Can a name be more than just a name? Can it be an idea? The wizard Merlin of folklore and myth seems to encapsulate both the title and the belief. In fact, the very utterance of his name brings forth certain emotions and feelings: smoke, magic, and wonder. It is important that in discussing the connotative idea as it relates to Merlin, we see more than just an old man or a wizard, as he stands for something more profoundly symbolic and transcendental: a wizard of lore.
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Mastering Intensive Pronouns for Effective Emphasis
Often in writing, writers must emphasize their ideas to impart critical information to their reader. There are certain ways of accomplishing this feat. In fact, there are certain words that can help us accomplish more nuanced and incisive grammar. These words are known as intensive pronouns.
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The Life, Works, and Strange Disappearance of Ambrose Bierce
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” by Ambrose Bierce is a haunting piece of literature. Often, stories that dark must come from someone’s haunted mind. Bierce, by some estimation, lived in a haunted world himself, dying under strange circumstances. But, what happened to Ambrose Bierce? And why is his disappearance so strange? Dissecting his death is actually quite revealing: we find a man who lived through traumatic warfare, and a man who committed himself to literary works of bravery, honor, and death.
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George Eliot’s ‘Silas Marner’: Redemption and Love
Can a person change after a grievous trauma? Can a miser be reformed to see the light of love? George Eliot attempts to answer those questions in her novel Silas Marner. Similarly, it’s worth noting that George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. A Victorian novelist, Evans wrote such novels as Adam Bede (1859), Middlemarch (1872), and Daniel Deronda (1876). According to multiple sources, she used a “masculine” pen name to separate her writings from “previous work.” This allowed her “to escape the stereotype that women’s writings were limited to lighthearted romances.”
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Biography: Author Robert Bloch
Author Robert Bloch’s most famous work has now been transformed into a successful film franchise and a successful television show. Both of these sources showcased the delusions, murderous tendencies, and maternal issues of one Norman Bates. The world knows Psycho (1959) for its many incarnations (films and TV shows); however, its author is just as well known, Bloch, as it stands, is not necessarily a one-trick pony in the literature and writing field.
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Types of Conjunctions: Correlative Conjunctions
Connecting and showing relationships between ideas can be difficult in writing. As always, it just comes down to using the right words. Sometimes, the right words are apart of a few different types of the same idea. There are three main types of conjunctions: coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, and correlative conjunctions.
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Mary Shelley’s The Last Man: A Gothic Sci-Fi Journey
Mary Shelley has an impression on this blog, as her most famous work is easily referential. That is to say, the convenience of referencing Frankenstein: Modern Prometheus as an exemplar for gothic-horror novels is practical. However, throughout her career, Shelley published more novels that stayed within the same science fiction/grounded-in-realism genre. In the The Last Man buy Mary Shelley, the author explores these themes once again.
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Gothic Horror and Dark Magic in ‘The Haunted Palace’
Through the power of dark magic and malevolence, warlocks seek to do harm and/or destroy the world. At least according to literature and the movies. They also appear in various media and in many forms. These forms include sexy preppies at vampire schools, to horrible Euro-centrists of menacing power. Similarly, they are cunning, crafty, and pure evil. Of course these are only stories. The Haunted Palace (1963) and its relationship to the fictitious inspirations that include Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven and H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
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Rory Power’s Wilder Girls: A Shocking Survival Tale
“I think I’d been looking for it all my life
a storm in my body to match the one in my head.”
― Rory Power, Wilder Girls
The Power of Anacoluthon in Writing and Speech
Often, how we speak differs from how we write. Sometimes, we do not even realize it is happening. For instance, humans use asides and segues to shift between ideas. Anacoluthon in writing is just that. It can be an abrupt change, or a shift to a different idea. Writers use this in dialogue and argumentation to move between ideas to shift or obfuscate meaning.
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