Question
Belacqua (“bel-ACK-wuh”) and his aunt puzzle over the “enigma” of a passage about this place in a Samuel Beckett story. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name this place where the former nun Constance lives. The narrator’s explanation of this place’s features is refuted with a thought experiment featuring a light and three mirrors.
ANSWER: the Moon [or la luna; or first sphere; or first heaven; or primo cielo; prompt on paradiso, paradise, heaven, or aldilà]
[10e] Beatrice explains the spots of the Moon to Dante in the second canto of this third book of the Divine Comedy.
ANSWER: Paradiso [or Paradise]
[10m] That Beckett story ends with Belacqua thinking “it’s a quick death, God help us all” as he watches the demise of one of these animals, to which the narrator replies “it is not.” Gérard de Nerval walked one of these animals named Thibault (“tee-BOH”) on the streets of Paris.
ANSWER: lobsters [accept “Dante and the Lobster”; accept European lobster; prompt on crustaceans, arthropods, invertebrates, or decapods]
<European Literature>
Summary
| 2024 ACF Nationals | 2024-04-21 | Y | 19 | 13.16 | 95% | 32% | 5% |
Data
| Harvard | Berkeley B | 0 | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| Chicago A | Purdue | 10 | 10 | 10 | 30 |
| Texas | Chicago B | 0 | 10 | 10 | 20 |
| Chicago C | Kentucky | 0 | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| Cornell A | Columbia A | 0 | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| Columbia B | Claremont Colleges | 0 | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| Berkeley A | Illinois | 0 | 10 | 10 | 20 |
| WUSTL A | Indiana | 0 | 10 | 10 | 20 |
| Iowa State | Brown | 0 | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| Johns Hopkins | Toronto A | 0 | 10 | 10 | 20 |
| Maryland | Yale A | 0 | 10 | 10 | 20 |
| NYU | Georgia Tech | 0 | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| North Carolina A | Minnesota A | 0 | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| North Carolina B | McGill | 0 | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| Michigan | Northwestern | 0 | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| Penn | Toronto B | 0 | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| Cornell B | Truman State | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Rutgers | Virginia | 0 | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| Stanford | Waterloo | 0 | 10 | 0 | 10 |