Five Etymologies that May Change the Way You Think About Literature
Did you know that the words ‘fiction’ and ‘dough’ are closely related? Read on to find out how, and for more eye-opening information about the origins of common literary terms. 1. Scene It probably doesn’t surprise you that before the word ‘scene’ was applied to literature in general, it was solely a theatrical term that meant the...
Irish Storytelling: Broad Street Runs Through It
Ireland’s 1976 Tidy Town winner, “Ireland’s Best Kept Town,” casts its Broad Street past thatched-roof cottages. The rural homes of Adare in Limerick County maintain the same thatched style of a century ago (see the pictures below). Gathering wheat straw, reeds, heathers and sedges into thick clumps, the townspeople built their thatched roofs to be resistant to quickly spreading...
Truly Embellished Nonfiction
Nonfiction writers and readers are no strangers to the dialectic between those who think there is room in nonfiction for embellishment, and those who disapprove of any kind of fact-bending. At the heart of the debate seems to be a disagreement of what it means for a story to be true. Is a story true...
Do Stories Benefit Us?
The common sentiment among writers and readers is that stories are good for us, and many would say that we need stories. Tim Parks explores this idea for the New York Review of Books blog. Why do we claim that stories benefit us, or fulfill a need? Is it because they allow us to find ourselves in an...
The Sheldonian’s Laughing Head
”Here in Oxford, exposed eternally and inexorably to wind and frost, to the four winds that lash them and the rains that wear them away, they are expiating, in effigy, the abominations of their pride and cruelty and lust. Who were lechers, they are without bodies; who were tyrants, they are crowned never but with...
