The English Miscellany

“Infinity made imaginable.” A review of The Encyclopedia of the Gothic (2016), edited by William Hughes, David Punter and Andrew Smith. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN: 978-1-119-06460-2. (880 pages).      The general editors (William Hughes, David Punter and Andrew Smith) begin their Introduction to The Encyclopedia of the Gothic by employing the now well-known story of the Chinese encyclopedia, popularized by Jorge Luis Borges and by Michel Foucault in The Order of Things (1970). Although they choose to employ the definite article in their chosen title, their enlightened emphasis on ‘provisionality’ hints at the struggle with the ‘epistemologically firm structure of an encyclopedia’ (p. xxxiv). Indeed, the evidence of diversity and the proliferation of resources [FN1] on gothic appears to challenge the possibility of constructing an encyclopedia in fixed media. Fortunately, the online version will provide an opportunity to interact with the suggestions of ...

Time to take the Book Challenge. Please post comments and suggestion below, or use Twitter #bookchallenge Which book is most often stolen from a library? Is it possible to be poisoned by a book? How much did it cost to produce the world's most expensive book? What was Shakespeare's best insult? Who invented science fiction, or fantasy? When was the world's first novel written? What's the funniest moment in literature? Which book has the best opening line? What's the longest book ever written? Who is the world's best selling writer, alive or dead? Who is the most famous/infamous fictional woman to appear in a story? When was the first comic strip published? Who wrote the world's first romance? When was the world's first recipe book composed? Who was the world's most prolific author? Who invented young adult fiction? Which book has caused the most trouble? Who is the most liked/hated superhero?  Who was the world's slowest ...

The path to publication is arduous! "Publication is a self-invasion of privacy." - - -  Marshall McLuhan You can't publish unless you've written something ... 1. Ban thoughts of failure or rejection; by starting to write you are improving on the blank page of terror 2. Write a rough draft quickly; the quality of the writing should be worked on later 3. Familiarise yourself with an appropriate academic phrasebank 4. Learn to use a range of connectives in order to make your ideas flow 5. Avoid writing marathons - they seldom produce quality outcomes 6. Learn to use short stretches of highly focused writing time 7. Check that your have displaced all potential distractions 8. Identify SMART targets for your short periods of writing: Specific – target a specific area for improvement. Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress. Assignable – specify who will do it. Realistic – state what results can realistically...

Students create their own maps of connection "The creative journey has more departures than arrivals."   Students often have problems thinking about the flow of their ideas within a paragraph. This is not surprising as different thought-pathways occur at each (full) stop.  For instance, having expressed one idea, the next one might illustrate, supplement, qualify, or reverse the preceding sentence.  As a result, our sentence journeys quickly become very complicated. A complex argument often degenerates into confusion, and the sense of feeling lost. Writers and readers need signposts, and they need a map. In reality, writing involves weaving together a complex and dense thread of connectives and transitions. These words have the special function of signalling the direction of travel. They help to maintain a sense of purpose and direction. By using them effectively the writer is able to stick to a plan. Transitions help writing to flow . By thinking about th...