Questions tagged [meaning]
Questions regarding the meaning of certain terms or phrases used in a work of literature. If your question concerns the symbolic significance of something whose surface meaning is clear, use the [symbolism] tag instead. Please add specific tags as well: for the author (if known), the language (if not English), and either the work itself (if long) or the [poetry] or [short-stories] tags for short works.
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What is the significance of this song about "the plain of Fereish" and "Hussein's grandfather"?
In Tayeb Salih's novella The Wedding of Zein (Denys Johnson-Davies's English translation available here), during the actual wedding of Zein, "the leading local chanter" sings:
Blessed be he ...
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What does the Don't Knock motto card mean?
In Willa Cather's The Professor's House, the titular professor's son-in-law, Scott McGregor, a journalist, tells him this anecdote:
"Oh, Professor, you know your English friend, Sir Edgar ...
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What does "playing soupé" mean here?
From a letter (allegedly) received by Charles Guiteau in prison, from "A Philadelphia Lawyer":
[...] Corkhill is an ass and cannot appreciate the fine point on which your case turns. Porter ...
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What does "like devils in the Valley of the Jinn" refer to?
In Tayeb Salih's novella The Wedding of Zein (Denys Johnson-Davies's English translation available here), we see the following description from a wedding party (emphasis mine):
The trilling sounds of ...
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What's the point of "I shan’t try to hit two balls" joke?
I am reading Ethel Lina White’s novel Fear Stalks the Village, written in 1930s, and came across this passage:
In spite of her short sight, the novelist was the best tennis player
in the ...
kaoru
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“Vertu-bamboche” in “Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo
In part 5 of Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, M. Gillenormand toasts the married couple, Marius and Cosette:
“Il est impossible de s'imaginer que Dieu nous ait faits pour autre chose que ceci: ...
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What does Tolkien mean by "eating tea" in Letters from Father Christmas?
I was just rereading Letters from Father Christmas by Tolkien and noticed this odd phrase from the second 1930 letter, which recounts one of the Great North Polar Bear's many misadventures. Here, he ...
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Last sentence of "Foundation and Earth" by Isaac Asimov
I just finished rereading Asimov's Foundation series which I had last read years ago. I did not remember anything in the last two books, Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth, which was great. ...
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"Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green" in Shakespeare's sonnet 104
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold
Have from the forests shook three summers’ pride,
Three beauteous ...
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What is a "Squitchen"?
In the poem "The Preface" by Edward Taylor (1642–1729), there are a few lines that go like this:
Whose Might Almighty can by half a looks
Root up the rocks and rock the hills by th’ roots.
...
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Sonnet 33 from Edmund Spenser's "Amoretti"
Here is the sonnet:
Great wrong I doe, I can it not deny,
to that most sacred Empresse my dear dred,
not finishing her Queene of faëry,
that mote enlarge her living prayses dead:
But lodwick, ...
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Meaning of "caught bending" in Forster's "Arthur Snatchfold"
E. M. Forster's short story "Arthur Snatchfold" begins with Richard Conway looking out over a garden:
Too green. A flight of mossy steps led up from the drive to a turfed amphitheatre. This ...
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"An adjunct of an earth" in Whitman's "Song of Myself"
From "Song of Myself" (1892) by Walt Whitman:
I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not contain’d between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no ...
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Scholarly explanation of Kabir's hiranā samajh būjh ban caranā
tl;dr
While there are plenty of interpretations of hīranā, samajha būjha bana caranā on the web, I'm hoping for an analysis backed by scholarly evidence.
Deets
A well-known poem attributed to the 15th ...
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"Fine knacks for ladies" by John Dowland
In John Dowland's Second Book of Songs (1600), the song "Fine knacks for ladies" has this verse:
Within this pack, pins, points, laces, and gloves,
And divers toys fitting a country fair;
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