):
Et d'autres, dont la gorge aime les scapulaires,
Qui, recélant un fouet sous leurs longs vêtements,
Mêlent, dans le bois sombre et les nuits…
Mark Read
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How can poetry be defined?
I've been trying to figure this out recently, but I can't.
My logic it this:
1) A lot of people think that poetry must rhyme. But the list of poets who broke with that tradition when it suited them is too long to write here. So...
2) Perhaps it is…
KittenWithAWhip
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Did C. S. Lewis ever intend to write about any of the other universes in The Magician's Nephew?
The Wood Between the Worlds has numerous pools. We're told about where three of them lead: our world, Narnia, and Charn. Evidently, each pool leads to a separate universe in the Chronicles of Narnia multiverse, each with its own history.
At least…
EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine
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How long did the Pevensies rule in Narnia?
The books imply that the Pevensies were in Narnia for years (or perhaps even decades) in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Is there any indication of exactly how long they were gone?
EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine
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Why does Macbeth move to and fortify Dunsinane?
The witches tell Macbeth that he will be defeated only if Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. This should give Macbeth a very good reason to avoid Dunsinsane, so that his enemies never focus on it. If I were Macbeth, I would probably burn down…
Rahul Kumar
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Why are the magicians who captured Morpheus "rubbish"?
Neil Gaiman is on record saying the people who captured Morpheus in issue #1 (i.e. Roderick Burgess and the Order of the Ancient Mysteries) are
completely rubbish, English, sort of Crowley-esque, hedge magicians
Do they deserve this evaluation,…
Gallifreyan
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Why is it important that 'Nowadays it's the girl who takes the initiative'?
In Sophie's World, we have one scene that can be described as a sex scene. It's in the chapter 'The Garden Party'; page 478 in my edition. Here's the relevant part:
The guests applauded, and one of the boys threw a firecracker up in the pear tree.…
Mithical
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9
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Complicated name features in Wuthering Heights
In Wuthering Heights, Catherine Earnshaw and her daughter Catherine Linton constantly change their names and created confusion as to who is who. And you would all have read the part where Lockwood discovers carved variation of their names…
Victoria
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9
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What effect does an epistolary format have on our understanding of the book as a reader?
There are many great works of literature written in the form of an epistolary novel. However, many of those stories could have also been told in a more traditional novel form. What effect does the epistolary novel format have on how novels are…
Benjamin
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