Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking coined the phrase: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” While he probably didn't have 19th century German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss in mind when developing the sentiment, he may well have. Actually, in Gauss’ case, it would be more fitting to say “shoot for the comet,” the Ceres comet at that, and as it turns out, the math genius didn’t have to be too concerned with missing.
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." -Henry David Thoreau
Contemporary writer Annie Dillard draws great inspiration from legendary author Henry David Thoreau. Her crowning work, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, is often compared to Thoreau's Walden, for good reason. Here, we briefly explore Dillard's life and work to learn more about how she's both similiar to and different from Thoreau.
Motherhood is an incredible vocation; mothers form deep and magical connections with their children that last a lifetime. Take a moment to explore classic fictional mother figures by taking our quiz: Who Is Your Literary Mother?
In Part I of our exploration of the history of Postcolonial literature, we focused on the rise of postcolonial theory and early postcolonial writers, such as Chinua Achebe and Nadine Gordimer, who set the stage for the international genre with their imaginative literature. Today, we shift our emphasis to contemporary writers of the postcolonial condition.
Movie-lovers can be just as passionate about collecting rare materials as book-lovers, and it shows in the number of large film collections around the world. One of the most prestigious is found at the library and archives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. The Academy, better known for handing out the Academy Awards or Oscars, has made it their business to make films, screenplays, production sketches, periodicals, and much more available for research and education.
During periods of tyranny, writers of fiction become subject to intense censorship and scrutiny. Remarkably, novelists and poets from the early decades of the Soviet Union produced some of the most imaginative and redemptive works in the history of the twentieth century. From the poems of Vladimir Mayakovsky to the realist prose of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Soviet resistance literature occupies an important place in the contemporary imagination when it comes to linking fiction with politics.
When you pick up a book to read, do you also pick up a pencil, ready to mark up the margins with your thoughts and ideas? If so, your written additions are part of a body of writings called marginalia. For many readers, scribbling on the pages of books is a beloved, recreational practice. For others, it’s more of a necessity. Whether they are humorous jots and tittles, lessons learned from the story, or more serious notes of textual analysis, marginalia are simply fascinating.
At a certain point, it seems unusual that any writer should ply his trade in Ireland. Of the small nation’s four Nobel Prize winners in literature, two, Samuel Beckett and George Bernard Shaw, conducted most of their literary careers abroad in France and England, respectively. And, of course, that pair barely scratches the surface of Irish writers’ propensity, as a group, to work in self-imposed exile. Where literary titans like James Joyce and Oscar Wilde could scarcely abscond from the Emerald Isle quickly enough, the Hibernian countryside proved an ideal starting-point for one of England’s most idiosyncratic novelists: Anthony Trollope.
Shakespeare's influence on our everyday language is undeniable. Any time you’ve waited "with bated breath” or taken “cold comfort,” you can thank Shakespeare for your phraseology. Have you recently found yourself “in a pickle” or been sent on a “wild goose chase?” Shakespeare coined those descriptors, as well. Maybe you are thinking everything in this paragraph is a “foregone conclusion.” Well, that’s Shakespeare, too. Truly, Shakespeare’s cultural reach is wide. But think for a minute about your earliest exposure to Shakespeare’s actual works. Was it college? High school? Even before then? In the 19th century, one man worked to bring the great Shakespearean dramas to an even younger audience. His name was Charles Lamb.
For many years it was believed that Immanuel Kant never made it more than ten miles outside of Konigsberg. Even though this is demonstrably false (he spent some years working as a tutor in Russia) public perception of the father of modern philosophy has not changed. Thousands of freshman philosophy students each year will happily speculate about Kant’s fussiness, his cloistered lifestyle, and what many diagnose as a desperate need to get out of the house more. The grumblings of would-be thinkers notwithstanding, it’s hard to gripe too much about the man who redefined philosophy in the 18th Century, forever altering the trajectory of human thought. It can, however, still be hard to envision the great thinker coming into contact with anything downright bizarre.
