Talk:Thomas De Quincey

message: Does anyone have a reference for the qoute from his schoolteachers from Bath please? 
87.65.205.164 18:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: At this late date, I think none will be forth-coming.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.103.14.52 (talk) 13:36, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a reference to Robert Morrison, but that probably just goes back to family tradition.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.103.14.52 (talk) 13:39, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quote 

message: Have there been any criticisms of his influence on the world, given that his books glorified opium and murder?Lestrade 13:19, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There were complaints that, in de Quincey's description, the pleasures of opium seemed to out-weigh the pains.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.160.202.155 (talk) 10:18, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism

message: The biography portrays De Quincey in such a manner that he seems grim and heavy hearted.  And while many aspects of his life were hard, this seems to misrepresent the nature of De Quincey.  A completely different sense of the man is found in the short introductory bio of De Quincey found in volume 5 of Gateway to the Great Books edited by Robert M. Hutchins, Mortimer J. Adler and published by Encylopǣdia Britannica, Inc. William Benton Publisher, 1963.  For example: 
::De Quincey moved from one rented room to another, each so full of books and papers that he could hardly turn around in it.  He loved both solitude and society, and could never get enough of either.  He had a great fondness for the human race in all its varieties, and the human race repaid him in kind.  His children were enchanted with him.  His friends found him a delightful companion.  If there had been no creditors in the world, De Quincey might have been that monster of nature, a completely happy man. [p. 356.] 
And while this sketch may paint an overly rosy picture of De Quincey, it certainly calls into question the dour feeling evinced by the current biography.  e.gajd Canada 04:45, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism

message: Dostoevsky may have used De Quincey's essay as a guidebook for his central character in Crime and Punishment:
ON THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE IN MACBETH.  MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS BY THOMAS DE QUINCEY. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10708/10708-8.txt  "Now it will be remembered that in the first of these murders, (that of the Marrs,) the same incident (of a knocking at the door soon after the work of extermination was complete) did actually occur, which the genius of Shakespeare has invented . . . Murder in ordinary cases, where the sympathy is wholly directed to the case of the murdered person, is an incident of coarse and vulgar horror; and for this reason, that it flings the interest exclusively upon the natural but ignoble instinct by which we cleave to life; an instinct, which, as being indispensable to the primal law of self-preservation, is the same in kind, (though different in degree,) amongst all living creatures; this instinct
therefore, because it annihilates all distinctions, and degrades the greatest of men to the level of "the poor beetle that we tread on," exhibits human nature in its most abject and humiliating attitude. Such an
attitude would little suit the purposes of the poet. What then must he do? He must throw the interest on the murderer. Our sympathy must be with _him_; (of course I mean a sympathy of comprehension, a sympathy by which we enter into his feelings, and are made to understand them,--not a sympathy[1] of pity or approbation.) In the murdered person all strife of thought, all flux and reflux of passion and of purpose, are crushed by one overwhelming panic; the fear of instant death smites him "with its petrific mace." But in the murderer, such a murderer as a poet will condescend to, there must be raging some great storm of passion,--jealousy, ambition, vengeance, hatred,--which will create a hell within him; and into this hell we are to look . . . The murderers, and the murder, must be insulated--cut off by an immeasurable gulf
from the ordinary tide and succession of human affairs--locked up and sequestered in some deep recess; we must be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested--laid asleep--tranced--racked into a dread armistice: time must be annihilated; relation to things without abolished; and all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion. Hence it is, that when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds: the knocking at the gate is heard; and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced: the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again; and the re-establishment of the goings-on of the world in which we live, first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that had suspended them."
Compare to this scene: "Raskolnikov stood keeping tight hold of the axe. He was in a sort of delirium. He was even making ready to fight when they should come in. While they were knocking and talking together, the idea several times occurred to him to end it all at once and shout to them through the door. Now and then he was tempted to swear at them, to jeer at them, while they could not open the door! "Only make haste!" was the thought that flashed through his mind." http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2554/2554-h/2554-h.htm  (post by Richard Scalper)
Dick Scalper (talk) 15:56, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:   De Quincey's influence on Dostoevsky 

message: From the entry:
Psychologically, he had what Alethea Hayter has called the "pariah temperament" typical of drug addicts.
Is the use of the phrase "pariah temperament" simply a way of saying that he preferred to be alone?  I am (or, at least, fancy myself as being) fairly well-read, but I have never come across that phrase before in my *cough* years on the planet.
I'm afraid that Alethea Hayter is, as near as I can make out, a fairly obscure writer for 21st century readers.  Is there, perhaps, another way to convey the same idea, but with different (and less opaque) verbiage?  If not, I would be grateful if someone could at least confirm with certainty that the aforementioned phrase means what I understand it to mean.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.18.168.230 (talk) 03:26, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question on phrase used in his Wikipedia entry 

message: Should it be "Thomas De Quincey" or "Thomas de Quincey"? The article uses both forms, and sources seem divided. However, the illustration carrying his signature clearly shows him using a lower-case "d", so I would have thought his own preference should be the deciding factor. Therefore I propose to rename this article to 'Thomas de Quincey' and standardise on that form throughout the article. Colonies Chris (talk) 00:16, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed move (January 2012) 

message: I'll argue that the article title "Thomas de Quincey" should be corrected to "Thomas De Quincey". See reasons in the Capitalization discussion section. Or, see any scholarly book or peer-reviewed essay published on De Quincey in the last hundred years. The capitalized "De" is used with extremely little exception.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.91.159.134 (talk) 16:34, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Having spent 10 minutes checking sources. I agree. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 23:21, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

text: The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article has him as "Quincey, Thomas Penson De", so I agree with the renaming. Malleus Fatuorum 01:02, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requested Move (May 2012) 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The Journalist section needs a better rewrite. In particular, the final sentence:
"While some people wrongly think that De Quincey was an abolitionist, a quick read of his West Indies essays would reveal that he was in fact a racist who believed white people to be physically and morally superior."
This isn't really up to standard:
- The writer takes a position without any citation or evidence
- "a quick read" isn't a very good summary of anything
- "racist" needs contextualizing
- "believed white people to be physically and morally superior" whose words are these? I don't think they are De Quincey's, but if they are, they must be cited.
- the depth of discussion isn't very good  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Even978 (talk • contribs) 07:26, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Racism