Language has played a crucial role in the history of our world, but in most fantasy, it is often mentioned only in passing. It’s easy to see why: writing fictional languages is hard, and making them seem realistic is even harder. But it’s a topic worth thinking about, especially for those writers who like to… Continue reading Language in Fantasy
It's a song commonly played to ring in the New Year, bidding farewell to the old. Across the English-speaking world, it's used for graduations, for funerals, for any major transitional period in one's life. As a result, pretty much everyone is familiar with the tune. But growing up, I never knew anyone who was actually… Continue reading Dialects in Literature: A Look at Robert Burns
There is an inherent interconnectivity between epic literature and cultural identity. Nationals epics typically have their roots in an oral tradition, painting a romanticized portrait of the distant past. This rose-tinted view of cultural history leads to a skewed sense of identity--a perception of an original and "pure" society, untainted by outside cultures. It is… Continue reading Transnational Epics: How an Indian Epic Became Popular in 19th-Century Germany
In a world of emerging paper currency and capitalism, it comes as little surprise that contemporary entertainment so often focused on economic problems. A surprisingly common theme in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century works was the economics of the human body. Often, this issue was addressed in literature and performances through female prostitution, but some texts present… Continue reading The Common Soldier: An Archetype in 17th- and 18th-Century Theatre
A quick walk-through of the character's history and significance in medieval Germanic literature
