Everybody's Got to Be Somewhere
The answer to the previous bonus question is: setting.
If you're a fan of the Science Channel, you might have seen various programs about string theory and “parallel universes,” in which could exist a multitude of different versions of our world and everything on it (including you me.) I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that just one of me is more than enough for any number of universes!
But if you buy the parallel universe notion, then it would also make it theoretically possible for a person to be simultaneously in more than one place. I've got news for you – it’s already possible to be in two places at once. Case in point: At this moment you are sitting in front of your computer, out there in Upper Sandusky or
Outer Mongolia, wherever. Yet at this self-same moment, you are also “on” the LitNet, ergo, two places at once. Yeah, I know, that’s neither here nor there. Let’s make it three places and go to the quiz:
Everybody’s Got to Be Someplace
1. Who was the 20th century poet whose trademark lower-case letters could be found in such graceful poems as “somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond”?
2. When a well-known character asks a fairy where she’s been, she answers “Over hill, over dale. . .” adding, “I do wander everywhere.” Name the Shakespearean comedy in which this passage appears.
3. An anonymous saying, cited by the author of The Romance of the Rose as well as St. Bonaventure, defines “a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.” Whose “nature” is so described?
4. In 1923, what was the question posed to George Leigh Mallory in which he famously replied, “Because it was there”?
5. The Unnameable, the last part of a novel trilogy, consists of a stream of conscious monologue by a narrator whose head is encased in a glass jar set in an alley behind a downscale restaurant. Who was the author?
6. What is the title of E.M. Forster’s first novel, culled from a line by Alexander Pope?
7. Because of theological technicality, some souls, which are barred from heaven and hell yet not guilty enough to be sentenced to purgatory, required a kind of permanent holding area. What is the name of this place, which is also the name of a dance which originated in the Caribbean islands?
8. Inspired by a passage in Plato’s Republic and written in Latin, Utopia depicts an idealized island community. Who wrote this 1516 fantasy?
9. On a similar theme, Samuel Butler’s 1872 satire uses a future world to poke fun at social and political institutions which actually existed circa 1872. Name the title, which is an anagram of a common English word we use every day.
10. Where did heroic Scandinavian warriors go after they were slain on the battlefield?
11. According to songwriters Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, where do “bluebirds fly”?
12. What is the title of Sartre’s absurdist play in which three characters are imprisoned in a room where the door won't open?
13. And finally, in 17th century England it was rare for women to forge literary careers, but one woman fought the tide and became a celebrated playwright. Even though most of us never heard of Aphra Behn, we often quote her lines. Finish this famous saying:
“Here today. . .” and what?
Answers
1. e e cummings
2. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
3. God
4. “Why did you climb Mount Everest?”
5. Samuel Beckett
6.Where Angels Fear to Tread
7. Limbo
8. Sir (or Saint) Thomas More
9. Erewhon (an anagram for “nowhere”)
10. Valhalla
11. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
12. No Exit
13. “. . .gone tomorrow.”
Bonus Question
( in which is set a hint about the next topic.) Finish this phrase from a line from King Lear:
“That way madness ____” (what?)