Search Term: war poetry

Metre and alliteration in The Kalevala

By Keith Bosley
The Kalevala’s influence lies not only in Finnish history — such as its essential role in fostering a distinct sense of national cultural identity that resulted in its independence in 1917 following the Russian Revolution — but elsewhere too. One of the more famous examples may be found in J.R.R. Tolkien, who credited several aspects of the Finnish epic and the language as part of the inspiration behind The Lord of the Rings. Väinämöinen, the wise old sage, was a source of inspiration for the character of Gandalf, and Tolkien was rapt with excitement upon discovering a Finnish Grammar.

His name was George F. Babbitt.

Sinclair Lewis was the first US writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Known for his insightful and critical depictions of American society, one of Lewis’ most famous works was Babbitt. In honor of the anniversary of Lewis’ birth (7 February 1885), we’ve crept into the archives and dug up some pages from Babbitt for you to enjoy.

Monthly etymology gleanings for January 2013, part 2

By Anatoly Liberman
I am picking up where I left off a week ago.
Mare and Mars. Can they be related?
The chance is close to zero. Both words are of obscure origin, and attempts to explain an opaque word by referring it to an equally opaque one invariably come out wrong.

A fresh look at the work of Robert Burns

By Robert P. Irvine
As we sit down to enjoy our Burns Suppers on Friday, it is worth pausing to ask ourselves just how well we know some of the songs and poems that are a feature of the occasion. Editing and presenting a selection of his texts in the order in which they were published, taking as my copy-text the version of the poem or song published on that occasion, has given me many new insights into the original contexts of Burns’s work.

A better New Year’s resolution: commit to hope

By Anthony Scioli

From late December to the middle of January it is obligatory for people to make one or more New Years’ resolutions. Recent surveys reveal that the most common resolutions made by Americans include losing weight, getting fit, quitting smoking, quitting drinking, reducing debt, or getting organized.

The death of Edmund Spenser

By Andrew Hadfield
Writing to his friend Dudley Carleton on 17 January 1599, the enthusiastic correspondent John Chamberlain (1553-1628) noted that “Spencer, our principall poet, coming lately out of Ireland, died at Westminster on Satturday last.” Chamberlain’s testimony confirms that Spenser died on 13 January. Chamberlain is a good recorder of court gossip and a barometer of what interested the upper echelons of London society.

Romanticism: a legacy

By Michael Ferber
The Very Short Introductions are indeed very short, so I had to cut a chapter out of my volume that would have discussed the aftermath or legacy of Romanticism today, two hundred years after Romanticism’s days of glory. In that chapter I would have pointed out the obvious fact that those who still love poetry look at the Romantic era as poetry’s high point in every European country. Think of Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Pushkin, Mickiewicz, Leopardi, Lamartine, Hugo, and Nerval. Those who still love “classical” music fill the concert halls to listen to Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Berlioz, and Wagner; and those who still love traditional painting flock to look at Constable, Turner, Friedrich, and Delacroix. These poets and artists are still “alive”: their works are central to the culture from which millions of people still draw nourishment. I can scarcely imagine how miserable I would feel if I knew I could never again listen to Beethoven or read a poem by Keats.

Jack Kerouac: On and Off the Road

By David Sterritt
Jack Kerouac, the novelist and poet who gave the Beat Generation its name, died 43 years ago on 21 October 1969 at the age of 47. On Friday, the long-delayed movie version of Kerouac’s autobiographical novel about crisscrossing the United States with his hipster friend Neal Cassady in the 1940s, On the Road will be released. When the novel was published in 1957, six years after he finished writing it, Kerouac dreamed up his own screen adaptation, hoping to play himself (called Sal Paradise in the novel) opposite Marlon Brando as Dean Moriarty, the Cassady character.

The Grimms and ‘Tales for Children and the Household’

By Joyce Crick
This year, Thursday December 20th, is the 200th anniversary of the publication of their Tales for Children and the Household, currently being celebrated world-wide. Just in time for Christmas. But even after 200 years, English-speaking countries still seem to know little more about the brothers and their stories than as a brand name for films from Disney or Terry Gillliam. How many could we name off the cuff? A dozen? Twenty?

The Naming of Hobbits

By Michael Adams
It will be interesting to see how much of J. R. R. Tolkien’s several invented languages will appear in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. In a letter to his American publisher, dated 30 June 1955, Tolkien suspected there were limits to how much invented language readers would ‘stomach’, to use his term. There are certainly limits to how much can be included in a film. American audiences, anyway, are subtitle averse.

Robert Browning in 2012

By Gregory Tate
This year marked the bicentenary of the birth of the Victorian poet Robert Browning in 1812, although this news might come as something of a surprise…

Written in the stars

By Marilyn Deegan
The new discoveries of the Mars rover Curiosity have greatly excited the world in the last few weeks, and speculation was rife about whether some evidence of life has been found. (In actuality, Curiosity discovered complex chemistry, including organic compounds, in a Martian soil analysis.) Why the excitement?

Mars and music

By Kyle Gann
By long tradition, sweet Venus and mystical Neptune are the planets astrologically connected with music. The relevance of Mars, “the bringer of war” as one famous composition has it, would seem to be pretty oblique. Mars in the horoscope has to do with action, ego, how we separate ourselves off from the world; it is “the fighting principle for the Sun,” in the words of famous astrologer Liz Greene.

Celebrating Scotland: St Andrew’s Day

St Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland, is rather a mysterious figure; very little is actually known about his life. Meanwhile, St Andrew’s Day, on 30th November, is well-established and widely celebrated by Scots around the world. The bestselling Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and the Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations include quotes from a wide-range of people, on an even wider-range of subjects. Here are some contributions from some of Scotland’s most treasured wordsmiths.

Art and human evolution

By Stephen Davies
Young children take to painting, singing, dancing, storytelling, and role-playing with scarcely any explicit training. They delight in these proto-art behaviors. Grown-ups are no less avid in extending such behaviors, either as spectators or participants. Provided we have a generous view of art, we all engage routinely and often passionately with it.

To gif or not to gif

To gif, or not to gif–that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of crude animation
Or to take arms against a sea of static
And by opposing end them.