Series Of Tales Research Articles

Controlling Insects with Biology

Not since Carson's 'Silent Spring' has so a clarion been sounded. 'The Dragon Hunters' shows us the way to ecological survival. So says author and commentator Roger Caras on the front of the jacket of The Dragon Hunters. Les Line, editor of Audubon magazine, comments on the back of the jacket, Rachel Carson's 1962 shocker, 'Silent Spring,' warned us of the devastating results of pesticide abuse. Now, while there's still time to curb the chemical countdown, Frank Graham Jr. narrates of the environmental scientists around us who are tracking down nature's hidden ways of nonpolluting pest control. 'The Dragon Hunters' is a timely, profoundly important, and fascinating book. To The Dragon Hunters an urgent clarion call is a bit much, although it may sell books. To The Dragon Hunters a series of tales of the environmental scientists around us who are tracking down nature's hidden ways of nonpolluting pest ...

I'm Dying but It's Only Your Story: Sarraute's Reader on Stage

In L'Usage de la parole, one of Nathalie Sarraute's most recent works, the author too appropriately uses, playfully abuses, and constructively reuses words in changing contexts to avoid telling a story. It is no one's nonstory, yet it belongs to everyone and every one. It is a series of tales begun which are as old or as young as the writer and the reader, beginnings which reveal how the self and the story of each individual are continually created and re-created through social relationships. This fractured fairy tale, which opens at Tchekhov's deathbed in Germany and ends somewhere deep inside the reader, bears the unmistakable mark of Nathalie Sarraute in particular and of a woman writer in general. Although Sarraute would be the first to deny that any piece of writing could be characterized as having been written by a woman, it is nevertheless true that the territory she has charted out for her fictional explorations is a no-man's land that corresponds to Nancy Chodorow's later psychoanalytic insights as described in The Reproduction of Mothering and that corroborates the critical theory on women's writing elaborated by Judith Kegan Gardiner. The poles of Sarraute's fictioncontact and fusion versus the separation and individuation of the self in relation to others coincide with the processes

American Folk Tales Series

American Folk Tales Series

Sentence and Solaas in Fragment VII of the Canterbury Tales: Harry Bailly as Horseback Editor

In this paper I wish to suggest in broad outline a hypothesis concerning the unity of Fragment vu of the Canterbury Tales, based upon the thematic significance of the terms, “sentence” and “solaas.” I will not attempt to explicate any of the tales here, nor elaborate very fully upon their interplay of theme; rather, in introducing such a hypothesis, I will concentrate on the place inquiry must start: with the way Harry Bailly puts his own terms to use. This evidence will be drawn from the links, and lends itself to a fuller understanding of Chaucer's intent in putting Harry into the foreground of this series of tales, even as it leads towards the discovery of Chaucer's own principles of craft.

Structure and Theme in The House of the Seven Gables

Research Article| June 01 1959 Structure and Theme in The House of the Seven Gables William B. Dillingham William B. Dillingham Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nineteenth-Century Fiction (1959) 14 (1): 59–70. https://doi.org/10.2307/3044347 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation William B. Dillingham; Structure and Theme in The House of the Seven Gables. Nineteenth-Century Fiction 1 June 1959; 14 (1): 59–70. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3044347 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentNineteenth-Century Literature Search This content is only available via PDF. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Plan of the Canterbury Pilgrimage

Those who have suggested theories of the number of days Chaucer intended the pilgrimage in the Canterbury Tales to last have either confined themselves to a consideration of the journey to Canterbury or have assumed that it would take the pilgrims the same length of time for their return. Thus Miss Rickert, finding that groups such as the one described by Chaucer ordinarily traveled thirty miles in a day, “insisted on two days each way.” And Manly, after discussing the time it took the pilgrims to reach Canterbury and arriving at no definite conclusion, decided that the question was of no importance, “since the whole conception of a series of tales told while riding by so large a group of pilgrims is, however entertaining, entirely unrealistic.” The conception, though perhaps unrealistic, has been accepted by generations of readers as thoroughly as any artistic postulate. The stage of the Canterbury Tales is the road from London to Canterbury, and the acts of the finished work would have been the days of the pilgrimage. The evidence for Chaucer's intentions is slight, yet, with the confirmation provided by contemporaries familiar with conditions of pilgrimage, it is sufficient to indicate a five-day journey.

The Framework of the Canterbury Tales

For the purposes of this article, a framework or framing story is to be understood as a narrative which, however interesting in itself, was composed for the primary purpose of introducing and connecting a series of tales, which are the raison d'être of the whole work. Though it is outside my plan to trace the origin and growth of this literary genre, a few examples may be given. In the oriental collections entitled The Thousand and One Nights and The Seven Sages, the stories are told in order to postpone the execution of a condemned person. In the first case, this is done by the device of interrupting each story at a critical point, with a promise to conclude it if the execution is put off for a day. In The Seven Sages, a work known in various forms in medieval Europe, a young prince, the son of a Roman emperor, has resisted the amorous advances of his stepmother and has been accused by her of assault and of plotting his father's death. Because she has put a spell upon him which makes it impossible for him to speak for seven days without losing his life, he is unable to refute the charge; but his seven wise tutors come to his assistance. Each evening the stepmother relates to the emperor a story that recalls the wiles of counsellors, and each morning one of the tutors tells a tale illustrating woman's cunning. They thus succeed in putting off the execution from day to day until the period of the spell is completed. When the prince can speak, he convinces the emperor of his own innocence and his stepmother's guilt and she suffers the fate she had planned for him. Both framing stories gain interest through suspense and the second imposes unity and didactic purpose on the tales it encloses.

For the DAE Supplement: The Vocabulary of 'Sam Slick in Texas'

T HE Dictionary of American English includes in its bibliography two books by 'Philip Paxton' (Samuel A. Hammett), A Stray Yank in Texas (N. Y., 1853) and The Wonderful Adventures of Captain Priest (N. Y., 1855). For some reason, however, the DAE does not use as a source a third book by Hammett, Piney Woods Tavern; or, Sam Slick in Texas (1858). Although Hammett has contributed a fair share of the words in the DAE and one of his books has recently been re-examined for words unobserved by the editors of the DAE,1 he still proves to be the source of additional early Americanisms. The purpose of this paper is to point out some expressions in Sam Slick in Texas which (1) do not appear at all in the DAE; (2) are not given in the DAE in the particular sense indicated here; or (3) are given in the DAE, but only under more recent dates. In the case of four words (bull, judy, pewter, quilting, infra), though they may not properly belong in the DAE and are given in the NED, usage (in printed form) has been so rare as to warrant their inclusion in this paper. Bull, n. A drink made by pouring water into an empty cask or canteen which has held spirits. 'Upon an examination of the articles in question [canteens], it appeared, that not satisfied with his blunders of the preceding evening, he had deliberately made a bull in the canteens, as the few drops of slightly discolored water that they contained, proved' (pp. 226-227). The word does not occur in this sense in the DAE. Cf. bull, sb.6 in the NED. Curlecue, n. Trick. 'Most a powerful rough-lookin' flatboat captain, sold him out a bargain, and cut up a most amazin' slick curlecue with him, I guess' (p. 35). The chapter in which this sentence is found is one dealing with a series of tales in which some men outsmart others by trickery; so the meaning of curlecue here is obviously 'trick.' The DAE lists the word in an allied meaning of 'flourish,' 'fancy twirl,' but not in the sense suggested here. Go blind, intr. v. To bet on a hand without looking at the cards. 'Now, it was the oldest hand's turn; he had passed the first say by going