Questions tagged [allusions]
Questions about references to other works, external incidents, etc. in literature. Use this tag with the relevant author and work tags if applicable.
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What reference is Shakespeare making in Act 2 Scene 2 of Macbeth?
In Act 2 Scene 2 of Macbeth there is this line.
What hands are here? Ha! They pluck out mine eyes.
Someone two days ago told me this is a reference to a different piece of literature. I didn't ...
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1
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How does the golden bough in "Sailing to Byzantium" relate to the story in the Aeneid, if at all?
According to Wikipedia of W.B. Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium" is
a metaphor for a spiritual journey. Yeats explores his thoughts and musings on how immortality, art, and the human spirit may ...
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Did the Lord of the Flies have any kind of religious reference more specific than just the Devil?
Lord of the Flies contains an absurd amount of biblical references, one of which being the titular character. The creature is obviously supposed to be some kind of demon or devil, but is this a ...
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What are "the feelings of an Emma towards her Henry"?
In Jane Austen's Persuasion, when Louisa has her accident, and her friends and family are figuring out who's going to stay with her, we have this quote from Anne:
She endeavoured to be composed, and ...
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In "The Importance of Being Earnest", what does 'Or they come in the evening, at any rate' mean?
In The Importance of Being Earnest, when Lady Bracknell asks Jack about his politics, he answers "Liberal Unionist". Here's the exchange:
Lady Bracknell: What are your politics?
Jack: Well, ...
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11
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0
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Was Isidora's fate in Melmoth the Wanderer directly inspired by Faust?
When reading Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer I couldn't help but notice that Isidora's fate largely resembled Gretchen's in Goethe's Faust and especially the endings of both storylines ...
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Which Upanishad is TS Eliot referencing with "Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata." and why?
Specifically the last lines of the Wasteland:
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
[The Wasteland]
The poem was written in 1922, and the invocation can be taken as a ...
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Are there any debated authorship references in Thursday Next series?
Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series is a sort of fantasy about literature. Much of the story line about the books and literary characters that appear in this series is obviously made up, but there ...
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Is the speaker with an on-off switch a reference to Orwell?
I'm intrigued by this passage in Lois Lowry, The Giver, chapter 10.
He watched as the man rose and moved first to the wall where the speaker was. It was the same sort of speaker that occupied a ...
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What's with the reference to "Alice in Wonderland" in Nalo Hopkinson's "The Reverse Cheshire Cat"?
Nalo Hopkinson's "The Reverse Cheshire Cat" is obviously making a reference to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, with the Cheshire Cat. The two protagonists enter a shop named "The Reverse Cheshire ...
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What is a Pillycoddian gesture?
From "Jo's Boys," by Louisa May Alcott...
'A true woman, and a born sailor's wife! You are a happy man, Emil, and I'm sure this trip will be a prosperous one,' cried Mrs Jo, delighted with ...
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1
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Is Keats' swan with "neck of arched snow" an allusion to Milton's "swan with arched neck"?
I discovered something quite interesting today in John Milton's Paradise Lost. Here is Milton (this is the Archangel Raphael relating to Adam and Eve the creation of the world):
...
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Is the song "Mabel Grey" by Brown Bird an allusion to a real ship?
The song Mabel Grey, by Brown Bird contains peculiar lyrics.
The lyrics are awfully specific about what happened to this ship, which is a common pattern I see when a song is referent to a real-life ...
user80
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1
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What is the "Eastern wolf" in this poem?
I'm reading through J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fall of Arthur and in I.29 - I.33 it says
[...] But what foe dareth
war here to wake or the walls assail
of this island-realm while Arthur liveth,
...
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'Wild-bee hours' and 'wild-parrot days' in Sarojini Naidu's "A Rajput Love Song"
Sarojini Naidu's poem A Rajput Love Song has the stanza:
Haste, O wild-bee hours, to the gardens of the sunset!
Fly, wild-parrot day, to the orchards of the west!
Come, O tender night, with your ...
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