The Reading Room - 2017-02-19

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12:17 AM

1

Q: Where did the idea of a "true name" come from?

There's a common fantasy trope that, up until now, I've sort of taken for granted: the "true name." This is the idea that all things have true names that are somehow more closely linked to what the thing is, and that knowing it grants some degree of power over the thing. This has many forms and ...

@Bookworm @Emrakul After a little research, it looks as if my initial gut feeling was right: the concept goes way back into the mists of time, but Ursula le Guin was among the first to popularise it in the fantasy genre.

Despite the many failings of the Eragon series when it comes to originality, I will say that the way the "true names" thing is done there is one of my favourites. It makes much more sense to me that a person's true name is a several-sentence description of their essential nature and personality, rather than just a single word as it usually is in other fantasy literature.

I wish I could write up a really good answer to that question now. But by the time I can spare enough time for it, someone else (@HDE, perhaps) will probably already have done so.

@Randal'Thor I'd have no idea where to start researching that.

user61230

If I had to guess, I'd imagine it could be traced back to Norse mythology. But that's just a guess.

user61230

The reason I'd speculate it's mythologically based is that this trope doesn't really appear in, say, Japanese literature.

12:35 AM

@HDE226868 I've dropped a bunch of links in a comment, which could definitely be at least a starting point.

@Emrakul uh? Not specifically Norse, it's a common thing

@verbose any links to a discussion of the sonnet?

that's more of an anthropology question than a literature question, the idea is older than writing and was probably invented independently many times

I'll add some more examples and post it tomorrowish

@Gilles do you have a source for that?

@Hamlet Not off the top of my head. I don't have a source for all the well-known facts around. Wikipedia probably does.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_name is pretty crappy though.

it's just anecdotes, not a properly encyclopedic view.

12:42 AM

@Bookworm I attempted something.

TVTropes has more examples than Wikipedia

1:10 AM

@verbose Yes, "author god" is used in film as a term for the hypothetical author; a shorthand for the nebulous group of influences which create a text. The ideas that "author" must mean a singular individual, and that "text" must mean a particular collection of physical words, are jargon hurdles the site needs to be able to manage.

@Gilles No, canon is about official declarations by the managing authority of the intellectual property. The author is not always the authority (see the Star Wars expanded universe); nor is there always ANY authority (see Doctor Who), including the text itself.

Star Wars expanded universe material is authored by many people, but their canonicity is overseen by a committee which is separate from the individuals we'd generally call the 'authors' of that content.

Contrariwise, the BBC could exercise canonical authority over Doctor Who, but has never done so.

When Disney reduced expanded universe content to "legends," they exercised managerial authority over the franchise canon independent of any of the individual creators of the texts they were managing.

(Tangential question: why are the words "author" and "authority" so similar despite being quite different in meaning? I guess they must be cognate somehow?)

Yup.

Both derive from words roughly signifying "originator" or "promotor."

The author is the originator of the work; the authority is the origin point of control over the work.

They're both originators--sources--but one is the source of the work and the other is the source of oversight of the work.

The word "authority" sounds as if it should mean "authorship".

Canon -> canonicity, possible -> possibility, reliable -> reliability, author -> authority.

I refer you to my starred comment on the sidebar about English.

Our words come to us over twisted paths, and just because they came from the same place doesn't mean they wind up in the same spot.

This applies doubly so for literary jargon.

clicks on "show all 832"

1:21 AM

(Look up the pathetic fallacy some time. It's less insulting than it sounds.)

Ah yes, that one.

As a grammar pedant, I can't quite decide whether or not to agree ;-)

I have great pity for people who try to apply pedantry to English syntax.

@BESW I've studied the pointless topology and the irrelevant ideal in maths; may as well add the pathetic fallacy to the list.

2

Hmm. What's the difference between pathetic fallacy and simply personification?

@Randal'Thor The pathetic fallacy is when the poet's feelings are expressed through the third party of normally unfeeling objects. Personification is when normally unfeeling objects are given their own feelings.

It's a poetic version of the Kuleshov effect.

I feel sad, so the daffodils are bobbing dejectedly; if I felt happy the same daffodils doing the same motion would be dancing joyously.

It'd be personification if the daffodils were happy or sad depending on their own mood, rather than through reflection of my own.

@Hamlet Looks like a good start.

Still not sure I get that distinction, in the context of a work of literature.

If I write a poem describing every inanimate object as if it's miserable, is that because I'm feeling miserable myself or just because I'm trying to create an atmosphere of misery in the poem, regardless of my own feelings? Can one tell the difference just from reading the poem? Does it even matter?

1:29 AM

@Randal'Thor These are excellent questions to apply to a particular work.

It's a tool, a concept. You can argue if it's applicable in a given work, and what that means for the work.

Some will use the pathetic fallacy for projection of the narrator rather than the author, or of non-narrator characters within the work.

For example, Poe claims that when he wrote about the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain, the rustling is sad and uncertain because he wants to create those feelings in the audience. But he's doing so through the perspective of the sad and uncertain narrator, who is attributing his feelings to the curtains.

For instance, I happen to know that part of the reason 1984 was so dark and gloomy was because Orwell was sick and only a year short of death when he wrote it. Now that increases my appreciation of the book in an "out of universe" way, but does it matter for the purposes of looking at the work itself? It's dystopic fiction, for goodness sake - it's supposed to be dark anyway! Does it matter whether the book is miserable because the author was, or just because it was designed to be?

By having his narrator describe the curtains as sad and uncertain, Poe is telling us that the narrator himself is sad and uncertain--AND that the narrator is so steeped in those feelings he's projecting on his environment.

@BESW Now that (to my mind) makes a lot more sense.

@Randal'Thor The conflation of author and narrator is more or less prevalent for both authors and critics, so the distinction is... worth noting, but not always useful.

I'd say the pathetic fallacy is perhaps most usefully described as attributing emotions to unfeeling diegetic elements as a reflection of the emotions of a feeling character, and leave out all the specifics about whether it's author or narrator or whatever.

We could go back to Ruskin, who coined the term, and only use it to mean exactly what he meant. But that'd be denying the field of analysis the power to adopt and adapt its own concepts to meet its changing needs.

(The authority of authorship is an issue within criticism as well; did Ruskin give us a concept we can use and change as we see fit, or are we borrowing a concept he still controls?)

@BESW That's probably an idea I can get behind. (Still need more time to get my head around it properly.)

@BESW Ha, the "authorial intent" issue again! :-)

1:43 AM

Exactly.

@Hamlet Here is a link to the one critical edition that exists, which incorporates a long discussion. But the point I made about it earlier is not part of that discussion, sadly; it is original research based on an as-yet unpublished paper I wrote some years ago. Revising it and sending it out is on the to-do list.

I think, also, that the sonnet sequence is too obscure to incorporate into your answer. A better alternative that makes the same point is Poe's Law.

I think it's going to be more important to focus on literary theories which consider the author to be as unrelated to the work as anyone else.

(And/or which decry the author god as a Platonic illusion disconnected from the reality of creativity within a society.)

@Hamlet P.S. Zepheria is a sonnet sequence, not just one sonnet. It's part of the many that were being written in 16th C England, following Wyatt and Surrey's importation of the sonnet form into English

and the pioneering sequences of Locke and Sidney.

I guess I think theories are less likely to convince non-specialists of the dubious merits of authorial authority than the kind of arguments @Hamlet makes in his answer?

(^ That was supposed to be a response to @BESW, apologies)

Sure, but we aren't just talking about the dubious merits of authorial authority. We're also going to have to deal with a rejection of authority altogether.

Giving examples of bad authority is just going to make the case that one has to prove a particular authority is valid before using it.

"of the dubiety of the merits" I meant to say...thanks for understanding what I meant rather than responding to what I wrote

I agree, a comprehensive answer would incorporate both. But I don't think a single answer has to be comprehensive.....

1:59 AM

If this answer doesn't include it, we'll need another that does.

yup, complete agreement with you there. Need to name-drop such personages as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. Points bonus si la réponse serait écrit en français.

0

Q: Did Shakespeare consider Julius Caesar a dictator or a martyr?

I've seen the Shakespeare play Julius Caesar interpreted in two different ways (by people with different social and political views, naturally): either Caesar as a dictator who got what was coming to him, and Brutus and Cassius as freedom fighters sadly defeated by Caesar's former lackeys who n...

william-shakespeare julius-caesar

3:00 AM

Well, there you go, @Emrakul. Two very long and detailed answers coming in within minutes of each other.

Yeah, I did find time for it after all. But now I'm off again.

those things I do when I can't sleep at 4am

@Randal'Thor Why do you single out LeGuin and Clarke?

@Gilles Because while they may not have been the first to write about "true names" in sci-fi/fantasy contexts, I suspect they were the most famous authors to do so, and as such had the biggest influence on the spread of the trope.

In the same way as, for instance, Tolkien inspired a large part of the fantasy genre as it is today, despite the fact that he himself took a lot of his ideas from older works (e.g. The Princess and the Goblin, She, and of course Germanic mythology).

@Randal'Thor that may be true for LeGuin, but I don't think Clarke's story was particularly influential

and even for LeGuin, I doubt that that many stories were influenced by her work, as opposed to the ambient idea

Hmm, you may be right. I get the idea that "The Nine Billion Names of God" is one of the more famous sci-fi short stories of the 20th century, but I may have been biased by SFF.SE.

3:15 AM

NBNOG is pretty famous, but influential?

Fair enough. Edited that section.

@Randal'Thor can't be that famous... I haven't heard of it.

Not like The Cask of Amontillado, as an example.

@Catija That's not sci-fi.

Ok, fine, I, Robot.

AFAIK, Asimov and Clarke were probably the best-known writers of sci-fi shorts in the 20th century.

(Not that I'm any kind of authority on this. Fantasy is my thing, not sci-fi.)

@Catija That's Asimov, right?

And "The Last Question". Also Asimov.

3:28 AM

Think so.

4:03 AM

@Bookworm I haven't really been following the discussion around genre tags, but what do y'all think about a theater tag?

I think there's some utility in that (although I couldn't say whether it's more useful than any other genre tag; like I said, I'm not up to date on that discussion)

2 hours later…

6:16 AM

Interesting: Community Building is at 935 days in beta, and has 425 questions. Literature is at 31 days in beta and has 483 questions.

6:58 AM

0

Q: How does the short story "Big World" from The Turning by Tim Winton explore aspects of Australian Identity?

The Turning by Tim Winton is a collection of short stories about turnings (obviously) at crucial times in people's lives. I've been asked to read and annotate the first short story in the series – “Big World” – with a focus on its portrayal of personal and cultural aspects of Australian identity ...

symbolism short-stories

3 hours later…

10:08 AM

Just curious, what is the thinking behind posting questions from the site in this room? Is it supposed to spark extended discussions about the question, which are verboten in the comments?

@verbose do you mean users posting questions or the bot posting questions?

It connects the chat room to the site more viscerally, gets attention on problems more quickly, and yes, sometimes it produces good discussions that aren't really main-site fare but are still beneficial for the chatizens.

The answer is probably yes for both, but the bot feed is also handy for posting related questions from other sites, or meta (where people don't go that often), or hot network questions

The chat feed itself is curated per room, so it was a conscious decision to have mainsite and meta-site posts appear here. I curate RPG.SE's main chat feed with input from other users, and we've added a number of third-party sites that help keep us abreast of the wider RPG community.

10:23 AM

I had kinda concluded Bookworm was a bot. I guess s/he failed the Turing test. 🙃

4

@Gallifreyan I don't think I've seen anybody other than Bookworm post the questions here, so I guess I mean the bot?

Hit Turing right in the test-ees.

@verbose sometimes people also post toxic questions that need to be nuked. Or questions they're unsure of

I own a T-shirt that says "I passed the Turing test!"

ah okay

I used to work for a MOOC provider. Part of my job was to follow up with students enrolled in the classes, check on how they were progressing, prod them gently if they'dn't shown up on the site for a while, etc. This correspondence was typically over email. One day I got a reply from a student who had ignored all my emails until then. She said: "Oh, sorry, vebrose, I've been blowing off all your messages until now. I thought you were a bot."

(She did misspell my name similar to what I've done with vebrose)

@verbose the problem with using official and concise language - 21st century people think you're a scam/bot

I guess you have no real grounds for certainty that I'm not a bot....

And what about all the people who won't be able to join the community because they're terrible at making helpful and constructive co-- ... oh.

At this point, I don't think it matters

10:39 AM

True enough. Even if I weren't a bot, my existence, like all phenomena, would still be māyā anyway.

For that matter, even as a bot my existence is māyā. Since as a bot, I'm part of the phenomenal world. Or, as I prefer to think of myself, a phenomenon.

11:16 AM

Precision, control, elocution--don't have to come at the expense of voice.

2

The greatest masters of the English language are precise and controlled, can write and speak in many modes, but have a recognisable voice across their code-switching.

Baha'is joke that Shoghi Effendi mastered the five-paragraph sentence, but his distinct voice could be recognised even in an economical cable.

11:34 AM

0

Q: Why do the Grayer twins switch places?

This question contains spoilers for David Mitchell's Slade House. The first four chapters for Slade House end with the narrator in twins' attic, sitting around a candle with them. I noticed that during Sally's viewpoint, they've switched places around the candle: Nathan Lady Grayer on my le...

12:00 PM

@HDE226868 Heh, I got one unexpectedly (hadn't even realised my answer was eligible) ... on meta.

12:38 PM

I'm thinking about reading Corey's "The Expanse." Anybody got opinions on that series?

Whenever anyone asks "in what order should I read this series" I'm tempted to answer "alphabetically"

TODO: ask in what order to read a series in Chinese

since this has “learn Chinese” as a dependency, don't hold your breath

...is the series in Chinese, or just the question?

@BESW just the series, not the question, unless zh.literature.stackexchange.com exists by then

I guess I could ask it about a translated series as well, if the series has different translations with different alphabetical ordering

1 hour later…

2:16 PM

1

Q: In what order is Corey's Expanse best read?

So far as I can tell The Expanse is a series of novels that fall in roughly chronological order, but there's a number of novellas and short stories which jump around the chronology. In what order should I read the full Expanse series, novels and other material?

reading-order the-expanse james-s-a-corey

2:29 PM

user image

2

3:00 PM

@Randal'Thor How exactly does one reach the Cave of Reclusive Genius?

@HDE226868 if you were one, you'd know

@Gilles I'm not sure I want to be one, so I'll take that as a complement.

3:25 PM

@HDE226868 A complement to what?

</spelling_pedant>

3:36 PM

@Hamlet You had some interesting example questions on Area 51 which so far haven't been posted here; are you planning to ask them at some point? (I'm thinking in particular of the "Dostoevskian smile" question and the "Second Stain"/"Naval Treaty" one.)

@Randal'Thor I really liked that ad. But I can't see it anywhere.

@AJ Just keep refreshing until it shows up. It's already had 47 clicks so far, so it's definitely there.

It may show up later.

@Randal'Thor I can almost see GRRM chillin' in that Procrastination Patio

3:54 PM

@Gallifreyan He's the guy on the right. Just look at the beard.

@Randal'Thor some freehand red circles would help

4:51 PM

@Shokhet it's all cool, don't worry about that suggested edit

no harm done

@Emrakul Congrats, your "true name" question hit HNQ.

5:10 PM

1

Q: Was Jonah Wizard based on any specific celebrity?

In the The 39 Clues series, Jonah Wizard is the Cahill's famous face - he's a star hip-hop musician, and he gets mobbed everywhere. He's a celebrity - he flies private planes, has tons of money, etc. He talks like a 'gangsta'. Here's an example: "Wassup, Pierce Landing? The Wiz is in the hous...

inspiration the-39-clues

5:20 PM

@Bookworm Quick today, eh?

5:40 PM

bookworm heh

6:08 PM

@Randal'Thor go ahead and ask them

1 hour later…

7:20 PM

1

Q: Has copy protection ever been used in physical books?

"Digital rights management", DRM, is almost a standard in the e-book industry. Have copyright holders ever tried to protect physical books from scanning, for example in a way how banknotes are protected against counterfeiting?

history-of-literature

1 hour later…

user61230

8:30 PM

@Randal'Thor Huzzah! More rep!

@Shokhet I like the idea of a theatre tag but what do I know

9:06 PM

O_o...

-48

A: Is there an idiom available, that is exactly opposite to "Cake walk" or "Child's play"?

Adulting Adulting (v): to do grown up things and hold responsibilities such as, a 9-5 job, a mortgage/rent, a car payment, or anything else that makes one think of grown ups. Used in a sentence: Jane is adulting quite well today as she is on time for work promptly at 8am and appears well groomed...

o-o

9:39 PM

@Bookworm Another HNQ question. We're not doing too badly.

@Randal'Thor Haha.

ok holy s*** why do we have so many HNQs

O_O

@Randal'Thor I haven't been able to find anything in Orwell's writings that explicitly uses the phrase "too Scottish". I did find a letter of his in which he writes, "The Blairs are by origin Lowland Scottish & dull", and I've added that to my answer, but that might be all I can find in that area.

9:54 PM

@Riker Because we're awesome.

lol

0

Q: Why did the stars throw down their spears?

William Blake's poem “The Tyger” from Songs of Experience contains one couplet whose meaning has always puzzled me, lines 17–18, the first two lines of the fifth stanza: When the stars threw down their spears And water'd heaven with their tears What do these two lines mean?

poetry meaning william-blake

@HDE Thanks; I'll have another read through your answer in a bit. Going AFK now though ...

10:47 PM

@Randal'Thor Do you need anymore examples for the Shakespeare questions?

@MatrimCauthon Just left a comment on your answer. I'm not convinced yet on Shakespeare's ambivalence towards Caesar.

11:12 PM

@Randal'Thor Ok I think I fixed it this time.

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Feb '1719

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