Fun Times with English Literature

So, a paid ad showed up on my dash (as they sometimes do) declaring, ‘Ya Bish!’ And ya know, bro, I don’t even know you, so no, I do not bish.  But, it made me think of something else.

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s middle name is pronounced ‘Bish’.  God bless the English (and their really silly names).  It’s a simple name that just means bush.

Look at that quote, if that isn’t Elven, I dunno what is.

Anyway, if you have nerdy, well-read friends, and if you’re checking out this blog, you probably do, call them a Bysshe in a text or send them out a ‘ya Bysshe’ when you know they get you.  And indeed, they might.

Quick Tolkien tie-in (straws, I’m grasping them!) like, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s  literary essay “A Defence of Poetry” and Tolkien’s oft-discussed but criticized essay “On Fairy-Stories” are both analytical works on the uses of the literary imagination.

CliffsNotes: They’re both defenders of imaginative writing.

So, go them!

A paragraph I especially like from Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy-Stories”, ya Bysshe.