NPPF - Preliminary - Title

[Paul Mackin]

On Mon, 2003-07-07 at 10:32, Paul Mackin wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-07-07 at 09:47, Jasper Fidget wrote:
> > As the text suggests (repeatedly), the title _Pale Fire_ may come from
> > Shakespeare's _Timon of Athens_  4:3, line 423:
> > 
> > The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction   
> > Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief,   
> > And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;   
> > The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves  
> > The moon into salt tears; the earth's a thief,   
> > That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen   
> > >From general excrement, each thing's a thief;   
> > The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power  
> > Have uncheck'd theft. Love not yourselves; away!
> > 
> > Shade pulls the title from within the poem on line 962: "Help me, Will!
> > _Pale Fire_", at the end of a verse enumerating his published works and
> > implying that he has dispensed with the (perhaps peculiar) habit of certain
> > authors (for instance Faulkner) of adopting their titles from phrases in
> > other author's works (usually Shakespeare).  Note that Shade has quoted from
> > a passage denouncing thievery (making this a doubly odd or at least ironic
> > choice...).  Furthermore, Nabokov loudly criticized Scott Moncrieff's
> > translation of Proust's _A la Recherche du Temps Perdu_, not least because
> > of the translator's unaccountable adoption of phrases from Shakespeare for
> > use as titles, making Nabokov's choice for his novel certainly a peculiar
> > one.
> 
> 
> To tie things into Pynchon at the earlier opportunity, Kinbote
> criticizes Slade for using another writer's words for the title of his
> (Slade's) collection of essays The Untamed Seahorse
> 
> P.
> 


The work is Browning's My Last Duchess, not Pynchon's Mason & Dixon.
Just to make things perfectly clear.

And the name is Shade, not Slade.

P.