#literary

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear - and even, in certain respects, would be - the most modern of critical movements. ↗

— Paul de Man

#certain #critical #denies #even #literary

It's too bad for us 'literary' enthusiasts, but it's the truth nevertheless - pictures tell any story more effectively than words. ↗

— William Moulton Marston

#bad #effectively #enthusiasts #literary #more

If critics say your work stinks it's because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered "dangerous" but set in place in their compartmental understandings. ↗

— Jack Kerouac

#creativity #literary-criticism #self-expression #art

The urge to change my mind and not go at all is enormous. I’m absolutely terrified to leave on that boat. But, if I don’t go, there’ll be one more broken person in this world who gave up a dream to sit in a chair, pick up the TV remote and shrink. ↗

— Lexis De Rothschild

#cats #chick-lit #humor #kindle #literary-collections

Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life. And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home. ↗

— Anna Quindlen

#fictional-london #imagination #life #literary-london #literature

Pearl introduces an original story, in a form which was to become one of the most frequent in mediaeval literature, the dream-vision. Authors like Chaucer and Langland use this form, in which the narrator describes another world - usually a heavenly paradise - which is compared with the earthly human world. In Pearl, the narrator sees his daughter who died in infancy, 'the ground of all my bliss'. She now has a kind of perfect knowledge, which her father can never comprehend. The whole poem underlines the divide between human comprehension and perfection; these lines show the gap between possible perfection and fallen humanity which, thematically, anticipate many literary examinations of man's fall, the most well known being Milton's late Renaissance epic, Paradise Lost. ↗

— Ronald Carter

#dreams

Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesn't stifle enough of them. ↗

— Flannery O'Connor

#humour #literary-criticism #writing #education

A clever schoolboy's reaction to his reading is most naturally expressed by parody or imitation. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#education #literary-theory #reading #education

At first I was glad for the help. My freshmen English class, "Mythology and Archetypal Experience," confounded me. I didn't understand why we couldn't just read books without forcing contorted interpretations on then ↗

— Alison Bechdel

#literary-criticism #university #experience

It is the voice of everyday people, rather than of a self-conscious 'artist', that we hear in Caedmon's Hymn, and in such texts as Deor's Lament (also known simply as Deor) or The Seafarer. These reflect ordinary human experience and are told in the first person. They make the reader or hearer relate directly with the narratorial 'I', and frequently contain intertextual references to religious texts. Although they express a faith in God, only Caedmon's Hymn is an overtly religious piece. Already we can notice one or two conventions creeping in; ways of writing which will be found again and again in later works. One of these is the use of the first-person speaker who narrates his experience, inviting the reader or listener to identify with him and sympathise with his feelings. ↗

— Ronald Carter

#experience