Questions tagged [setting]
Questions regarding the physical location and time period in which a work of literature takes place.
84 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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When Does the Novel The Princess Bride happen?
When does the novel The Princess Bride (1973) by William Goldman happen?
I mean the story of Buttercup and Wesley told in the fictional book within a book allegedly written by S. Morgenstern and ...
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What is (or was) the Madden Prize examination?
In the "Wandering Rocks" episode of Ulysses, Joyce writes:
Thither of the wall the quartermile flat handicappers, M.C. Green, H. Thrift, T.M. Patey, C. Scaife, J.B. Jeffs, G.N. Morphy, F. ...
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Setting in Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" - background or integral?
I've been having a debate with a colleague whether the setting in Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" is backdrop or integral.
These terms, as far as I know and as far as the debate ...
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When is the setting of Aitmatov's "To Have and to Lose"?
Yesterday I read Chingiz Aitmatov's To Have and to Lose (freely available online in English), which was originally published in 1961. How precisely can we figure out when this story is set? The ...
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Whereabouts is the setting of Jhumpa Lahiri's Whereabouts?
Jhumpa Lahiri's Whereabouts is a series of very short vignettes of the life of an unnamed woman in an unnamed Italian city.
I've asked over here about the character, but this time I'm interested in ...
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Where are all the places mentioned in "Orinoco Flow"?
In the song "Orinoco Flow" (lyrics here), the following places are mentioned, some of which are easy to locate and others not so much:
the Orinoco (Venezuela and Colombia)
Tripoli, which ...
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Where is the setting of "When Mr Pirzada Came to Dine"?
Jhumpa Lahiri's short story "When Mr Pirzada Came to Dine", part of a collection with "Interpreter of Maladies", is set in a US university town. Is it possible to figure out which ...
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Where is Kernel Fleck from?
The second book of the Demonata series, Demon Thief, introduces the main viewpoint character of Kernel Fleck. Where in the world is he from? We know that Grubbs and Bec are both from (very different ...
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Where is the setting of The Supernaturalist?
The Supernaturalist is a novel by Eoin Colfer set in a dystopian future. When I read it twenty years ago, I'd vaguely assumed it was probably set somewhere in the Americas, but now I wonder if the ...
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For how many "young" people in the Vampirates series do we know where they're from?
The Vampirates series is set in the 2500s, at a time when "the oceans have risen", the implication being that the world is now so dominated by water that most people live on the sea, hence ...
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Where are these ancient places described in a Sumerian tablet?
Recently, in a museum, I saw a tablet of ancient literature from Mesopotamia, specifically showing part of the ancient Sumerian story Enki and Ninhursag:
The translation to English (provided in the ...
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Where is Hardy's Carriford?
In Desperate Remedies, Thomas Hardy writes of a village named Carriford. Being close to Kingston Maurward I assumed it to be Stinsford, but Hardy refers to this place as Mellstock. Did Hardy make up ...
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What evidence supports Calypso's island being Gozo (Malta)?
In the Odyssey, the island where Calypso lives is called Ogygia, but what real Mediterranean island is this? One long-standing theory has it as Gozo, the second island of Malta:
Ogygia or Phaeacia ...
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Which Animorphs books have description of the Yeerk Pool?
I want to refer to descriptions of the Yeerk Pool from K. A. Applegate's Animorphs series. This is for a short story I'm working on which would be set within the main Pool complex. However, there are ...
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