Most Popular
1500 questions
7
votes
2 answers
What are the charactaristics of German Trümmerliteratur?
Trümmerliteratur is a literary movement that originated in Germany shortly after the Second World War. What are typical charactaristics of Trümmerliteratur?
How can a work that is Trümmerliteratur be recognized as such?
wythagoras
- 756
- 7
- 21
7
votes
1 answer
Novel: young woman blows herself up at her rich dad's party for Latin American dictators
I read this book for a university course between 1993-97.
The narration is hectic & fragmented: inner thoughts mixed with straight narration mixed with flashbacks, run-on and choppy sentences, funky grammar, etc. I think it would be classified as…
Katarina_YYZ
- 73
- 4
7
votes
1 answer
In "Sounder", why is the dog the only character with a name?
The book Sounder strikes me as quite unique, in that it gives a lot of detail, and yet most of the characters, even main characters like the boy and his father, are not named. The only character with a name is the dog, Sounder. And yet this seems so…
kristan
- 1,003
- 10
- 17
7
votes
2 answers
Did Frodo have a prophetic dream?
Right before Frodo and company head into the Old Forest, Frodo has this dream.
Eventually he fell into a vague dream, in which he seemed to be
looking out of a high window over a dark sea of tangled trees. Down
below among the roots there was…
Himarm
- 1,313
- 14
- 21
7
votes
1 answer
What does Thomas More try to do with Greek puns in Utopia?
Thomas More uses Greek puns such as Hythloday that means speaker of nonsense, etc. What is he trying to do? What difference would it make for Greek readers and non-Greek readers?
Binary Yildirim
- 71
- 2
7
votes
1 answer
What was the exact wording from Ivanhoe of this advice on how to free yourself from slavery?
All you need to free yourself from slavery is a couple of pints of beer
I read Ivanhoe for the first time translated into Spanish, and am having a heck of time finding the material in any English editions for reference.
oliver
- 71
- 1
7
votes
1 answer
Anthology: one story about an astronaut falling on flowers, another about a wife trying to kill her husband
I am trying to remember the name of a book with short stories inside. I remember 2 stories from it:
There was an astronaut on a foreign planet with flowers all around called floofs or phoofs, I forgot. His helmet broke and he fell upon those…
Chrysley Abellana
- 71
- 2
7
votes
1 answer
Novel about a contract killer being pursued by other killers - Started with an icepick guy and ended with a Latino woman disguised as a cleaning lady
I don't remember exactly when I read this, probably over 10 years ago, somewhere in the late 2000s. The protagonist is some sort of hired killer, who winds up being the target of a contract, leading to a variety of killers going after him. I don't…
Sean Duggan
- 10,493
- 2
- 30
- 66
7
votes
1 answer
In "The Library of Babel" is the "cyclical book" really God?
In the second paragraph of The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges, the narrator says,
This cyclical book is god.
However, later in the story he says,
On some shelf in some hexagon (men reasoned) there must exist a book which is the formula and…
Benjamin
- 6,053
- 2
- 30
- 76
7
votes
1 answer
Why is there no spelling consistency in Robert Ludlum's books?
I just started reading "The Bourne Supremacy" and I see that in some places Robert Ludlum spells things the British way, and in others the American way. For example, on one page you'd see "favorite" and on another one you'd see "favourite". Or, he…
Pavel Orekhov
- 173
- 5
7
votes
1 answer
How is it 1100 miles from Hannibal to southern Arkansas in Huck Finn?
In Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it says:
Well, Aunt Polly she said that when Aunt Sally wrote to her that Tom and SID had come all right and safe, she says to herself: "Look at that, now! I might have expected it, letting him go…
B. Clay Shannon-B. Crow Raven
- 1,594
- 10
- 20
7
votes
3 answers
Why is Hemingway's generation a ‘lost generation’?
I recently began reading Hemingway’s memoir, A Moveable Feast. In it, Hemingway and his contemporary Americans are described as a ‘lost generation’:
It was when we had come back from Canada and were living in the rue Notre-Dame-des-Chanps and Miss…
Mozibur Ullah
- 1
- 5
- 16
7
votes
1 answer
What is the significance of "half past two" in Wolfgang Borchert's The Clock and The Bread?
In both The Clock and The Bread by Wolfgang Borchert there is a mention of the events happening at "half past two" in the morning. I have been unable to find a historical event of World War Two that specifically coincided with this time, and was…
S. Wilson
- 73
- 4
7
votes
1 answer
Looking for an Aeschylus quote mistranslated from Polish
I am working through a book of poetry by Tadeusz Miciński, a Polish writer who was active toward the end of the 19th century. The book is called "W mroku gwiazd" or "In the Twilight of the Stars" and was published in 1902. I found a PDF copy of the…
Nathaniel D. Hoffman
- 218
- 1
- 5
7
votes
1 answer
Paradise Lost pagan gods
In Paradise Lost, Milton depicts the Greek and Egyptian "gods" as among the fallen angels. It does not seem to matter whether the individual god had an evil or good character in its original myths. As these gods are depicted as so humanlike in their…
user5698
- 71
- 1