id,comments,provenance,dictionary,created_at,reviewed_on,work_id,theme,context,updated_at,metaphor,text
15709,•Usually the fancy is the painter. Here the fancy is a viewer?,Reading,"",2003-07-16 00:00:00 UTC,2007-06-26,5925,"","",2009-09-14 19:44:26 UTC,"""I spent the night ruminating on the future and in painting to my fancy the adventures which I should be likely to meet.""","I determined to commence my journey the next morning. No wonder the prospect of so considerable a change in my condition should deprive me of sleep. I spent the night ruminating on the future and in painting to my fancy the adventures which I should be likely to meet. The foresight of man is in proportion to his knowledge. No wonder that in my state of profound ignorance, not the faintest preconceptions should be formed of the events that really befel me. My temper was inquisitive, but there was nothing in the scene to which I was going from which my curiosity expected to derive gratification. Discords and evil smells, unsavoury food, unwholesome labour, and irksome companions, were, in my opinion, the unavoidable attendants of a city.
(Part I, chapter 2, p. 250)"
15713,"",Reading,"",2003-07-16 00:00:00 UTC,2003-10-22,5925,"",Mervyn hiding in the closet. Leaves his shoes.,2009-09-14 19:44:26 UTC,"""I could not help smiling at the picture which my fancy drew of their anxiety and wonder.""","On the morrow the two doors of the chamber and the window below would be found unclosed. They will suspect a design to pillage, but their searches will terminate in nothing but in the discovery of a pair of clumsy and dusty shoes in the closet. Now that I was safe I could not help smiling at the picture which my fancy drew of their anxiety and wonder. These thoughts, however, gave place to more momentous considerations.
(Part I, chapter 5, p. 271)"
15733,"",Reading,"",2003-07-18 00:00:00 UTC,,5925,"",Mervyn assisting Welbeck (on the night of Watson's murder),2009-09-14 19:44:30 UTC,"Past events may be painted, ""in vivid hues"" on the [canvas] of the memory","What condition was ever parallel mine? The transactions of the last three days, resembled the monstrous creations of delirium. They were painted with vivid hues on my memory; but so rapid and incongruous were these transitions, that I almost denied belief to their reality. They exercised a bewildering and stupifying influence on my mind, from which the meditations of an hour were scarcely sufficient to relieve me. Gradually I recovered the power of arranging my ideas, and forming conclusions.
(Part I, chapter 12, p. 332)"
15742,"",Reading,"",2003-07-18 00:00:00 UTC,2007-06-26,5925,"",Mervyn believes he has deiscovered Wallace,2009-09-14 19:44:32 UTC,"""My fancy readily depicted the progress and completion of this tragedy.""","My fancy readily depicted the progress and completion of this tragedy. Wallace was the first of the family on whom the pestilence had seized. Thetford had fled from his habitation. Perhaps, as a father and husband, to shun the danger attending his stay, was the injunction of his duty.
(Part I, chapter 15, p. 361)"
15836,"•Rich passage. Phantoms, revolution, understanding, soliloquy, and fancy.
•I've only included ""fancy"" in the database. I am not confident that the other references are metaphorically rich enough. REVISIT.",Reading,"",2003-07-21 00:00:00 UTC,,5960,"",Mervyn is about to visit the Mrs. Villars,2009-09-14 19:44:50 UTC,The fancy may outstrip one's footsteps and be busy picturing and rehearsing,"Hitherto I had strolled along the path at a lingering pace. Time enough, methought, to reach your threshold between sun-rise and moonlight, if my way had been three times longer than it was. Yon were the pleasing phantoms that hovered before me, and beckoned me forward. What a total revolution had occurred in the course of a few seconds, for thus long did my reasonings with regard to Clemenza and the Villars require to pass through my understanding, and escape, in half muttered soliloquy, from my lips. My muscles trembled with eagerness, and I bounded forward with impetuousity. I saw nothing but a visto of catalpas, leafless, loaded with icicles, and terminating in four chimneys and a painted roof. My fancy outstripped my footsteps, and was busy in picturing faces and rehearsing dialogues. Presently I reached this new object of my pursuit, darted through the avenue, noticed that some windows of the house were unclosed, drew thence an hasty inference that the house was not without inhabitants, and knocked, quickly and loudly, for admission.
(Part II, chapter 11, p. 514)"
15843,"•Previous paragraphs on the pleasures of the imagination. Racialized omparisons of a monkey, the Congolese, and the Creole-Gaul. See a younger Mervyn doing the same with features of nature (539).",Reading,"",2003-07-21 00:00:00 UTC,,5960,"",Mervyn on his way to Baltimore,2009-09-14 19:44:51 UTC,The fancy depicts pictures,"My chief occupation, however, related to the scenes into which I was about to enter. My imaginations were, of course, crude and inadequate; and I found an uncommon gratification in comparing realities, as they successively occurred, with the pictures which my wayward fancy had depicted.
(Part II, chapter 17, p. 566)"
17445,Wilson takes aim at the blank slate...,"Reading Edward Slingerland, ""Good and Bad Reductionism: Acknowledging the Power of Culture."" Style. 42:2-3 (Summer/Fall 2008). p. 270.","",2009-06-16 00:00:00 UTC,,6566,Blank Slate,Chapter 7: Development and Modification of Social Behavior,2009-09-14 19:50:12 UTC,"""The remainder [of the brain] is more like an exposed negative waiting to be dipped into developer fluid.""","Viewed in a certain way, the phenomenon of learning creates a major paradox. It seems to be a negating force in evolution. How can learning evolve? Unless some Lamarckist process is at work, individual acts of learning cannot be transmitted to offspring. If learning is a generalized process whereby each brain is stamped afresh by experience, the role of natural selection must be solely to keep the tabula rasa of the brain clean and malleable. To the degree that learning is paramount in the repertory of a species, behavior cannot evolve. This paradox has been resolved in the writings of Niko Tinbergen, Peter Marler, Sherwood Washburn, Hans Kummer, and others. What evolves is the directedness of learning--the relative ease with which certain associations are made and acts are learned, and others bypassed even in the face of strong reinforcement. Pavlov was simply wrong when he postulated that ""any natural phenomena chosen at will may be converted into conditioned stimuli."" Only small parts of the brain resemble a tabula rasa; this is true even for human beings. The remainder is more like an exposed negative waiting to be dipped into developer fluid. This being the case, learning also serves as a pacemaker of evolution. When exploratory behavior leads one or a few animals to a breakthrough enhancing survival and reproduction, the capacity for that kind of exploratory behavior and the imitation of the successful act are favored by natural selection. The enabling portions of the anatomy, particularly the brain, will then be perfected by evolution. The process can lead to greater stereotypy--""instinct"" formation--of the succesful new behavior. A caterpillar accidentally captured by a fly-eating sphecid wasp might be the first step toward the evolution of a species whose searching behavior is directed preferentially at caterpillars. Or, more rarely, the learned act can produce higher intelligence. As Washburn has said, a human mind can easily guide a chimpanzee to a level of performace that lies well beyond the normal behavior of the species. In both species, the wasp and man, the structure of the brain has been biased in special ways to exploit opportunities in the environment.
(p. 79)"
20227,"",Reading,"",2013-05-29 19:21:15 UTC,,7396,"",Chapter VI. An Intriguing Teacher ,2013-05-29 19:21:15 UTC,"""When fancy paints to me the good old man stooping to raise the weeping penitent, while every tear from her eye is numbered by drops from his bleeding heart, my bosom glows with honest indignation, and I wish for power to extirpate those monsters of seduction from the earth.""","racious heaven! when I think on the miseries that must rend the heart of a doating parent, when he sees the darling of his age at first seduced from his protection, and afterwards abandoned, by the very wretch whose promises of love decoyed her from the paternal roof--when he sees her poor and wretched, her bosom tom between remorse for her crime and love for her vile betrayer--when fancy paints to me the good old man stooping to raise the weeping penitent, while every tear from her eye is numbered by drops from his bleeding heart, my bosom glows with honest indignation, and I wish for power to extirpate those monsters of seduction from the earth.
(I.vi, p. 25 in Penguin)"
20231,"",Reading,"",2013-05-29 19:27:05 UTC,,7396,"",Chapter XVII. A Wedding ,2013-05-29 19:27:05 UTC,"""The goodness of her heart is depicted in her ingenuous countenance.""","""What a pity!"" said Mrs. Beauchamp softly, (casting a most compassionate glance at her.) ""But surely her mind is not depraved. The goodness of her heart is depicted in her ingenuous countenance.""
(I. xvii, p. 130; p. 66)
"
20240,"",Reading,"",2013-05-29 19:41:45 UTC,,7396,"",Chapter XXVI. What Might Be Expected ,2013-05-29 19:41:45 UTC,"""Even now imagination paints the scene, when, torn by contending passions, when, struggling between love and duty, you fainted in my arms, and I lifted you into the chaise.""","Though I have taken up my pen to address you, my poor injured girl, I feel I am inadequate to the task; yet, however painful the endeavour, I could not resolve upon leaving you for ever without one kind line to bid you adieu, to tell you how my heart bleeds at the remembrance of what you was, before you saw the hated Montraville. Even now imagination paints the scene, when, torn by contending passions, when, struggling between love and duty, you fainted in my arms, and I lifted you into the chaise: I see the agony of your mind, when, recovering, you found yourself on the road to Portsmouth: but how, my gentle girl, how could you, when so justly impressed with the value of virtue, how could you, when loving as I thought you loved me, yield to the solicitations of Belcour?
(II.xxvi, pp. 66-7; pp. 100-1 in Penguin edition)"