Quotes & Sayings About Literary Allusions

Amelia envisaged that between York and the royal-infested Scottish Highlands there was a grimy wasteland of derelict cranes and abandoned mills and betrayed, yet still staunch, people. Oh and moorland, of course, vast tracts of brooding landscape under lowering skies, and across this heath strode brooding, lowering men intent on reaching their ancestral houses, where they were going to fling open doors and castigate orphaned yet resolute governesses. Or - preferably - the brooding, lowering men were on horseback, black horses with huge muscled haunches, glistening with sweat - — Kate Atkinson

One aspect of Samantha's personality that drove me nuts was her tendency to reveal herself via literary allusions. She called it a quirk, but it was more of a compulsion. Her mother was Lady Macbeth; her father, Big Daddy. An uncle she liked was Mr. Micawber, a favorite governess, Jane Eyre; a doting professor, Mr. Chips.
This curious habit of hers quickly made the voyage from eccentric to bizarre when she began to invoke the names of literary characters to describe moments in our relationship. When she thought I was treating her rudely, she called me Wolf Larsen; if I was standoffish, I was Mr. Darcy; when I dressed too shabbily, I was Tom Joad.
Once, in bed, she yelled out the name Victor as she approached orgasm. I assumed she was referring to Victor Hugo because she'd been reading 'Les Miserables.'. It didn't really bother me that much though it was a little odd being with a woman who thought she was having sex with a dead French author. — John Blumenthal

Ah". Tzimisces smiled. "Let me guess. Flowery periphrases, back-to-back literary allusions and quotations from thousand-year-old authors. A marked reluctance to use one word when twelve can be jammed in if you sit on the lid. — K.J. Parker

Reviewers, critics, guest editors... Such people may have an eye for literary conventions and contrivances, allusions and innovations on the art. But what are their tastes based on? Do they tend to choose work that most resembles theirs? — Amy Tan

When in company with literary women, make no allusions to 'learned ladies,' or 'blue stockings,' or express surprise that they should have any knowledge of housewifery, or needle-work, or dress; or that they are able to talk on 'common things.' It is rude and foolish and shows that you really know nothing about them, either as a class or as individuals. — Eliza Leslie

In a sermon I heard recently, the minister claimed that the portrait of God as a storm god (a literary motif that he did not name) in Psalm 97 is based on allusions to the Exodus and is 'not mere window dressing,' that is, metaphoric. As I observed to this preacher later, he used a metaphor in his denigration of metaphor as mere window dressing. — Leland Ryken

What of Thought? The Crew had developed a kind of shorthand whereby they could set forth any visions that might come their way. Conversations at the Spoon had become little more than proper nouns, literary allusions, critical or philosophical terms linked in certain ways. Depending on how you arranged the building blocks at your disposal, you were smart or stupid. Depending on how others reacted they were In or Out. The number of blocks, however, was finite.
"Mathematically, boy," he told himself, "if nobody else original comes along, they're bound to run out of arrangements someday. What then?" What indeed. This sort of arranging and rearranging was Decadence, but the exhaustion of all possible permutations and combinations was death.
It scared Eigenvalue, sometimes. He would go in back and look at the set of dentures. Teeth and metals endure. — Thomas Pynchon

There is something underwhelming about scholarly hate mail - the sad literary allusions, the refusal to use contractions. — Brock Clarke

The decline of sustained close reading of Eliot is also related, ironically, to the emergence of historical scholarship regarding sources and allusions. The major figure here is Grover Smith, who in the midfifties published an encyclopedic study of Eliot's sources. 3 The mere existence of Smith's scholarly tome changed the shape of close readings of Eliot. The poet's allusions and sources moved to the foreground of concern, and although most readers of Eliot's poetry and plays benefited from Smith's work, others found themselves frustrated by the weight of the intellectual backgrounds. — Jewel Spears Brooker

As a guiding principle I believe that every poem must be its own sole freshly created universe, and therefore have no belief n 'tradition' or a common myth-kitty or casual allusions in poems to other poems or poets, which last I find unpleasantly like the talk of literary understrappers letting you see they know the right people. — Philip Larkin