“... unlike ours. Even if this is possible, it seems to require of Hero mistakes so egregious that it may be hard to tell whether Hero knows what he is thinking. Strawson and Evans conspire to pose one of the great problems of contemporary theory of knowledge with exquisite acuteness: if atomistic empiricism does not suffice to derive the concepts necessary for ...”

“... Symphony’, which is always referred to by commentators as ‘Barnefield’s “When will my May come?” ’ The generally heterosexual implication of the tenor/soprano exchanges in this Part disguises the fact that the Barnfield lines are an extract, starting in midstanza, from ‘The Affectionate Shepherd’, a long Virgilian pastoral that is ...”

“... book’s unchristian, kindly attitude to the heroine’s hope that if she can die just right, she may, in a dormouse, or some other creature’s form, be ...”

“... know, was a snob, to an extent which was positively disabling. It cannot have mattered much – it may even have been an advantage – in the career which, about the time with which this volume opens, he had just thrown up. For diplomatic services are not exactly the antennae of the race, when it comes to social relationships. What more proper, over half a ...”

“... It wasn’t new. There was not even a kindly schoolmaster who put books into my hands. I think one may have tried to, but it was not until I was 16 and a bit late in the day. Another boy had shown me Stephen Spender’s World Within World, or at any rate the bits dealing with homosexuality, the references to which (while pretty opaque by today’s ...”

“... in post-war Germany is more important than the there), and when to allow himself metaphor. It may be that his development as a poet can be best explained as a transference of allegiance to Eliot from Auden. Much of Terminal Moraine, notably those poems reprinted here in a section called ‘Exempla’, had the early Auden’s determination to test what ...”

“... about food’. To me this seems one of the poet’s most masterly touches. Achilles in his grief may live only for revenge, but ordinary life must go on, and the more realistic Odysseus must remind him that an army marches on its belly. Not all distinguished textual critics have been prone to this kind of over-logicality, but since it often goes with the ...”

“... Many were even born here. Intermarriage with the natives is still forbidden, although that may soon change, but most speak a few words of English. Indeed, this distant province with its forgotten glories is beginning to exercise a fascination on its masters. Imagine an ape-man, a Quasimodo. He has picked up a delicate china figurine which has ...”

“... the varieties of nomenclaturism prominent among them. It words are typically names of things, they may bear a natural or an arbitrary relationship to these things that are prior to them. Exponents of the range of surrogational views are demolished one by one – with, alas, some tendency to the choosing of Aunt Sallies. Professor Scheffler’s book. Beyond the ...”

“... much venom is directed for ‘accumulated dishonesty’. If it isn’t too clear a story, this may be due in part to the subject, perhaps even to constraints arising in real life; but mainly can only be due to the language, which all along withholds more than it reveals. T. S. Eliot maintained: ‘As with Dostoevski and George Chapman, one feels that the ...”

“... to the collection, White locates the main problem in a development which his own earlier Writings may, ironically, have helped to accentuate: this is the modern historian’s withdrawal of confidence in the protocol of narrative. ‘Many modern historians,’ he writes, ‘hold that narrative discourse, far from being a neutral medium for the representation ...”

“... into ridicule and contempt, and encourage students to report fellow students and teachers who may offend. The same tenderness towards oppressed minorities has led many universities to explicit or implicit racial quotas for student admissions and faculty appointments. Now, the liberals are deeply riven, and the conservatives are talking strange talk. Some ...”

“... and to explaining how much the pain of separation hurt Gilman herself. Her bouts of depression may have been an unconscious self-punishment for the urgent needs that forced her to make the break. Many of the contradictions in her ideas can be traced to her ‘uncuddled childhood’. Her father, a professional librarian and linguist, deserted the family ...”

“... His thesis is that it was only monetarist writers such as Peter Jay in a famous Times article of May 1973 who foresaw that ‘the boom [would have to] go bust’ and Professors Laidler and Parkin, writing in June 1974, who foresaw that as a result of the rapid growth of the money supply in 1972-3 inflation would reach 20 per cent in 1974 and 1975. This is at ...”

“... pages accumulated to argue no such thing; it also brings the unknowable rather too near. Forster may not have been disingenuous in insisting he had no idea what was going on inside the Marabar Caves; he was in any case wise not to limit its implication by privileging his readership with a look. McEwan’s method, on the other hand, tells us not enough more ...”