Extracts from Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Literature’
Reynard the Fox was mortified to hear his efforts to rescue Isegrim’s wife from a frozen lake had been misinterpreted.
In his landmark 1481 translation of political satire ‘Reynard the Fox’, William Caxton told how the animals gathered at Stade near Hamburg to charge Reynard with a catalogue of shocking crimes, and how the wily Fox emerged without a stain on his character. The allegation underpinning the whole story was that Reynard had tried to force his attentions on Erswynd, wife of Isegrim the Wolf.
John Clayton, a British colonial official lost in the African jungle, is caught unawares by Kerchak, the gorilla.
In 1888 (so begins Tarzan of the Apes) colonial official John Clayton and his pregnant wife Alice took ship for west Africa, only to be put ashore in the uncharted jungle by mutineers. For a year after baby John was born, his father defied repeated attacks upon the family’s rough hut by a troop of gorillas. But last night Alice died; and this morning her grieving husband was caught unready.
Pliny admired Julius Mauricus because he spoke his mind, and Emperor Nerva because he let him.
Rome welcomed gentle Nerva (r. 96-98) with relief following the death of Emperor Domitian, who — thanks to hangers-on such as Fabricius Veiento, and the feared spymaster Catullus Messalinus — had maintained a vicious police state. Pliny’s friend Julius Mauricus had lost his brother in one of Domitian’s purges, but he was still speaking his mind.
The English ‘Cato’ cautioned that sabre-rattling sanctions and other forms of coercion are never in the country’s economic interest.
The wisdom in the 1720s was that the Government and its wealthy partners should use their superior financial and military resources to shape global trade in the British interest; so they bribed, bullied and bombarded foreign lands and peoples into working for us instead of themselves. Wars spread, debts mounted, and ‘Cato’ wondered what happened to sane men when they joined the Cabinet.
Charles Dickens laments William the Conqueror’s brutal rampage through rebellious Durham and Yorkshire.
The Harrying of the North was William of Normandy’s rampage through the lands around Durham and York in the winter of 1069-70. Following victory over King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William was crowned King of England on Christmas Day that year, but the people of England, and their Viking friends in Ireland and across the North Sea, did not meekly acknowledge their new lord.
At first, John Milton struggled to come to terms with the loss of his eyesight.
In 1649, John Milton (1608-74) was appointed Latin Secretary to the Council of State, a Parliamentary role accountable to Oliver Cromwell, the country’s military ruler following the execution of King Charles I that year. By 1655, Milton was losing his sight, and as his condition worsened he was tempted to complain that God was robbing him of any chance to continue serving him.