Pride comes before the fall
John Donne's intellectually elitist school of poetry.
What is metaphysical poetry?
A vantage point for conscience troubled men.
What is the Bridge of Hesitation?
The personal voice Hustvedt uses to make it feel like she's coughing up a secret.
What is a confessional tone?
The divisive religious movement that led to hundreds of years of Catholic/Protestant tension.
What is the Reformation?
The thing you do if it's "on the spine".
Antonio prides himself on this and he's really on the money.
What is his Christian generosity?
An adequate number of days to wear a corset.
What is eight?
You need lots of these to explore a question discursively.
What is the rise of trade/the merchant class?
Talking around the point.
What is circumlocution?
Vivian's description of herself to suggest her pride in her academic achievements.
What is "a force"?
A supposedly neutral setting that reveals the inherent contradictions and inconsistencies of human nature. Molto bene!
What is Venice?
A style of jumping around favoured by Kazuo and Nam.
Non linear or fragmented structure.
Ishiguro is concerned with the difficulty of rising above these.
What is the dogmatic fervours of one's time?
A half breed Shakespearean genre.
What is tragicomedy?
The way Ono describes his supposed reputation for always thinking for himself.
What is "rising about the sway of things"?
A hypocritical and ironic line by Portia in the court scene.
What is "the quality of mercy is not strain'd"?
How Atwood gets her ethos on.
What is listing her literary credentials as a famous author?
What is the Protestant Doctrine of Salvation?
Arthur Miller's explanation of the tragedy of the common man.
What is the unwillingness to remain passive in the face of a challenge to (one's) dignity?
Shylock's dogged insistence on his bond leads him to get all of this and then some, or so Portia says.
What is justice?
The tragic structural feature TMOV lacks.
What is restoration of social order?
Inception for postmodernists.
What is metafiction?
What is the postmodern equivalent to Donne's metaphysical conceit.
Alanis Morissette used it (accidentally) when she sang that it was like rain on your wedding day... because it wasn't what she said it was. Ishiguro uses it a lot too.
What is irony?