Literary Ditloids: How Many Whats? Quiz

Answer: A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens, one of the most influential English writers, published "A Tale of Two Cities", one of the most well-known novels, as a weekly serial from April 1859 to Novemeber 1859. While the story most certainly is concerned with the politics of the age of the French Revolution, it is also, as everyone is aware, about a love triangle between Lucie Manette, Charles Darnay, and Sydney Carton.

A few have wondered whether Lucie was inspired by Ellen Ternan, an eighteen-year-old actess with whom Dickens is believed to have had an affair. Those critics who argue this also suggest that Darnay and Carton represent two different parts of Dickens, who was in conflict with himself over this affair. Readers of the book will recall that Darnay and Carton uncannily mirror each other in appearance but not in personality.

Answer: The Sign of the Four

"The Sign of the Four", sometimes referred to as "The Sign of Four", is Arthur Conan Doyle's second novel to relate an adventure of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle originally named the novel "The Sign of the Four", as is obvious by the February 1890 publication of the American "Lippincott's" monthly magazine, but subsequent British publications of later editions condensed the title to "The Sign of Four".

While Doyle wrote mostly short stories about Holmes' adventures--56, to be exact--he also wrote four novels about the uncanny detective.

The other three are "A Study in Scarlet", "The Hound of the Baskervilles", and "The Valley of Fear". The title refers to a pact made among four convicts (and two prison guards), and the novel is a significant one in the Holmes storyline as it not only establishes Holmes' drug problem but also sees Doctor John Watson fall in love and become engaged with Mary Morstan.

Answer: The Three Musketeers

"The Three Musketeers" or "Les Trois Mousquetaires" by Alexandre Dumas was first published as a serial novel from March 1844 to July 1844; it is set, however, not in the contemporary France of Dumas' time but in the 1600s. Interestingly, Dumas, at the time of his writing his adventure novel, was learning the practice of fencing himself. One of his instructors was Joseph Charlemont, an instructor for French soldiers.

Answer: The Two Towers

"The Two Towers" is the second book in J. R. R. Tolkien's trilogy "The Lord of the Rings". The other two books are, of course, "The Fellowship of the Ring" and "The Return of the King". Interestingly, Tolkien originally planned for "The Lord of the Rings" to be published as one book; however, because of paper shortages that led to a cost increase following World War II, Tolkien, out of necessity, divided the book into three parts. Forced to think of a name for this second book, he settled on "The Two Towers".

These two towers are Orthanc, a black tower that serves as Saruman's base of operations during most of the events of the trilogy, and Minas Morgul, a white tower that serves as the base of operations for the Witch-king or the Lord of the Nazgul.

Answer: One Hundred Years of Solitude

The Colombian writer and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez published "One Hundred Years of Solitude" in 1967. The novel is considered by many to be an exemplary representation of magical realism, a genre in which myth and fantasy appear as natural parts of the everyday world while the common and uninteresting are often presented as having a greater significance than perhaps they really do possess.

For example, one of the characters lives to be 130 years of age while another leaves this world by ascending into the sky; readers are expected to accept these phenomena without question as natural occurrences.

The novel relies on the progression of the seven generations of the Buendia family through time as a metaphorical representation of the history of Colombia and the development of Latin America from colonialism to socialism.

The town of Macondo, founded by the Buendia patriarch Jose Arcadio, is an isolated settlement, which is supposed to represent the solitude of the original isolated colonial settlements in Latin America. Furthermore, as the reader encounters the lives of various members of the Buendia family, he or she grows aware of how selfish or withdrawn or reclusive each one of the characters is.

This egocentrism continues from generation to generation until a couple of characters find love and begin to understand social responsibility, a way of life Marquez associates with socialism, which he greatly supported.

Answer: Three Men in a Boat

Jerome K. Jerome published "Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)" in 1889. The English writer composed a comical and mostly truthful account of a boating holiday he and two friends took on the Thames. Montmerency is the name of the dog that Jerome created purely for the purposes of story telling; there was no dog on the real trip. Jerome originally intended the book to be a travelogue; however, he could not resist the inclusion of several comical events that soon took over the majority of the book. Nevertheless, the visited sites so very vividly described in the book are quite accurate so that the trip can be recreated by anyone today.

In fact, the pubs and inns mentioned in the book are still currently in business.

Answer: The House of the Seven Gables

"The House of the Seven Gables" was published in 1851 by Nathaniel Hawthorne, just a year following the publication of his more famous work "The Scarlet Letter". The novel has quite an interesting background. The physical house with its seven gables was based on the actual house of Hawthorne's cousin Susanna Ingersoll of Salem, Massachusetts.

The themes of guilt and retribution and the suggestions of witchcraft are derived from Hawthorne's own family background; his ancestor John Hathorne was one of the primary judges involved in the Salem Witch Trials. Finally, the main family of characters in the story--the Pyncheons--led a real family of Pyncheons in Hawthorne's time to claim they were the inspiration for this family of characters. Hawthorne denied this claim of theirs and referred to them as "jackasses." Interestingly, this Pyncheon family turns out to be the ancestors of Thomas Pynchon, the twentieth century author of such postmodern novels as "V.", "The Crying of Lot 49", and "Gravity's Rainbow".

Answer: The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Probably written between 1589 and 1592, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" may have been William Shakespeare's first play, or at least the first one attributed to him. As such, it would also be the first of his plays to rely on what would become a common motif in a number of his comedies--humor that revolves around romance and mistaken identities.

In this particular play, a woman disguises herself as a boy. Of course, this situation is complicated by the fact that a male would have been playing the female role in the first place.

Unfortunately, many also consider it the weakest of his plays. But, hey, it was his first, right?

Answer: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" was written by Wallace Stevens. It can be found in Stevens' book of poems "Harmonium", which was first published in 1923. However, the poem's first appearance is in "Others: An Anthology of the New Verse" in 1917.

The poem is typical of Stevens in that it represents his belief that reality is forever dependent upon each individual's perspective and that each human being must piece together the fragments of his or her perceptions with the creative processes of the mind (one's imagination) to reach an understanding of reality. Examples of lines from this poem include the following: "Among twenty snowy mountains, / The only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird" and "A man and a woman / Are one. / A man and a woman and a blackbird / Are one" and "The river is moving. / The blackbird must be flying."

Answer: Two in the Campagna

"Two in the Campagna" was written by Robert Browning. It was first published in Browning's poetry compilation "Men and Women" in 1855. Robert Browning and his equally famous wife Elizabeth Barrett lived happily in love in Italy from 1846 until her death in 1861.

It is there that Browning would become familiar with the campagna, an area outside of Rome that had once been known for its great agricultural productivity during the time of empire. The speaker of the poem and his lover sit in the campagna, and he expresses to her the unlimited extreme of his passion for her and his desire to be one with her.

However, he recognizes that in reality this desire is impossible to fulfill because, although his love for her is eternal and without limitations, his heart and body are limited and cannot truly join with her. Ultimately, the poem moves beyond being merely a love poem to one poignantly observing that our souls and their ability to transcend to a greater experience or existence are trapped within the limitations of this world.