To Say Nothing of the Dog--Literary Allusions (original) (raw)

Chapter 4:

(assorted movie references which I will skip)

"Howard's End" -- Howard's End, E.M. Forster.

"Marple's End" -- Jane Marple, another Agatha Christie reference.

"Tennyson" -- the poet again.

"fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf" -- Macbeth, by William Shakespeare:
"My way of life
Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but in their stead
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not."

"crookbacked and crabbèd with age" -- anyone know??? Perhaps Shakespeare: "Crabbed age and youth Cannot live together"?

"You are old, Father William" -- original poem by Robert Southey, parodied in Alice in Wonderland.

"Betsey Trotwood" -- David Copperfield, Charles Dickens.

"rest that knits the ravelled sleeve of care" -- Macbeth, William Shakespeare: "Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care."

"Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" -- Actual history, supposedly.

"Mariana in the South" -- "Mariana In the South," poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

"patience on a monument, smiling at grief" -- Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare:
"Duke. And what ’s her history?
Vio. A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief."
(Often quoted by P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster characters)

"Three Men in a Boat," again.

"Lewis Carroll"

"Tom Brown" -- Tom Brown's Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes?

"Matthew Arnold" -- poet, wrote Dover Beach.

"Gerald Manley Hopkins" -- poet and pastor.

"the city of lost causes" and "the last echoes of the Middle Ages" -- ???

"sweet city with her dreaming spires" -- "Thrysis, A Monody," by Matthew Arnold:
"And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty's heightening,

Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!--"

"deanery garden... Alice Liddell... Alice in Wonderland... shop where Alice had bought sweets from a sheep -- Through the Looking-Glass, actually.

"Fate holds the strings, and Men like children move but as they're led: Success is from above" -- Heroic Love, by Lord Henry Landsdowne.

"Fate show thy force. What is decreed must be, and be this so" -- Twelth Night, by William Shakespeare.

"Jabez... Oliver Twist... Bill Sikes..." -- Oliver Twist again.

Chapter 5:

"poems of Xenophon" -- ancient Greek writer, Anabasis (story of a leader who led a group of men safely home through enemy territory).

"Dark brown is the river... golden is the sand" -- "Where Go The Boats?" by Robert Louis Stevenson.

"Lady of Shallott... mirror crack'd..." and many other references -- Lady of Shallott, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

"O name forever sweet! forever dear! The sound of it is precious to mine ear!" -- ???

"never the twain shall meet" -- "The Ballad of East and West," by Rudyard Kipling: "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet."

"Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise" -- "The Kraken," by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

"Mr. Walton... a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts" -- The Compleat Angler, by Izaak Walton. One of the oldest books published in English.

"piscatur in aqua turbida" - Latin proverb.

There are too many! I can't do any more right now.

I found a cool website, though... Note and Queries for Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Anita Rowland. She has some of the historical references, which I have blithely skipped as off-topic.