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A Poem Without An Author

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Abstract

These lines begin an “Ode” which has permeated culture throughout the last hundred years. In 1912, Edward Elgar set it to music, as did Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály in 1964, to commemorate the 700th anniversary of Merton College, Oxford. In 1971, Gene Wilder spoke the opening lines as Willy Wonka in the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. The words appear as epigraphs in an eclectic range of novels, including science fiction (Raymond E. Feist's Rage of a Demon King), fantasy (Elizabeth Haydon's The Assassin King), and historical fiction (E. V. Thompson's The Music Makers). They are quoted in an even more varied selection of books, including travelogues (Warren Rovetch's The Creaky Traveler in Ireland), textbooks (Arnold O. Allen's Probability, Statistics and Queueing Theory and R. S. Vassan and Sudha Seshadri's Textbook of Medicine), New Age self-help books (Raven Kaldera's Moon Phase Astrology: The Lunar Key to Your Destiny), autobiographies (Hilary Liftin's Candy and Me, a Love Story) and pedagogical guides (Lindsay Peer and Gavin Reid's Dyslexia – Successful Inclusion in the Secondary School).

Acceptance Date Nov 4, 2016
Publication Date Nov 4, 2016
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Victorian Literature and Culture
Print ISSN 1060-1503
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Pages 875 - 886
DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/S1060150316000255
Publisher URL https://doi.org/10.1017/S1060150316000255

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