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Bookworm

06:22

Q: "otherwise" in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

In Chapter Seven of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I saw the following sentence: I remembered also the nervous fever with which I had been seized just at the time that I dated my creation, and which would give an air of delirium to a tale otherwise so utterly improbable. This use of "otherwise" may...

3 hours later…

CowperKettle

09:19

A.D. Melville of the day

Rand al'Thor

09:45

@bobble Having seen the question now, maybe theme would fit? Since (IIUC) you're asking about how the character's powers tie in to the Norse-flavoured theme of the novel.

Although I'm not sure if you realised that there's not only a "general Norse mythology theme" but that very character is a specific type of figure in Norse mythology :-)

7 hours later…

bobble

16:24

@Randal'Thor 1: I somehow completely forgot to mention that Valkyrja has wings as well... had a quote about it and then took it out and neglected to mention it in text. I'm going to update the question, and maybe you'll want to update your answer. 2) Dear goodness do I feel silly for missing the Valkyrja-Valkryie connection

Rand al'Thor

16:42

@bobble :-D

I thought maybe you hadn't heard of valkyries. For me they're a natural part of my vocabulary and I can't remember a time when I hadn't heard of them, but then I grew up next door to Scandinavia and reading a lot of fantasy.

bobble

I know about valkyries from 1) Riordan and 2) a bit of background research I did before watching Thor: Ragnarok

Also, I'm not sure what "things that open the way" means either. At one point she finds a key, and at another point she opens a portal.

1 hour later…

Rand al'Thor

18:00

@Fabjaja I finished "The Withered Arm" - thanks again for the recommendation! Three questions for now, maybe I can come up with some others that are more analysis-based.

Bookworm

18:12

Q: Why is the country conjuror referred to as a "white wizard"?

In Thomas Hardy's short story "The Withered Arm" (freely available to read online), Gertrude Lodge and Rhona Brook go together to see a man named Trendle, often called Conjuror Trendle, who is reputed to have some knowledge or ability with magic. He's the one who tells Gertrude that her afflictio...

short-stories historical-context thomas-hardy

verbose

18:31

@Bookworm As an aside to this question and my answer thereto: my husband was a Wiccan high priest for a considerable number of years. When asked "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?", his standard response was, "oh, fair to middling, but with more practice I could probably get pretty good."

(He lost his religion a few years after we met.)

@Randal'Thor what are Flood and/or FitzSimmons?

Rand al'Thor

18:45

@verbose Wow, that's really interesting! I've heard a bit about Wiccan stuff (visited Glastonbury a few times), but I didn't know it's a thing on your side of the pond too.

@verbose See the linked Q&A. Alison Flood is the Guardian journalist whose article inspired the question, and Eleanor Fitzsimons is the person who first identified the correct source on Twitter. There was an ongoing Twitter discussion about it at the time Gareth posted his Q&A.

3 hours later…

Bookworm

22:03

Q: Is Jonathan Culler saying that theory is the study of the background we bring to the text?

Follow-up to: Is Jonathan Culler saying that literary theory is effectively the same subject as cultural studies? From chapter 3 of the second edition of Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Culler: Theory has enormously enriched and invigorated the study of literary works, but...