Pizza Island
Some of the most inspired cartoonists of the 21st century all started off in a single studio space in Brooklyn: Pizza Island.
Category: Literature
The ancients and the moderns
Is modern thought more advanced than the Greeks and Romans? Most people fall on the side of “duh, of course,” but in 16th century France the debate between the Ancients and the Moderns was fierce.
Renaissance fart jokes
Poggio Bracciolini was a key instigator of the Italian Renaissance: he recovered or rediscovered many of the Latin texts that would inspire that storied revival. Also, he loved a good fart joke.
Chaucer’s astrolabe
Geoffrey Chaucer is best known as the author of The Canterbury Tales, one of the most important works of early English literature. I guess that didn’t pay the bills, because he also wrote one of the first English technical manuals.
Comic syntax
Comic books have their own structure, conventions, and language. In a seminal 1988 essay, two cartoonists broke down elements of this syntax using a single Nancy comic strip.
The disappearance of Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is perhaps the most famous mystery and crime writer of the 20th century. In 1923 she started a real-life mystery of her own that has persisted to this day: she disappeared.
The most beautiful words
What is the most beautiful noun phrase in English? Cellar door is the favourite of many famous writers, including Dorothy Parker, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis. But no-one is quite sure who said it first.
A book without the letter ‘e’
Georges Perec wrote a 300 page novel without using the letter ‘e’. It’s a mystery, of course: friends gather at a country manor, but one of their number (A. Vowl) is missing. The title of the book is itself a pun: A Void.
Illustrated book of demons
Jacques Collin de Plancy’s 1818 book Dictionnaire Infernal contained a list of demons, part of a long tradition of grimoires and demonology texts. What made it stand out were the illustrations.
Shakespeare: the programming language
Shakespeare is a programming language designed to look like one of the bard’s plays.
The Generalist Academy 