Questions tagged [inspiration]
Questions about the inspiration behind a work of literature, or an object or concept in a work: what it was based on, or where the idea came from.
167 questions
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Landmark identification in "The Angel" (Arsenal FC's anthem)
I recently attended a football game in London, and was slightly surprised when the Arsenal fans around me started passionately belting out a song with the refrain "North London Forever". ...
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Was the Hobbit inspired by Karl Immerman's Merlin?
I am reading an encyclopedia about mythology and literature entitled "Companion to Literary Myths, Heroes, and Archetypes" (Ed. Brunel P, trans. by Allaston W, Hayward J, Selous T; Routledge ...
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Was Cthulhu based on Kulullû?
The most famous creature from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos is probably the titular entity. Now, it turns out that there is a Mesopotamian monster or deity known as Kulullû, which is fairly similar. ...
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What inspired Dickens to put a Megalosaurus in the opening to “Bleak House”?
In chapter 1 of Bleak House by Charles Dickens, the narrator says that the weather in London is so wet and the streets so muddy that the city resembles the world just after the biblical flood:
London....
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In what ways is Rudolph Fisher the model for Dave Freeland?
One of the minor characters in Nella Larsen's Passing is a writer named Dave Freeland, whom the narrator describes as "the author of novels that revealed a man of perception and a devastating ...
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Is Detective Sergeant Troy a reference to Hardy's Sergeant Troy?
Caroline Graham's Chief Inspector Barnaby series (adapted to TV as the Midsomer Murders) features a sidekick/assistant to Tom Barnaby, who's called Sergeant Troy. As soon as I saw this name and title, ...
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Any mythological inspiration behind calling these demons "loki"?
I've started reading Jennifer Roberson's Tiger and Del series after discovering it as an incorrect answer to a story-ID question. In the second book, Sword-Singer, a significant chunk of the plot is ...
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Why did Jhumpa Lahiri choose Alberto Moravia's title for her collection "Roman Stories"?
Jhumpa Lahiri's recent collection of short stories in Italian (published in 2022, English translation in 2023) is entitled Racconti Romani or Roman Stories. It's a banal enough name, but her Wikipedia ...
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Where did E. B. White get the idea for a mute Trumpeter Swan?
E. B. White's The Trumpet of the Swan features Louis, a Trumpeter Swan whose disability renders him unable to trumpet. To accommodate this, his father acquires a human-made trumpet in a bid to allow ...
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Are some passages in "Pedro Páramo" influenced by William Faulkner?
In the Wikipedia article on Juan Rulfo, it is remarked that:
In passages of the novel Pedro Páramo, the influence of American
novelist William Faulkner is notorious, according to Rulfo's former
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Was "The Tombs of Atuan" inspired by a real archaeology site?
I once read that the tombs in The Tombs of Atuan were based on a real archaeology site that Le Guin had visited as a child. The article did state which site it was, but I cannot find that article now ...
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Where did Ayn Rand get the idea for Directive 10-289?
I believe Ayn Rand got the idea for Directive 10-289 from witnessing the start of the Russian Revolution. She was 12 years old and had a bird's eye view of what was happening in Petrograd- where she ...
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Who inspired the poem "Addicted to Proof"?
One of Peter Shor's poems was published in The Mathematical Intelligencer. It's called "Addicted to Proof" and it's a short (16-line) poem about a mathematician who won the Abel Prize for a ...
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Was Agatha Christie's short story "Magnolia Blossom" inspired by Ibsen?
In both incident and theme, Agatha Christie's short story "Magnolia Blossom" has several parallels with Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. In Christie's story, Theodora Darrell is on the point ...
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How did Hitler get the idea for the title “My Struggle”?
Are there any records elaborating on how Hitler came up with the title for his book? Were there any previous books he was emulating or alluding to? Was he influenced by some literary style in his ...
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