Word: slays
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...enjoy it. As Gideon Rachman argued in a provocative column in the Financial Times in May, Europe has become a "giant Switzerland." Its people do not consider themselves threatened by the turmoil in the world around it, and see little point in going out looking for dragons to slay. Barack Obama may be Europe's darling, but he will find that his suitor's ardor cools pretty quickly the moment he asks European parents to volunteer their sons and daughters to beef up NATO forces in Afghanistan...
...Strictly speaking, the bullfighting prodigy known as "Michelito" isn't in France to slay any bovine foe. The series of exhibitions he's scheduled to appear in are bloodless becerrada - confrontations with calves, staged by local bullfighting schools. Young Lagravère's participation is intended to provide aspiring matadors a demonstration of technique and skill that falls short of provoking the calves with physical pain - much less a death blow with a sword...
...anecdote--and, in a bravura display, four others that are just as poignant--in support of a technical point he's making about free indirect discourse and characterization. The funny thing about it is that even if you don't understand what he's talking about, the anecdotes still slay you. In other words, you don't have to know what free indirect discourse is to read it, because you already know how to read it. Which raises the question: Do we really need to know How Fiction Works...
...thought of a loved one can turn our wits upside down, ratchet up our heart rate, impel us to slay dragons and write corny songs. We may become morose, obsessive, even violent. Lovesickness has been blamed on the moon, on the devil, but whatever is behind it, it doesn't look like the behavior of a rational animal trying to survive and reproduce. But might there be a method to this amorous madness...
...story will be familiar even to those who don't know the poem. The kingdom of old Hrothgar (voiced and modeled by Anthony Hopkins) is troubled by the predatory sorties of Grendel (Crispin Hellion Glover). Accompanied by his "14 brave thanes," Beowulf (Ray Winstone) comes across the sea to slay the monster and, not incidentally, add another laurel to his own legend. He repels a Grendel attack on Mead Hall, severing the beast's arm. Grendel limps back to his lair, where his mother - she has no name, so we'll call her Grendma - watches him die. When Beowulf discovers...