Blog

  • Anatole France’s Merrie Tales: Concerning an Horrible Picture

    THE WHICH WAS SHOWED IN A TEMPLE AND OF SUNDRY LIMNINGS OF A RIGHT PACIFIC AND AMOROUS SORT THE WHICH THE SAGE PHILEMON HAD HANGED IN HIS LIBRARIE AND OF A NOBLE PORTRAITURE OF THE POET HOMER THE WHICH THE AFORESAID PHILEMON DID PRIZE ABOVE ALL OTHER LIMNINGS The word “limnings” appears odd (as does Read more

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 12. A Wildgoose Chase

    The last thought of Louise Minturn regarding Harry Larchmont as the previous chapter closed: ‘Does he wish the real object of his journey to the Isthmus to be unsuspected and unknown?’ This is the ‘latter idea’ to which Gunter refers when opening this chapter. A fitting beginning as the narrative ahead is driven by the Read more

  • Anatole France’s Merrie Tales: Satan’s Tongue-Pie

    The image of a “Devil’s Pie” might appear to be a bit odd nowadays, but according to Barry Popik in”The Big Apple“, it apparently hails from the famous English priest Thomas Adams: “The Devil makes his Christmas-pyes from lawyers’ tongues and clerkes’ fingers”, attributing his original source to an Italian proverb. Probably the one written Read more

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 11. An Exile from The Four Hundred

    Our narrator is back and quick to inform us that Miss Minturn has secluded herself in her stateroom in order to update her diary—as she has not been given the opportunity previously. In a slip of chronology this is imperative, in order to enlighten readers to events prior to departure, of which they have already Read more

  • Anatole France’s Merrie Tales: A Good Lesson Well Learnt

    Never having had a confessor, I found this tale a little difficult to appreciate at first. I’d heard of King Edward the Confessor of course. As a kid, I used to believe that he must have confessed a lot… My only direct experience with such a, to me, quite bizarre custom was on a visit Read more