Oxford in Literature and Other Media
Oxford University is the setting for numerous works of fiction. Oxford was mentioned in fiction as early as 1400 when Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales referred to a "Clerk of Oxenford": "For him was levere have at his beddes heed/ Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,/ of Aristotle and his philosophie/ Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie". As of 1989, 533 Oxford-based novels had been identified, and the number continues to rise. Famous literary works range from Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh, to the trilogy His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, which features an alternate-reality version of the University. Sir Humphrey Appleby, GCB, KBE, MVO, MA (Oxon) attended the fictional Baillie College in Yes Minister, and The Complete Yes Minister book's introduction, dated September 2019, was written from the equally fictitious Hacker College.
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Famous quotes containing the words oxford, literature and/or media:
“The logical English train a scholar as they train an engineer. Oxford is Greek factory, as Wilton mills weave carpet, and Sheffield grinds steel. They know the use of a tutor, as they know the use of a horse; and they draw the greatest amount of benefit from both. The reading men are kept by hard walking, hard riding, and measured eating and drinking, at the top of their condition, and two days before the examination, do not work but lounge, ride, or run, to be fresh on the college doomsday.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“The media network has its idols, but its principal idol is its own style which generates an aura of winning and leaves the rest in darkness. It recognises neither pity nor pitilessness.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)