Questions tagged [meaning]
Questions regarding the meaning of certain terms or phrases used in a work of literature. If your question concerns the symbolic significance of something whose surface meaning is clear, use the [symbolism] tag instead. Please add specific tags as well: for the author (if known), the language (if not English), and either the work itself (if long) or the [poetry] or [short-stories] tags for short works.
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What is the meaning of Lord Vetinari's dungeon door in Terry Pratchett's "Guards! Guards!"?
The following passage is taken from the section of the book where Captain Vimes gets thrown into the dungeon, where he realizes that the Patrician is also being held captive:
It was a perfectly ...
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Meaning of “All spirits are enslaved that serve things evil” in "Prometheus Unbound"
The line “all spirits are enslaved that serve things evil” can be found in the play Prometheus Unbound by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
My initial interpretation is, spirits that serve evil are enslaved by ...
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Meaning of "the way they used to use up old women, in Russia, sweeping dirt" in "The Handmaid's Tale"
I think of my mother, sweeping up deadly toxins; the way they used to use up old women, in Russia, sweeping dirt. Only this dirt will kill her.
What does this mean?
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Meaning of "Am I clear? Have I a certificate, or what have I to do to get one? And when will it be dated? You can't think what hangs by it!"
(From The Wrecker by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, Chapter XVIII, published 1892)
Passage 286
“Even so, Jim. My questions,” I repeated. “I put questions as well as yourself; and however ...
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What does Anthony Burgess mean about "the State is all that matters and no one has a right to hear Beethoven"?
That’s what I believe in – mind, free mind, trying to understand itself as well as the world without, and to hell with the little men who try to stop free enquiry and the State is all that matters and ...
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Meaning of "the field was found to be plowed as thoroughly as any young man at Oxford" in 'The Book of Dragons'
E. Nesbit, in The Book of Dragons, toward the end of the chapter titled 'The Island of the Nine Whirlpools', wrote:
The nine rubies were used afterwards in agriculture. You had only to
throw them out ...
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Meaning of Shell, Remove, and Hundreds in Alice Winn's In Memoriam (and other novels with public school settings)
Alice Winn's In Memoriam (2023) is partly set in an English public school around the outbreak of World War I. Toward the beginning of the novel, the narrator states:
Preshute was a younger public ...
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Meaning of "My owners'll have to rank with the rest on their charter-party"?
(From The Wrecker by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, Chapter XVI, published 1892)
Passage 256
“All the same,” continued Nares, “you went into the opium-smuggling with your head down; and a ...
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Greek Alexander Romance - Plot device or other function of Alexander's surreptitious stealing of Persian drinking cups?
In one of the more common form factors of the Greek Alexander Romance (by Pseudo-Callisthenes), we have this passage, located in Book II, 15:
As they began to drink more deeply, Alexander had an idea:...
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Symbolism in saying that a grove, in the agitation of a storm, cannot be delineated from its picture in water
In the book The Information - A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick, there is a portion of text which speaks about the gradually increasing meanings/senses attached to verbs like go, make, take ...
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What did W M Praed mean by 'see if he turns out his toe'?
I had the pleasure of coming across one of Winthrop Mackworth Praed's better-known poems the other day, his 'A Letter of Advice', which purports to be a verse epistle from one young woman to another, ...
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Did Humbert kill a female pedestrian towards the end of Lolita?
Towards the end of the novel Lolita when Humbert has just killed Quilty and starts driving like a maniac, he says this:
I turned off the road, and after two or three big bounces, rode up a grassy ...
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What does "Christnique" mean in "1985" by Anthony Burgess?
This word appears twice in 1985 by Anthony Burgess:
‘That’s it. Without us how would the Christniques get on?’
They go out wanting to be cracked. Then they practise the Christnique of loving your ...
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What is the meaning of the following sentence of The Swimmer by John Cheever?
What is the meaning of the following sentence of The Swimmer by John Cheever?
His life was not confining, and the delight he took in this thought could not be explained by its suggestion of escape.
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What is the "slow wheel" in Frost's "Into My Own"?
Into My Own, by Robert Frost (first two stanzas):
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But ...
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1
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In George Meredith's "Ode to the Comic Spirit", what does "Thou guardian issue of the harvest brain !" mean?
The Internet Archive (see my tips for using this website at the end of this question) has in it's entirety J. B. Priestley's biography of George Meredith. On page 115 Priestley says that the first ...
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What did J. B. Priestley mean by, "Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself—with a smile."
One of the most popular J. B. Priestley quotes is:
Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself—with a smile.
Source: https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/j-b-priestley-quotes
https://literature....
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What are "devices of orthodoxy" in this context?
White always mates because the better player has opted for the white
pieces. But black is free to win if he can.
In that its citizens are free to play the game of memory control, of
working out the ...
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Meaning of "No turban walks across the lessened floors" in Wallace Stevens' "The Plain Sense of Things"
In Wallace Stevens' "The Plain Sense of Things", the meaning of every sentence, the sense of every verse, every image, is clear and straightforward; nothing is impressionistic or vague - ...
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What is a “sawney tea” in Kingsley Amis’ “The Riverside Villas Murder”?
From The Riverside Villas Murder by Kingsley Amis:
‘Good.’ The colonel worked his bell-push. ‘Thank you for coming, Peter.'
‘Oh no, sir, thank you for a sawney tea. And the music.’
Kingsley Amis (...
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Meaning of "a bride high-mated with the spheres" in Sarojini Naidu's 'To India'
Sarojini Naidu's To India uses a nurturing mother as a metaphor for the country throughout the poem. The first few lines run so:
O young through all thy immemorial years!
Rise, Mother, rise, ...
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Meaning of "twist of felt" in "The Tiger in the Smoke"
I found this description of the character Meg Elginbrodde in Margery Allingham's The Tiger in the Smoke:
A swathe of flax-white hair protruded from a twist of felt, and underneath was something not ...
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2
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Meaning of "her parish and her poultry" in "Pride and Prejudice"
From volume 2, chapter 5 of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen:
Elizabeth could safely say that it was a great happiness where that was the case, and with equal sincerity could add, that she firmly ...
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What did Mrs. Lippett say to her?
In imagination she followed first one equipage then another to the big houses dotted along the hillside. She pictured herself in a fur coat and a velvet hat trimmed with feathers leaning back in the ...
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What does "Which do you want — the truth or my resignation? I won’t lie for you" in this context from Asimov's book I, Robot indicate?
The politician straightened out of his chair. “Then we shall see what the insides of Mr. Byerley look like. It will mean publicity for U. S. Robots — but I gave you your chance.”
Lanning turned ...
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What are the "sirisha-bowers" in Sarojini Naidu's 'Indian Love Song'?
This is the first stanza of Sarojini Naidu's wonderfully evocative poem Indian Love Song:
She
Like a serpent to the calling voice of flutes,
Glides my heart into thy fingers, ...
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What does "the clustering keovas" mean in Sarojini Naidu's "The Snake Charmer"?
In Sarojini Naidu's "The Snake Chamer", the poem opens like this:
Whither dost thou hide from the magic of my flute-call?
In what moonlight-tangled meshes of perfume,
Where the clustering ...
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Meaning of "Bore many gentlemen" in Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure"?
In act I, scene 5, of Measure for Measure, Lucio says:
Lucio. This is the point.
The Duke is very strangely gone from hence;
Bore many gentlemen (my selfe being one)
In hand, and hope of action: but ...
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What scene is "To the west the Park dripped wretchedly...about its affairs" describing?
The fog was like a saffron blanket soaked in ice-water. It had hung
over London all day and at last was beginning to descend. the sky was
yellow as a duster and the rest was a granular black, ...
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Meaning of Proust's "Real life, life at last laid bare and illuminated ... is literature"
Marcel Proust writes in The Past Recaptured (English translation by Andreas Mayor, 1970):
Real life, life at last laid bare and illuminated—the only life in consequence which can be said to be really ...
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The distinction between the Orwell's belief about real world and his imagination
Orwell seemed to believe that the real world, as opposed to that of
his feverish and genuinely diseased imagination, was moving in the
direction of bigger and worse cacotopias.
1985 by Anthony Burgess
...
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What does the clown mean by saying that brothels in the cities "shall stand for seed" in the second scene of "Measure for Measure"?
In act I, scene 2, of Measure for Measure, the clown uses the word seed:
Clow. All howses in the Suburbs of Vienna must bee
pluck'd downe.
Bawd. And what shall become of those in the Citie?
Clow. ...
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Two Questions About Peter Pan (Grammar Term and French Heraldry Term), J. M Barrie novel and not play [closed]
The first unknown sentence (Chapter 5):
Feeling that Peter was on his way back, the Neverland had again woke into life. We ought to use the pluperfect and say wakened, but woke is better and was ...
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Did Poirot fabricate a fingerprint in "The ABC Murders"?
"I just can't believe it," said Meagan Barnard. "Could it be true?"
"It does explain why our murderer had two personalities," I said. "It's great that you got Clarke'...
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How should we understand care and nature as laid out by Seneca?
Seneca writes in one of his letters:
Unius bonum natura perficit, dei scilicet alterius cura hominis.
Which is something like:
God is fulfilled by his Nature; but that of the other, man, is
...
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What does "grinning" mean in Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen"?
At the beginning of Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen", when describing the distorting mirror that would then shatter, the word "grin" is used:
If a good thought passed ...
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What does 'sheers' mean in scene 2, act I of "Measure for Measure"?
In act I, scene 2, of Measure for Measure, one of the gentlemen uses the word sheer:
Luc. I, why not? Grace, is Grace, despight of all con-,
trouersie: as for example; Thou thy selfe art a wicked
...
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0
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Ending of Joyce Carol Oates story "Lady with a pet dog"
This is a rewritten Chekhov story.
This is the epiphany moment for Anna, when she accepts their love, but the ending is still quite ambiguous.
Their love beginning again, in spite of them? “How can ...
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A question about sewing a collar in Tom Sawyer
In the opening chapter of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, we find Aunt Polly trying to dupe Tom into revealing that he skipped school to go for a swim. To preempt a potential line of questioning, Tom ...
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Antecedent of a pronoun in Byron's "The Bride of Abydos"
What is the antecedent of the pronoun they in the context below, from Byron's The Bride of Abydos, Canto I, stanza 5?
He is an Arab to my sight, *
Or Christian crouching in the fight. – (145)
But ...
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1
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Meaning of dashes and "no more" in Byron's "The Bride of Abydos"
I came across this verse in Canto I, stanza 5, of Byron's The Bride of Abydos:
That blood – he hath not heard – no more –
Can someone explain the use of the dashes here and the meaning of no more?
...
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Meaning of "work me more annoy" in Byron's "The Bride of Abydos"
I am reading Byron's The Bride of Abydos and I came across this sentence in Canto I, stanza 5:
'Much I misdoubt this wayward boy
Will one day work me more annoy – (133)
How are we to understand the ...
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2
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Meaning of "let the old and weary sleep" in Byron's "The Bride of Abydos"
I am unsure about the meaning of a passage from Lord Byron's The Bride of Abydos (Canto I, stanza 3).
How are we to understand the sentence between dashes: let the old and weary sleep below?
What ...
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1
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Meaning of the word "award" in a stanza of Byron's "The Bride of Abydos"
I am reading a poem by Lord Byron: The Bride of Abydos and I am unsure about the meaning of the word award in Canto I, stanza 3, quoted below. Does it mean a sum of money such as a tip or does it have ...
- 781
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1
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What could be the meaning of "doctor-testing of little girls" by Steinbeck?
I was reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck, where I came across the sentence:
A man’s mind vagued up a little, for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can ...
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1
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154
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How should I understand the poem Paul Muldoon's Incantata?
I am reading Paul Muldoon's poems, and I am sometimes left confused and in limbo about the meanings of the many of out-of-the-way place names and terms I do not understand. What should I do in these ...
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1
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"The legend of the oyster and the pearl" by Dario Fo
A poem written by Dario Fo, "The legend of the oyster and the pearl", text here (included in the play Isabella, tre caravelle e un cacciaballe) ends with the lines
di morte nel pallore
lei ...
- 171
4
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1
answer
158
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What does Tennyson mean by "by the bird's song ye may learn the nest"?
In Tennyson's The Marriage of Geraint, the protagonist, Geraint, has just heard the song of Enid, the daughter of his host, Yniol. When Enid's song concludes, Yniol says the following to Geraint:
'...
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0
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What is the meaning of this excerpt from "The Scarlet Letter"?
What is the meaning of this excerpt from chapter 3 of The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne?
They were, doubtless, good men, just and sage. But, out of the whole human family, it would not ...
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What did David Hume mean by saying experimental philosophy should be applied to moral philosophy “after to natural”?
In A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume it’s written:
As the science of man is the only solid foundation for the other sciences, so the only solid foundation we can give to this science itself ...
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