The Worm and the Ring
Encyclopedia
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by English novelist Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
, drawing on his time as a teacher at Banbury Grammar School, Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, in the early 1950s.
It is Burgess's version of the Ring Cycle. The Dragon pub in the novel corresponds to the worm and a purloined diary to the ring.
Characters
(Wagnerian equivalents in brackets)- Woolton, the school principal (Wotan)
- Frederica, Woolton's wife (Fricka)
- Lodge (Loge)
- Albert Rich, a student at the school (Alberich)
- three female students (the Rhinemaidens)
- Linda (Woglinde)