# Titles From Literature **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 18, 2005, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655 "2005-11-18T16:04:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/21 "2005-11-20T07:10:43Z")
Charleston Heston? Now I have this image of Moses swing dancing! The _Sun also ariseth_ and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose. (Eccl. 1:5 KJV) …therefore never send to know _for whom the bell tolls_; it tolls for thee (John Donne, in his Meditations) _A Farewell To Arms_ (to Queen Elizabeth) - title of a poem by George Peele. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/22 "2005-11-20T08:18:01Z")
_Double, Double_ (after Macbeth), _More Things in Heaven_ (after Hamlet), and _Catch a Falling Star_ (after John Donne) by John Brunner. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/23 "2005-11-20T15:10:49Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > _Catch a Falling Star_ (after John Donne) by John Brunner. And Perry Como! Drat it, now the song is stuck in my head. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/24 "2005-11-20T15:22:01Z")
Como didn’t get into the whole “mandrake root” thing, though. Pretty funny if he’d just sung Donne’s lyric verbatim, woulda gone over with middle America just fine. ---
**Author:** ![PastAllReason](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f07891/32.png) [@PastAllReason](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastAllReason)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/25 "2005-11-20T15:42:52Z")
Allusions to Robert Louis Stevenson’s \*Requiem \* turn up fairly commonly: "Under the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me; “Here he lies where he longed to be, Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.” From _The Lady of Shalott_ by Tennyson comes: “half sick of shadows” and “the mirror crack’d from side to side”. Amongst other references, Christie used the latter in a book title. A not yet mentioned common biblical reference source is the _Song of Solomon_ which includes in Chapter 2 (KJV): “I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters. As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.” The biblical reference to “see through a glass darkly” also appears routinely. I’ve noted it in a book title, several magazine articles, and apparently even in a movie by Ingmar Bergman. ---
**Author:** ![Lissla\_Lissar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lissla\_Lissar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissla_Lissar)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/26 "2005-11-20T17:58:15Z")
Charles De Lint got _Dreams Underfoot_ from _Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven_, by Yeats. It’s a little skewed around- the line is “I have spread my dreams under your feet”. Madeleine L’Engle has tons of poetry and biblical references for titles: _Dragons in the Waters, An Acceptable Time, And It Was Good, Many Waters, The Rock that is Higher_- the Bible, mostly from the psalms. Poetry: \* A Ring of Endless Light, The Small Rain, A Wind In the Door\*. The psalms are great for titles, especially the older translations. I just remembered that Laurie King’s novel _O Jerusalem_ is from psalm 137. ---
**Author:** ![Lissla\_Lissar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lissla\_Lissar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissla_Lissar)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2005, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/27 "2005-11-20T18:01:40Z")
Bother. _To Sail Beyond the Sunset_ is from Tennyson’s _Ulysses_, _I will Fear No Evil_ is from psalm 23, _The Number of the Beast_ is from Revelation. Has anyone gotten titles from Beowulf or Chaucer? There must be some. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/28 "2005-11-21T02:13:10Z")
While plundering the local old, dusty used book store, I found (and purchased) a science fiction novel by george Bamber entitled _The Sea is Boiling Hot_. As far as I know, this is the only title of a speculative fiction novel taken from the text of an earlier speculative ficiton novel. ---
**Author:** ![Amok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f17d59/32.png) [@Amok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amok)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/29 "2005-11-21T03:22:28Z")
> [@ITR champion](#): > > While plundering the local old, dusty used book store, I found (and purchased) a science fiction novel by george Bamber entitled _The Sea is Boiling Hot_. As far as I know, this is the only title of a speculative fiction novel taken from the text of an earlier speculative ficiton novel. It’s from Lewis Carroll’s _Through the Looking Glass_ (specifically the poem “The Walrus and The Carpenter”). Which I wouldn’t consider speculative fiction. ---
**Author:** ![Abe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f1d935/32.png) [@Abe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abe)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/30 "2005-11-21T08:34:31Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > _Double, Double_ (after Macbeth), _More Things in Heaven_ (after Hamlet), and _Catch a Falling Star_ (after John Donne) by John Brunner. One more particularly poignant one (if slightly modified): _The Sheep Look Up_. From Milton’s _Lycidas_ (LXVI): The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: That Brunner… bloody genius, even when it comes to picking lines out of lengthy poems. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/31 "2005-11-21T08:39:39Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > National Lampoon did a parody of this sort of thing, taking a speech from Shakespeare and dissecting it into three- or four-word titles that they then placed next to each other in a parody of the New York Times Book Review, with a brief description of each book. > There are simply too many of these to list. I’ll bet Shakespeare gets top billing (“The Sound and the Fury”, “All Our Yesterdays”, etc.) , maybe followed by the Bible. That sounds like it could be really funny. I’ll have to try to find that. -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Abe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f1d935/32.png) [@Abe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abe)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/32 "2005-11-21T08:45:01Z")
> [@Lissla Lissar](#): > > Has anyone gotten titles from Beowulf or Chaucer? There must be some. Don’t know about Beowulf - the modern English text would vary with each translation from the original. Chaucer (like Malory) is a great source to quote from, but I do not immediately recall seeing quotations of his used as titles. Perhaps this is just a momentary blank, but all I can think of is _The Handmaid’s Tale_ by Margaret Atwood. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2005, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/33 "2005-11-21T16:34:16Z")
Connie Willis’ _To Say Nothing of the Dog_ is a hilarious time travel book that owes some of its style to the equally hilarious _Three Men in a Boat, to Say Nothing of the Dog_ - I imagine there are more books that borrow the subtitles of other books. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/34 "2005-11-27T08:38:49Z")
Kathleen Raine’s poem “See, See Where Christ’s Blood Streams in the Firmament” was titled from a line in _Doctor Faustus_ by Christopher Marlowe. The book title _Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart_ by Robert Bly was taken from the poem “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” by William Butler Yeats. ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/35 "2005-11-27T08:44:21Z")
> [@Lissla Lissar](#): > > I’m sure there’s lots of other Eliot titles around. A Handful of Dust -Evelyn Waugh ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/36 "2005-11-27T08:48:10Z")
Oh and then there’s “…The Gods Themselves…” by Asimov, from Schiller. ---
**Author:** ![Lissla\_Lissar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lissla\_Lissar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissla_Lissar)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/37 "2005-11-27T17:47:41Z")
Oh, right. Ruth Reichl’s second memoir is entitled _Comfort Me With Apples_, which is from the Song of Solomon. ---
**Author:** ![Ensign\_Edison](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7ab992/32.png) [@Ensign\_Edison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ensign_Edison)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/38 "2005-11-27T19:31:37Z")
> [@HazelNutCoffee](#): > > I have heard of two books that took their titles from Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming”: _Things Fall Apart_ and _Slouching Towards Bethlehem_. And of course there is _The Road Less Traveled_ by Dr. Scott Peck, taken from Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” Also Robert Parker’s _The Widening Gyre_. Peter S. Beagle wrote _A Fine and Private Place_, title taken from “To his Coy Mistress” by 15th century poet Andrew Marvel. ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2005, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/39 "2005-11-28T21:43:47Z")
All the lyrics of Handel’s Messiah are taken form the New Testament. ---
**Author:** ![Lissla\_Lissar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lissla\_Lissar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissla_Lissar)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2005, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655/40 "2005-11-29T02:17:03Z")
_Promises to Keep_, by Gloria Mallette, and the song _Forever Young_, which I’ve alsways assumed was taken from _Ode on a Grecian Urn_. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/titles-from-literature/331655.md?page=3)