Secret Library – Page 2 – Interesting Literature

The Meaning and Origin of ‘Good Fences Make Good Neighbours’

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning of a well-known expression

Here’s a question for you: who first wrote the line, ‘good fences make good neighbours’? Although it was the American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963) who first used that particular wording, the sentiment, expressed in slightly different (though only very slightly different) words, is considerably older. So where did ‘good fences make good neighbours’ originally come from, and what does it mean in the Robert Frost poem in which it appears?

The Meaning and Origin of ‘Jam Tomorrow and Jam Yesterday, but Never Jam Today’

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the origins of a famous expression in a classic work of children’s literature

The more I return to Lewis Carroll, the more convinced I become that he, not Dickens, has perhaps the strongest claim to being the key precursor to Kafka – although there are obviously numerous other contenders for that mantle, including Dostoevsky and Gogol. But something about Alice’s journeys down the rabbit hole and through the looking-glass, and the illogical and irrational figures she encounters on her travels, puts me in mind of Josef K.’s futile and laughable attempts to clear his name in The Trial and K.’s equally doomed efforts to penetrate the workings of the mysterious castle in The Castle.

The Meaning and Origin of ‘A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing’

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the origins of a famous quotation – and its less famous source

‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.’ This line is often quoted, but it’s actually, technically, a misquotation. What’s more, the meaning of this aperçu is worth analysing more closely, because it is open to misinterpretation as well as misquotation. Let’s take a look at the origins of ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ – or, more accurately, ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’.

The Meaning and Origin of ‘They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait’

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores the meaning of a famous line from John Milton

‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ This line has the ring of the proverb about it, but rather than being some anonymous piece of hand-me down wisdom, the quotation has a very definite and clearly discoverable origin. For ‘They also serve who only stand and wait’ is the closing line in one of the most celebrated sonnets by the seventeenth-century poet John Milton.

The Meaning of ‘Poetry Is Not a Turning Loose of Emotion, but an Escape from Emotion’

In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses the meaning of one of T. S. Eliot’s most famous statements about poetry

‘Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.’ This statement from T. S. Eliot is one of his most famous critical pronouncements, but what Eliot meant by ‘escape from personality’ in particular has often been misinterpreted. Let’s take a closer look at the essay in which Eliot’s statement appears.