Skeptics Stack Exchange
Skeptics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [literature]

written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit.

39 questions
13
votes
1 answer

Is the novel "Sleepers" a true account?

Note: this question contains spoilers about the novel and movie. Sleepers is a novel about four boys who are sexually abused at a school for boys, and later exact revenge on their tormentors. It was made into a film starring Kevin Bacon, Brad Pitt,…
Kevin Burke
  • 1,931
  • 2
  • 15
  • 21
12
votes
2 answers

Did Conan Doyle write Sherlock Holmes?

I came across the claim that sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn't write the Sherlock Holmes stories and probably just, at most, edited them. Normally such a claim would not be taken seriously. But the person who made the suggestion was Martin Gardner, an…
matt_black
  • 56,186
  • 16
  • 175
  • 373
11
votes
1 answer

Was the Education of Little Tree written by an ex-Klansman?

One of my favorite children's books growing up was the Education of Little Tree. This is a popular children's book in the US about a child who goes to live with his Cherokee grandparents in Appalachia during the Great Depression. The story was…
Razie Mah
  • 890
  • 7
  • 11
10
votes
2 answers

Did Alexander Solzhenitsyn say “they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them”?

A friend of mine just shared a quote They lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them. And attributed it to Alexander Solzhenitsyn. When searching in the web…
Gonçalo Peres
  • 367
  • 1
  • 2
  • 10
10
votes
2 answers

Did Niccoló Machiavelli advocate to fake one's own death?

September 13, 2014 will mark the 18th anniversary of when 2Pac (born Tupac Amaru Shakur), famous American gangster rapper, was murdered in Las Vegas. There are many conspiracy theories behind his death and although most are not worth debating, there…
Jori
  • 670
  • 1
  • 5
  • 15
9
votes
3 answers

Is the name "Ahmad" mentioned in the dead sea scrolls?

This video claims that the following excerpt is a verse of the Isiah scroll of the dead sea scrolls. The claim also appears in here. Is it true?
Sakib Arifin
  • 15,705
  • 14
  • 63
  • 137
9
votes
1 answer

Does the extent of illiteracy in children correlate with future criminality?

Neil Gaiman recently made what has been hailed as one of the best commencement speeches ever at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts (reported here, available as a book here). In it he talks about the value of literacy. As part of his argument he…
matt_black
  • 56,186
  • 16
  • 175
  • 373
8
votes
0 answers

Did the cat-o'-nine-tails' bag ever exist?

There are numerous instances on the Internet and in Google books, which claim the cat-o'-nine-tails, a late 17th century instrument of punishment used by the Royal Navy, was kept in a bag. It is said that this bag was a necessity in order to protect…
Mari-Lou A
  • 1,041
  • 8
  • 16
8
votes
3 answers

Is Macbeth cursed?

I recently read Macbeth and I looked up its history, and apparently there is such a thing as "The Curse of Macbeth". The story is as follows: Shakespeare, in writing the play, included a lot of details about witchcraftery, and their methods i.e. The…
Thursagen
  • 6,175
  • 3
  • 39
  • 52
8
votes
0 answers

Is the Greek/French macaronic phrase written by an ancient author?

From Wikipedia article: Occasionally language is unintentionally macaronic. One particularly famed piece of schoolyard Greek in France is Xenophon's line "they did not take the city; but in fact they had no hope of taking it" (οὐκ ἔλαβον πόλιν·…
Quassnoi
  • 4,315
  • 5
  • 30
  • 49
7
votes
0 answers

Did Stevenson assert his moral right?

I have here a copy of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, republished in 2010 by Harper Press, an imprint of HarperCollins's. On the copyright page is this text, with no further explanation: Robert Louis Stevenson…
msh210
  • 482
  • 3
  • 17
7
votes
2 answers

Was there a person made the quote about poetry that Poincaré responded to?

It is claimed that Henri Poincaré, a well-known mathematician, said this: Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things. It is also claimed that that quote was in response to this quote: Poetry is the art of giving different…
Ooker
  • 291
  • 1
  • 3
  • 13
6
votes
1 answer

Are the books from Carlos Castaneda real or fiction?

I have read all the Carlos Castaneda's books, I practiced some of their exercises, some have been helpful but I've always been in doubt about whether Don Juan ever existed, or if the events in the books from Carlos Castaneda never happened. About…
user4983
6
votes
1 answer

Were deserts once oceans/seas?

I was reading The Alchemist and stumbled upon something that says, Here and there, he found a shell, and realized that the desert, in remote times, had been a sea. Were the deserts once oceans/seas?
Daniel_V
  • 81
  • 1
  • 7
5
votes
4 answers

Was Shakespeare Marlowe? What does stylometry say?

I am not sure why this isn't asked here already, but Peter Farey and Ros Barber convinced me that Christopher Marlowe wrote the works of Shakespeare. This resolved my own cognitive dissonance from many years ago, when I picked up a copy of…
Ron Maimon
  • 1
  • 2
  • 10
  • 19
1
2
3