Издания и произведения

Four 30-minute BBC audio programs presented by Stephen Fry indulging his delight in the English language. Included in this release: CURRENT PUNS: why weak puns and lame jokes are important and oil the social wheels; METAPHOR: from the freshly minted to the ancient fossils embedded in our language; QUOTATION: literary quotations, clever bon mots, malapropisms; CLICHES: how original coinages gradually become the stock-in-trade of lazy writers.

Current Puns: Wliy does our language groan with the weight of puns? What exactly is a pun? And who, or what, is the Thief of Bad Gags? Metaphor: The English language is chock-full of maritime metaphors: cock up, token obock, chip on your shoulder and show a leg. And, with the help of a Greek removals firm, we also find the origin of the word metaphor. Quotation: The uses and misuses of quotations are revealed, and there is also a frank confession from a quotation compiler, which we cannot divulge here. Cliche: Featuring sick parrots and the cliche crisis that affected the writing of Flaubert, Joyce and Eliot, and…