The Reading Room

« first day (3402 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (1234 days later) »

Bookworm

1:45 AM

Q: In what ways can Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre be classified as a typical romance play?

In what ways can Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre be classified as a typical romance play of the sorts?

2 hours later…

bobble

3:36 AM

I just finished my Watership Down re-read and I have so many questions!

This is like school discussions, except for a book I love and I only have to ask about the stuff I'm interested in. :D

List of planned questions:

Why is Kehaar written with an accent?
What does the strange simile about Captain Fiver rounding up Efraranas mean?
What is the warren of the snares intended as a parallel of?
Why are primroses blooming emphasized at the end of the epilogue?
Why are there pronunciation guidelines for some of the names?

4 hours later…

Mithical

7:21 AM

@Tsundoku To kill a French vampire, you need to drive a baguette through its heart. Sounds easy, but the process is painstaking.

1 hour later…

Rand al'Thor

8:25 AM

@Mithical Ouch. Nice one.

@bobble Looks like we're going to have a mini topic challenge for Watership Down with just you and me :-D

Have you read anything else by Richard Adams, btw? I started reading The Plague Dogs as a child, but I think I never finished it.

Tsundoku

9:03 AM

@Mithical If I eat more croissants, will the quality of my multilingual jokes increase?

2 hours later…

Bookworm

11:09 AM

Q: Why the Alice epigraph in the epilogue of Watership Down?

Each chapter of Watership Down bears an epigraph, a quote from some other source which is relevant to the chapter at hand. In the epilogue (and nowhere else?) there are two epigraphs, one from Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well whose relevance is clear, and one from Lewis Carroll's Through t...

intertextuality richard-adams watership-down through-the-looking-glass

4 hours later…

bobble

3:12 PM

@Randal'Thor no, and I only have this one because it was given to me by a teacher.

And I'm trying to think of some more good [name-significance] questions; some will probably come as I do quote-diving for my current questions

bobble

3:23 PM

@Bookworm Reading this, I have an idea for an answer that interprets the quote fairly literally, to say that both Hazel and Woundwort are dreaming of each other. @Randal'Thor, would that be acceptable as an answer? It doesn't address the paradox or the Alice connection much.

Rand al'Thor

3:53 PM

@bobble If you can provide some good arguments to support the idea that Hazel and Woundwort are dreaming of each other and how that's relevant to the epilogue, then sure. At first glance that doesn't make sense to me, so I'd be interested to see where you got the idea from.

bobble

I can think I show that they would be thinking of each other, at the very least, which extrapolates to dreaming?

...gah, nevermind, was confusing Bigwig with Hazel in my head

Bookworm

Q: What does this simile about Fiver rouding up Efrafan prisoners mean?

In Watership Down, after the battle with the Efrafans has ended, there is this confusing simile: It so happened that Bluebell was the first through into the Honeycomb; and for many days afterwards he was still improving upon his imitation of Captain Fiver at the head of his crowd of Efrafan pris...

meaning richard-adams watership-down

bobble

sorry :(

bobble

5:03 PM

@Randal'Thor, that was certainly a longer answer than I was expecting

Rand al'Thor

@bobble Mostly because of the big Vervain quote really.

It seemed quite clear to me, so I wasn't really sure what to focus on in an explanation, and decided to give as much background as possible.

bobble

As I said in an earlier question, I have trouble with irony, so I appreciate the background

Mithical

5:37 PM

"Hey there! Are you having trouble detecting sarcasm? Do you find it difficult to tell when something is being mocking? You may be irony-deficient! Try our new supplement IronyPlus+™ today and get those irony levels back up to where they belong! Consult with your doctor first."

Tsundoku

@Mithical People with nerves of steel won't need it.

@Bookworm Hit-and-run question by an unregistered user :-(