With the advent of electronic word-processing and spellchecker programs, many people just presume that simply by running spellchecker all of their grammar errors will be caught and corrected. This is simply not so. Spellchecker programs often include some grammar checking, but no man-made program can catch all the innuendos of the English language. This article [...]

Beowulf, the oldest English epic: Translated into Alliterative Verse with a Critical Introduction by CHARLES W. KENNEDY, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, Oxford London New York INTRODUCTION THE Old English Beowulf holds a unique place as the oldest epic narrative in any modern European tongue. Of unknown authorship, and dating in all probability from the early eighth [...]

A Modern Critical Interpretations, edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom Sterling Professor of the Humanities Yale University. Editor’s Note This book gathers together a representative selection of the best criticism devoted to Ernest Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms. The critical essays are reprinted here in the chronological order of their original publication. [...]

“There is something about Tolkien’s art which eludes the conventional strategies of contemporary criticism, even when these are deployed with sympathy and patience.” This view from Brian Rosebury in Tolkien: A Critical Assessment (4) is insightful. The key words are, of course, “conventional” and “contemporary,” for what Tolkien was doing, for all his contemporary popularity, [...]

The “invention” of language is not known except for references in the Bible. It is not known what language Adam and Eve spoke. The first mention of different languages is the reference to the tower of Babel when different tongues were bestowed. The invention of writing, however, is credited to the Sumerians of Mesopotamia in [...]

The earliest case on copyright law dates to the year 561 over the ancient Irish manuscript, the Cathach of St. Columba. But the first proper copyright law is the Statute of Anne, the Copyright Act 1709, named after Queen Anne, monarch of Great Britain at the time. In 1886, the Berne Convention was established to [...]

Have you been asked which words end with “gry”? It is an age-old trick question that people often get wrong. The full question goes like this: “Think of words ending in ‘gry.’ ‘Hungry’ and ‘angry’ are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? The word [...]

Aesop, who lived in Greece in the 6th century BC, is considered to be the greatest teller of fables. They include ‘The Lion and the Mouse’, ‘The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’ and ‘The Hare and the Tortoise’. In an Aesop fable a lion, cow, sheep and a goat go hunting. They kill a deer and [...]