I've been listening to Allen Ginsberg reading his own poetry, and I've noticed a repeated mention of eggs in them. For examples: who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg "Howl", Pt I America when will you send your eggs to India? "America" While India starved and screamed ...

Recently, I was recounting to me wife various songs that my grandmother used to sing, because I'm trying to ensure they get passed on to our child, and one of them popped up that I have not been able to track down. My grandmother has since passed, and my grandfather does not remember the song. Th...

What did Larkin write about his poem "The Importance of Elsewhere"? I'm trying to find out what Larkin had in mind when he wrote that poem. I had assumed it referred to (the Republic of) Ireland as a whole, but some have suggested here (Was Philip Larkin factually correct when he implied that in ...

Would it be on-topic to ask on Literature what was the URL of and what happened to that Philip Larkin online forum that seems to have disappeared from the internet? I saw it in about the year 2000 plus or minus less than five years, I think. People were posting questions about what a particular L...

In Macbeth, at the end of Act 2, Scene 3 Macbeth reveals that he killed Duncan's servants O, Yet I do repent me of fury That I did kill them However, doesn't this appear as a plot hole when we take Lady Macbeth's reaction into account ("Help me hence, ho!")? I see 2 interpretations:- Macbeth k...

According to the Wikipedia article about the Shahnameh, this work by the Persian poet Ferdowsi "is the national epic of Greater Iran". The article adds that Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and the greater region influenced by Persian culture such as Armenia, Dagestan, Georgia, Turkey, ...

According to the Wikipedia article about the Shahnameh, the Persian poet Ferdowsi wrote this epic "for Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni between c. 977 and 1010 CE". This was long before the introduction of the printing press in Persia or Iran. According to the Wikipedia article Global spread of the printi...

According to some internet sources, Dorothy Parker did not think highly of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. For example, Brian Leiter (University of Chicago Law School), tweeted the following as 'Dorothy Parker's review of "Atlas Shrugged"': This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be...

Some operas are based on plays. For example, Shakespeare's Othello was the source for Rossini's Otello (1816) and Verdi's Otello (1887). Romeo and Juliet inspired Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette (1839) and Gounod's Roméo et Juliette (1867). Verdi's Falstaff (1893) was based on Shakespeare's The Merry...

In Macbeth (Act 3, Scene 1), Macbeth says about Banquo: in his royalty of nature Reigns that which would be feared. What does "royalty of nature" mean here? Surely, Banquo is no "king of nature"?