In Literature
- Common medlar, the fruit of Mespilus germanica, has been used as a metaphor
- for age, particularly premature age
- in British plays from the 16th and 17th centuries, references to the fruit are associated with a bawdy name for it: "open-arses"
- Giovanni Verga's novel of Sicilian peasant life is called "I Malavoglia: The House by the Medlar Tree"
Read more about this topic: Medlar
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“I did toy with the idea of doing a cook-book.... The recipes were to be the routine ones: how to make dry toast, instant coffee, hearts of lettuce and brownies. But as an added attraction, at no extra charge, my idea was to put a fried egg on the cover. I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right.”
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“A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time—this one, for instance—as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)