Eva Ibbotson's Journey to the River Sea is a novel set mainly in the Amazon region of Brazil. It's clearly set quite some time before its publication date of 2001, what with a "governess" being a major character; but it must also be set after the 1880s, given the existence of Little Lord Fauntler...
If you quote or paraphrase a work of literature or other in a post here, please include a precise citation that allows others to find the passage in situ. I've noticed many posts on this site that have not done that, and it's starting to annoy me.
Questions probably benefit from citations more t...
Jay Gatsby in famous Fitzgerald's novel is no doubt smart, talented, brave. But he only pursues his own egoistic desires, quite delusional in his love affairs, does not hesitate to destroy a family, does not create anything, does not make others happy.
So why is he great?
In Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time (Герой нашего времени), the main hero is Grigory Pechorin, a cynical noble army man, an example of superfluous Byronic hero.
The title of the novel has to refer to Pechorin himself - but why? What traits make Pechorin a "hero"? Or is it a negative descr...
@Bookworm After some research I've found out who suggested the title, and that the author himself always felt it was a bad choice and even said the poor title affected the book's sales.
But I'm not sure if that would really make a good answer ...
@Shokhet I feel that a really good answer would explain or at least speculate as to why the friend suggested it. And without having read the book, I can't really do that.
My answer would be more along the lines of "he isn't really great, and the title isn't very good ... because the author said so". Ideally I should have more to go on than authorial intent.
I want to make this an answer, but I just can't see how to do it :-/
What are the literary devices used in Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats, and to what effect? (I know this may be a little subjective but it would be great to see different interpretations of the same techniques)
This is one of Parra's "anti-poems" but I can't recall the exact wording, or which book it appeared in, and can't seem to find it online.
Q: What is the actual Parra poem?
Ideally the answer will feature the Spanish text.
I'm really sorry, but I can't understand why people would upvote this answer. If I try really hard, I can understand agreeing with the conclusion "oral literature should be off-topic on this site". But this answer argues for the conclusion on the basis of completely inaccurate information, and lacks even a basic understanding of what oral literature is or how it works. If you believe that oral literature is off-topic, fine, but at least take the time to understand what oral literature is, and at least find an argument for your views that isn't grounded in complete misinformation. — Hamlet ♦13 hours ago
@Hamlet (final one I guess) lastly, while I understand your point, it's important to try and get knowledge that is easily accessible in academia to those that did not access this. My answer was an attempt to do so, and I'm more than ready to understand why it's not good as is and improve it, but let's try and keep this spirit. Two many inline quotations of long, hard to read texts may not be the right solution?
I often find that an author's lesser-known works are among my favorites; some examples are Steinbeck's "Tortilla Flat" and "The Wayward Bus", Jack London's "The Road," and Twain's "The American Claimant" (not to mention Grisham's "A Painted House").
Is there an online site that would show, filte...
@Randal'Thor I created a resource request tag for it. I am not sure if that will be what it ends up being, but it is a heck of a lot better than what was there.
@Randal'Thor @Mithrandir Nevermind, I am just going to roll back to edit one. It seems dangerous to have a tag devoted to off-topic questions. It would give people the wrong ideas.
@MatrimCauthon I was about to ask you about your revisions to that post. The current tagging on that question is very messy :/
FTR I VTC'ed as "Unclear," because I didn't understand if he wanted a list for just those authors (and maybe just those books), or a general request. ...I think the general request for a ranking of book sales would be fine
@Randal'Thor [product-recommendation] works on some sites, but IINM most SE sites reject those
Speaking of things that work on some sites but not others, I'd like a very informal sample of the opinion of the Lit.SE community on [list] questions. I've already predicted your response, but I wonder if I'm wrong.
Not every device, I actually suggest a big-list tag for this and perhaps making this a community wiki question so as to incorporate everyone's analysis equally. — Airdish4 hours ago
Quick question, I'm experiencing an issue with 'protect' option on Puzzling. It's not appearing for anyone anywhere. Does anyone have the privilege here?
On Puzzling, I noticed first that there wasn't an option to protect my own questions. I brought this up in chat, and other high-rep users replied that it has disappeared for them too.
Not sure if this is just Puzzling, or site wide, but I have just under 16k rep and have had the privilege a whil...
I never understood DVs on a bug question that wasn't a low quality post. Have they tried the bug, and found it to be status-norepro? It's not like a discussion question, where a DV could/should signify a difference of opinion
I can't help but notice that already, we have a lot of tags. I've gone through them and seen quite a few tags with a specific name of a book, with maybe 1 or 2 posts on it.
I'm thinking that okay, there are a few pieces of literature that a lot of questions have been asked about, but if we cont...
Maybe we shouldn't have a tag for each work in a series, but other books do deserve a tag. And if people don't want to follow a billion work tags - just don't follow them. I follow only the author tags, and it works fine for me. Tag overflow is not something we should be concerned with, as long as we are consistent and don't create very generic tags
We've had a couple of discussions about these tags already:
Is [poetry] too broad / how should we use the tag?
How should we use [short-stories]?
Consensus in both cases was to keep the tags, but much of the reason boiled down to "it's not bad enough to get rid of", and nobody really addresse...
Just floating an idea for a reading challenge; why not something similar to SFF's upcoming Ladies' Night? ...I don't know if the Bechdel test is applied to books, but the Lit.SE equivalent would probably be just "by a female author." Thoughts?
@Shokhet Well, let's see how it goes. With only one challenge per month, it's going to be a long time before we run out of ideas and start getting creative with new twists.
@Shokhet That's why I always say goodnight a few minutes before I actually leave, so I can dismiss all the ping notifications and not have to wake up to them.
@BeastlyGerbil Yeah, but I was still pretty shocked by that statistic. Given the people who churn out dozens of answers every day on SO, and the people who mod half a dozen different sites, and the people who actually get paid to hang out on SE ...
@Mithrandir Hmm. I think of the hogwarts tag as being about the physical structure of Hogwarts, rather than the lessons and organisation of the school, but I could be wrong.
@Ash You lucky, lucky person :-)
user15026
laughs I come from Arqade, if things get more than just the game title tag, it's a rare day :P
it was too, I don't know... fairy-tale like for my taste
actually, I think I also remember that I didn't like the character development either. it just didn't seem very believable, which added to the fairy-tale feeling.
At the time, there were many Jewish bankers/moneylenders, so moneylenders were probably often portrayed as Jews.
For a very long time, the Jews have been associated with banking and money. There are a few reasons, such as that there were a lot of Jewish bankers after the 11th century. In The Enc...
user15026
I don't even know if I've read any Le Guin. I should really fix that.
user15026
(Not that I need to add to my 475 item TBR list, but you know.)
@VicAche One of the problems with your answer is that you were making claims but not explaining where those claims came from. You made progress towards fixing that with the note you added at the beginning of your answer.