Robert Louis Stevenson Website - RLS Website. The James Joyce Society: Selected Links. AP English Literature Websites.
W. Somerset Maugham : 20th Century Authors. Virginia Woolf : 20th Century Authors. 20th Century Authors Complete Text Mobile device ebooks! [html] for your mobile browser. Virginia Woolf [html] 20th Century AuthorsArthur's Classic Novels. D H Lawrence : 20th Century Authors. 20th Century Authors Complete Text Mobile device ebooks! [html] for your mobile browser. D H Lawrence [html] 20th Century AuthorsArthur's Classic Novels. George Orwell - Eric Arthur Blair. Novels. Essays. Articles. Reviews. Biography. Bibliography.
George Orwell: Politics and the English Language. Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer.
But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. DYING METAPHORS. OPERATORS OR VERBAL FALSE LIMBS. The Country of the Blind by H.G. Wells. Three hundred miles and more from Chimborazo, one hundred from the snows of Cotopaxi, in the wildest wastes of Ecuador's Andes, there lies that mysterious mountain valley, cut off from all the world of men, the Country of the Blind.
Long years ago that valley lay so far open to the world that men might come at last through frightful gorges and over an icy pass into its equable meadows, and thither indeed men came, a family or so of Peruvian half-breeds fleeing from the lust and tyranny of an evil Spanish ruler. Then came the stupendous outbreak of Mindobamba, when it was night in Quito for seventeen days, and the water was boiling at Yaguachi and all the fish floating dying even as far as Guayaquil; everywhere along the Pacific slopes there were land-slips and swift thawings and sudden floods, and one whole side of the old Arauca crest slipped and came down in thunder, and cut off the Country of the Blind for ever from the exploring feet of men.
And the man who fell survived. "Sight? " Lewis Carroll « Lewis Carroll Society of North America. The Walrus & The Carpenter. (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872) The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright-- And this was odd, because it was The middle of the night. The moon was shining sulkily, Because she thought the sun Had got no business to be there After the day was done-- "It's very rude of him," she said, "To come and spoil the fun! " The sea was wet as wet could be, The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because No cloud was in the sky: No birds were flying overhead-- There were no birds to fly. The Walrus and the Carpenter Were walking close at hand; They wept like anything to see Such quantities of sand: "If this were only cleared away," They said, "it would be grand! " "If seven maids with seven mops Swept it for half a year. Do you suppose," the Walrus said, "That they could get it clear? " "O Oysters, come and walk with us! " "But not on us! " "It was so kind of you to come! Jabberwocky. "Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch! " He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought -- So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! "And, has thou slain the Jabberwock? `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature. THE CAMELOT PROJECT at the UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER.