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Markup View
Author: 69BookWorM69
Oct 28th 2011
at
6:07:21 AM
How about in-universe examples? I think there's a general idea that some people work for years and years on some [[MagnumOpus magnum opus]]; in the US this is often called "the Great American Novel". Specifically, in George Eliot's ''{{Middlemarch}}'', Rev. Casaubon's life's work, an unfinished book ''The Key to All Mythologies'', is intended as a monument to the tradition of Christian syncretism. It turns out that this life's work is useless as he is behind on current studies (he doesn't read German, so his scholarship is incomplete). We also learn he is aware of this but has put too much time into his research to admit it to anyone else.
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