All Questions

The Wikipedia article about The Lusiads tells us that Manuel de Faria e Sousa wrote a commentary about the work in the 17th century. Published after Sousa's death[a], the work was originally written ...

This is a young adult/children's book read some time around 2004, in English. Unfortunately no recollection of the cover. Remembered details are: a boy is on vacation, or perhaps has moved, in a hot, ...

While researching to answer another Jude the Obscure question, I found a list of homework assignments related to this novel, in which the following one caught my eye: Three times objects are burned --...

Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge (1968) was perhaps the first major novel in English to have a transgender protagonist. Myra, née Myron, undergoes gender confirmation surgery. In order to retain Myron's ...

Thomas Jones, writing about the Kazuo Ishiguro novel Klara and the Sun, says: Ishiguro doesn’t get tangled up in the complexities of neural networks, machine learning, algorithms or the difficulties ...

The last verse in Hanan Ben Ari's "אלוף העולם" (Aluf HaOlam / Champion of the World) goes like this: אני אלוף העולם בלפצות להתנצל ולרצות לחטוא, להתנקות לחשוף, להתכסות תגידי, איך כותבים ...

I read this children's book about 5 years ago, it was a small, charming little book. It probably was published in the past 10 years. It was in Afrikaans, but I'm fairly certain it was a translation ...

John Donne's "Meditation XVII" from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624) includes the following well-known passage: No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the ...

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-the-house-of-death-n05060 While I'm asking about a colour print it's as much about Blake's poetry. I haven't been able to find much analysis of this ...

This passage is from The Children's Bach by Helen Garner Dexter walked with a bandy, rapid gait. They kept pace easily, not touching. They covered miles each night in the dark, sometimes heading east ...

What does the “justness of characters” mean? In the dedication of his play The Way of the World William Congreve says the following about the ancient Roman playwright Terence: "The purity of his ...

Brian Jacques's Redwall stories contain a huge number of songs: marching songs, drinking songs, campfire songs, feast songs, all of them different and none repeated from one book to another (as far as ...

Maya Angelou's "They Went Home" opens like this: They went home and told their wives, that never once in all their lives, had they known a girl like me, But... They went home. The end of ...

Wikipedia describes Mem and Zin as a Kurdish classic love story written down in 1692 (...). In other words, it was written down roughly two-and-a-half centuries after Johannes Gutenberg invented the ...

In Inkdeath, the third book in the Inkheart trilogy by Cornelia Funke, Resa uses seeds that turn the user into an animal. In Resa's case, she turns into a swift: It was easy to fly, so easy. The ...

Is there an English translation of the Onomasticon by Julius Pollux of Naucratis?

Both The Kid and Blevins are not evil but at the same time extremely dangerous young men (of roughly the same age) on their own due to the death of their fathers. It seems pretty likely that if ...

While doing some research for an answer, I discovered the Redwall series book Marlfox. At the end of the book, there is a meta-note: Curtain! This narrative has been edited by Florian Dugglewoof ...

This passage is from The Children's Bach by Helen Garner Dexter found, in a magazine, a photograph of the poet Tennyson, his wife and their two sons walking in the garden of their house on the Isle ...

I read most of Brian Jacques's Redwall books in the 2000s, and one of the things I always noticed was how seemingly every book has at least one major character die: for example, Am I right in saying ...

In his 1PM radio broadcast on 12 May 1926, John Reith, managing director of the BBC, recited William Blake's "Jerusalem" to celebrate the end of the General Strike which had lasted for nine ...

From his farewell to his wife Andromache in Book VI to the splendid description of his funeral with the which the epic concludes, Hector exhibits many of the hallmarks of the archetypal protagonist of ...

I'm looking for a kids’ almanac type book, written in English. The book, published in the 80’s or early 90’s, featured a chapter that profiled the biggest mass murderers of all time, people like Idi ...

According to Wikipedia, Os Lusíadas is often regarded as Portugal's national epic, much as Virgil's Aeneid was for the Ancient Romans, or Homer's Iliad and Odyssey for the Ancient Greeks. The ...

We are learning about dystopian societies in my English 2, and I learned that dystopian societies have government control, meaning the government watches their citizens closely. Also, in dystopian ...

In the short story "The Third Level" by Jack Finney, does the third level in the Grand Central Station really exist or, is it just in Charley's imagination? Does Sam Wiener really go to 1894,...

I may have read this in an Alfred Hitchcock anthology somewhere in the mid 1990s. An up and coming starlet is about to head off on her honeymoon with her new beau when her ex-husband and former agent ...

William Blake's lines of verse "Jerusalem", which appear in the "Preface" to his poem "Milton", were written c.1804 and first printed c.1808. They also appear, but with ...

In "The Markenmore Mystery" (1922) by J. S. Fletcher, Harry was talking with his neighbour about his ill old father and the possibility of his death at anytime: “Well, I must go,” the ...

I am not able to understand William Ernest Henley's poem "Invictus" properly, except the last two lines. Can someone explain in detail the meaning of this poem? Out of the night that covers ...

"The butler did it" is a common trope indicating a hackneyed solution to a mystery. I have read several classic mysteries from the 1920s and earlier (Poe, Conan Doyle, Christie, Sayers, etc.)...

I'm looking for source of a quote about being better not to give something than to take away. It's been many years, so I can't recall much more about the quote. I thought it would be from the book ...

This passage is from The Children's Bach by Helen Garner On his way through the kitchen he screwed up the pizza boxes and tried to force them into the stuffed bin, but they would not go so he left ...

At the end of Watership Down, in the Epilogue covering just before this happens, he has a final dream which is something about "rain and elder bloom": One chilly, blustery morning in March,...

I am looking for a 19th century short story. I thought it was written by Guy de Maupassant, but didn't find it. A French country priest starts having vivid dreams that he is a diabolical courtier in ...

The haiku I'm looking for is probably of an anonymous author. I got a hint on a Japanese message board that it's maybe Musashi's one and I should find it in Eiji Yoshikawa's famous novel, but it's not ...

This passage is from The Children's Bach by Helen Garner When the film ended a Greek man explained in his native tongue the details of the government’s health scheme. It took him fully ten minutes, ...

The usage of dashes to obscure personal/place names and dates in Victorian literature has been widely noted, but I don't feel that the reasons that are usually given help me understand this case. I'm ...

It's no secret that Howard Roark was loosely inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright. Interestingly enough, on a recent tour of Frank Lloyd Wright houses in Oak Park, IL, I encountered a park named after Henry ...

From Chapter 48 of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations: “Mr. Jaggers was for her [Molly, Mr. Jaggers's maidservant],” pursued Wemmick, with a look full of meaning, “and worked the case in a way ...

I remember some years ago listening to a recording of a speech by Martin Luther King Jr, in which he says something like: Even if Jewish leaders told me "No, we do not need your help fighting ...

I had a niece (age 8) who was recently diagnosed with dyslexia. As a good Lit.SE member, I tend to like to give books as gifts, but want to make sure that I'm getting books that she can actually read. ...

Many articles around the internet explain the general reason why six books were removed from publication in March 2021 and some even detail specific examples from 1-2 of the books (for example, The ...

This passage is from The Children's Bach by Helen Garner: Some things, Morty,’ he said, ‘strain a person’s sense of humour.’ He swept through the room. The three of them sat foolishly, with fading ...

The well-known children's song "Old MacDonald had a Farm" has lyrics in the following format: Old MacDonald had a farm E-I-E-I-O ! And on that farm he had {article} {singular or plural ...

The poem "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum" by Stephen Spender is given below Far far from gusty waves these children's faces. Like rootless weeds, the hair torn round their pallor: ...

#Belarus 66-year-old Halina Huliankova was sentenced to 20 days in prison for reading books of Belarusian authors. She was on a train together with other pensioners. She is being held at Akrescina. In ...

In the following passage from Lonely Man Full of Love by Mauro Mevlud Martino, what does "mirror in my bathroom" mean? A: ‘’Are you quieter and lonelier than me, Rachel?’’ B: ‘’Perhaps, ...

I'm reading Kristin Hannah's Firefly Lane. There's a scene when Kate (one of two main characters) saw Tully (the other main character) wearing fashionable elephant bells and wished her jeans weren't ...

This passage is from The Children's Bach by Helen Garner: She turned round with her arms full of stinking sheets. He had not heard a word. His eyes had gone out of focus, his pitch was up, his pace ...