All Questions

In Thomas De Quincey's 1823 essay "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth", why did “the knocking at the gate” puzzle De Quincey? What does he mean by saying "it [the knocking] reflected back upon the ...

I hope you will be able to help me out here :) My best friend is marrying soon and it's a tradition in Germany for the friends to prepare a so called "wedding newspaper". This is some kind of ...

This is probably a Soviet-era children's book. It is about a boy's journey by train. As I remember it, not much happens plot-wise, but the boy's sense of wonder makes everything he encounters (The ...

I'm trying to identify a book, or series of books I read as a child. The setting was pre-columbian Central America, the protagonists were belonged to a river based tribe (lots of big canoes etc). If ...

I was reading Antinatalism on Wikiquote and saw Antinatalism - Wikiquote Above all, we must make the reproductive question ethically relevant. A coin is turned around before it is handed to the ...

The boots were approaching again. The door opened. O'Brien came in. Winston started to his feet. The shock of the sight had driven all caution out of him. For the first time in many years he ...

On page 334 of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, Elrod responds to the man’s assertion that the ears on his scapular were taken from Apaches by saying that the “Apaches would give a watermelon a pure ...

Hoping you can help with this half-remembered poem that from what I can recall was written by someone who worked for the New Statesman or the Spectator in the 1970s. The opening part is: 'They say ...

In a Grove is one of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa best-known short stories, partly due to Kurosawa's film Rashomon. In the short stories, we get several accounts of the death of samurai Kanazawa no Takehiro. ...

I'm visiting my girl this week (long-distance relationship, different country) and at some point she told me about being a big fan of Anna Karenina. However, the copy she had read was old and falling ...

From chapter 1 of The Great Gatsby: No — Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my ...

It is often said that many of the English translations of Jules Verne (especially those in the 19th and early 20th century) are not of very good quality as the translators have summarized dialogues, ...

Why did Bill Watterson name Calvin after the reformer, John Calvin and Hobbes after the philosopher Thomas Hobbes?

I've been reading through some fables of Aesop's. I notice that some of them draw an explicit moral, but I don't know whether these were edited in later. For example, this version of "boy and snails" ...

Mary, who having, in consequence of being the only plain one in the family, worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, and was always impatient for display... had neither genius nor taste, and ...

What do the phrases in bold mean in this passage from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice? Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty; he had looked at her without admiration at the ...

This famous Persian poet and mystic was named Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (جلال‌الدین محمد بلخى‎) or Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (جلال‌الدین محمد رومی), where Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad was his actual ...

Minor spoilers for Fingersmith follow. Pornography is an omnipresent but tangential feature in the plot of Sarah Waters' novel Fingersmith. Several important characters are related to the trade as ...

I can only remember the rough plot of a novel that I read many (15, 20?) years ago. (I am not talking about the film "Allied".) It went something like this. The wife in a US American married couple ...

Has it ever happened to some of you to experience a sort of emptiness and to no longer be able to appreciate a book after having read a novel so "immense" that nothing can compete with it anymore? ...

The unit "Memories of Childhood" (a short five minute read) is on my curriculum; I think it consists of excerpts from two different books, one by Zitkala-Sa and one by Bama, presented together. But ...

It is probably impossible to know how literature or music were born. However I would like what research says about how poetry was born. Perhaps some people claim that it came into existence after ...

I remember during my English class reading an extract of a well-known novel. It was about a lady spraining her ankle and a gentleman helping her, I recollect. I have always thought it to be from Pride ...

In act 1, scene 7, Lady Macbeth encourages Macbeth to keep his promise and kill king Duncan, but is there any textual evidence from the play regarding his earlier oath to kill the king? Here, for ...

Here is the summary of the poem "Death Be Not Proud" by Jon Donne (Source - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44107/holy-sonnets-death-be-not-proud)- “Death Be Not Proud” presents an argument ...

When only Lombard and Vera are left alive, they have this dialogue that makes it seem like Lombard was the murderer. And while you could claim that it was a mutual misunderstanding (both of them ...

This question maybe will be a silly one, due to the fact that I'm not a academic researcher on literature, but in fact someone who intend to write a short tale. So, recently I watched this channel ...

The below paragraph is from "Roman Fever'. "Alida Slade's awfully brilliant; but not as brilliant as she thinks," would have summed it up; though she would have added, for the enlightenment of ...

I am reading Edith Wharton’s Roman Fever. I have a question which is beyond my understanding, being not a native English speaker. The phrase is as below from the original text. "I'd rather live ...

The first part of Jean Rhys' novel Wide Sargasso Sea is set in Jamaica, but the main character's mother is from Martinique, where French and the French-based Martiniquan Creole are spoken. The family'...

The song "Africa" by Toto is at least nominally about the narrator's relationship with a woman: I hear the drums echoing tonight But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation She's ...

I am reading Edith Wharton’s 'Roman Fever'. I have a couple of question which are beyond my understanding, being not a native English speaker. "I'd rather live opposite a speakeasy for a change; at ...

In Lorca's Ode to Walt Whitman, his hommage to the great American poet, he has the following few verses: That's why I don't raise my voice, old Walt Whitman ... ... against the men with that ...

(Note: Not sure if this is the right place to ask this question, but this link: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/300800/where-can-i-ask-questions-about-a-broadway-show brought me here.) My ...

I know the play caused drama over feminist ideas and all, but what about the social structure, such as in the end when Nora ignores Torvald's statement "You don’t understand the society you live in" ...

In Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (1894-95) some of the characters meet in Christminster (Oxford) on "Remembrance Day". For example: "The place seems gay," said Sue. "Why—it is Remembrance Day!—...

I used to have a set of "Just William" audiobooks. One of these was about when William went out for the evening with his school choir or similar, and ended up going into somebody's house, the owner of ...

I remember listening to a "Just William" audiobook when I was younger about a Christmas Day when he received a mouth organ, and started playing it really early in the morning.

Now was the moment for her resolution to be executed, and, while her courage was high, she immediately said, 'Mr Darcy, I am a very selfish creature; and, for the sake of giving relief to my own ...

The short story "Should Wizard hit Mommy" by John Updike (a short five-to-ten-minute read) is on my curriculum; it involves a father who tells a nap-time story to his daughter. It appears to be a ...

I am having some trouble comprehending a portion of "Liberty Tree" by Thomas Paine, and was unable to find a decent analysis of it. It is my understanding that this poem is about the Liberty Tree that ...

I remember a poem about a little girl who is with her mum and is trying to change the sleeping arrangements or something so that she can stay in her dad's bed. I remember something about the father ...

A Supplement to the Journey to the West is a Chinese novel from around 1640 that was written as a type of addendum to the great classic novel Journey to the West. Journey to the West is set during the ...

In Ted Hughes' "In Laughter" (A Crow poem. See it fully here), the first paragraph depicts "colliding" and "crashing" as the kind of events that happen "In laughter": In laughter Cars collide and ...

During the 2nd chapter of Baptism Of Fire, Geralt and Dandelion come across a group of traders trying to sell Cahir to the Nilfgaardian army, who are introduced as "havekars", basically war profiteers ...

Hamlet Act 5 Scene 2: HAMLET: So much for this, sir. Now shall you see the other. You do remember all the circumstance? HORATIO: Remember it, my lord! Horatio replies to Hamlet calling ...

Does The Promised Land by Władysław Reymont have an English translation? I could not find it on Amazon. I am very naive about book shopping beyond Amazon and I could not find anything by Googling. ...

Joseph Conrad's short story "The Idiots": Millot was stumbling, laughing, swearing meaninglessly out of pure satisfaction, pleased with himself for having run down that fly-by-night. “As if there ...

From Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (volume 1, chapter 4): Mr. Bingley inherited property to the amount of nearly a hundred thousand pounds from his father, who had intended to purchase an ...

In Stephen King's IT, we are introduced to some particularly evil characters such as Beverley's husband Tom Rogan, Henry Bowers, and most notably Patrick Hockstetter. King delves into this maniacal, ...