Word: english
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Crocodile Tears. First published as a book in 1938, and the first of Nabokov's Russian-language novels to be translated into English (by his 25-year-old son Dmitri), Invitation to a Beheading will offer innumerable meanings to readers-or no meaning at all. But the 20th century being what it is, the political interpretation comes first to mind. No period is stated; the prisoner's name carries echoes of Roman civic virtue, the jailers' names are Russian, and the executioner is known (in an echo of the French Revolution?) as M'sieur Pierre...
Before the 130-odd ships that were the core of the Spanish Armada had been provisioned, searched for contraband women, and set creaking out of Lisbon harbor in May of 1588, one of the captains assessed the expedition's chances; unless a miracle occurred, the English could be expected to knock the Spanish to pieces. "So," he finished with heavy irony, "we are sailing against England in the hope of a miracle...
...decided." Certainly not the war between Spain and England; that dragged on for nearly 14 years and ended in a draw. Nor did it cut down the Spanish colonial empire. What the defeat did accomplish, Mattingly argues, was to halt the spread of the Counter Reformation and provide the English with a handy legend of victory. "It raised men's hearts in dark hours, and led them to say to one another, 'What we have done once, we can do again...
...July 19 by the Old Style calendar still used by the English at the time. Mattingly gives all dates according to the Gregorian calendar...
...Plume de Ma Tante. An acrobatty French revue that leaves English and the audience happily fractured...