Extracts from Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Literature’
Lewis Carroll records a suburban photoshoot in the style of Longfellow.
The distinctive rhythm and tricks of speech that Henry Longfellow used in his narrative poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855) were just begging to be parodied. Lewis Carroll could not resist the temptation, nor could he resist descending from the lofty tale of a Native American warrior to suburban photography, in which Carroll was an early pioneer.
Henry Longfellow tells us how his tale of a heroic Native American warrior came to him.
In 1855, American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published The Song of Hiawatha, a long narrative poem named after the twelfth-century Ojibwe warrior and leader of the Iroquois Confederacy of Native American peoples. The tale he told was wholly fictitious, but in the opening lines he nevertheless told us where he got it from.
Peter foretold that King John would cease to be England’s sovereign, and he was right, though John still wore his crown.
Peter of Pomfret (Pontefract, near Wakefield in Yorkshire’s West Riding) was a simple, unlettered hermit who incautiously prophesied that by Ascension Day in 1213, King John would no longer be king of England. When that day had passed, and John still sat upon his throne, the King had poor Peter hanged; but as Sir George Wrong explains, the prophecy wasn’t so wide of the mark.
If little Maggie Tulliver is going to get her hair cut, it’s going to be done on her own terms.
Little Maggie Tulliver’s aunts have called round, and she has been subjected to repeated criticism for her heavy shock of unruly black hair. Even her father has ventured that “it ’ud be as well if Bessy ’ud have the child’s hair cut, so as it ’ud lie smooth.” Rebellion rises, and Maggie beckons to her older brother Tom.
Elizabeth Bennet stonewalls her way through a disagreeable encounter with Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
In Pride and Prejudice, Lady Catherine de Bourgh has heard that her wealthy nephew, Fitzwilliam Darcy, is planning to propose to Elizabeth Bennet, instead of her own daughter. She has raced to Longbourn, Elizabeth’s home, to demand an explanation of the ‘impossible’, but Lizzy sees no reason to be defensive.
In most contests the choices are win, lose or draw, but what happened here remains a mystery.
An Irish tale dating back to 1807 tells of two Cats of Kilkenny, who fought until nothing was left of them but their tails. In ‘The Duel’, a children’s rhyme by American writer Eugene Field, a dog and a cat took things a step further.