The Reading Room

user61230

12:01 AM

vimeo.com/112654091

user61230

Neil Gaiman posted this.

Mithrandir

indeed

Bookworm

12:29 AM

1

Q: How and why were pronoun genders changed in "Winter's King"?

While reading up on the works of the great, recently deceased, author Ursula le Guin, I found the following tidbit on Wikipedia about her short story "Winter's King": Le Guin revised the story, focusing on pronoun gender, for its inclusion in her 1975 short story collection The Wind's Twelve ...

Mithrandir

> Le Guin's commentary poses the thorny question of what a novelist can do when she realizes twenty years later that she disagrees with herself, especially when her former position had been quoted "with cries of joy" (1987, 7) by adverse critics. Well, she can write a public recantation, as Le Guin did, but it was too late to revise the novel itself. Le Guin found an ingenious two-pronged literary solution to this problem of having one's past remain alive in one's present. Her first response was to reprint "Winter's King" (1975), another story that set on the planet of Gethen that actually …

-books.google.co.il/…

> In the reprinting (and all subsequent reprintings) of the Gethenian based story "Winter's King," I kept malegendered nouns such as king, lord, but changed all the pronouns for Gethenians in sourer to the feminine. The effect is very interesting, and was effective, I think, at short story length.

-theliterarylink.com/afterword.html

Shokhet

1:15 AM

...it appears that Nicanor Parra has also died today. Worth posting with a link to everything Parra on the site? Right now, there is only one question and one answer, so I don't think so.

But raising the issue here to find others' opinions.

Bookworm

0

Q: Looking for an essay comparing Beethoven to Hamlet

I read an essay in school--I think a survey course on British literature--that compared the music of Beethoven to the soliloquies of Hamlet; the essay said that Beethoven's music is "spoken" privately, not knowing it has an audience, while Rossini's music is paradelike. Any idea what this might ...

william-shakespeare

Feeds

"Nicanor Parra, Chilean Voice in an ‘Anti-Poet’ Movement, Dies at 103" via @nytimes https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/obituaries/nicanor-parra-chile-poet-dead.html

Tweeted by StackLiterature on January 24, 2018 at 1:10 AM

skullpatrol

1:58 AM

@Hamlet they're trying to compare you to Beethoven? :-D

It's so rare for somebody to live to 103 @Shokhet

A very good kind of "rare."

imho

user61230

5:22 AM

user15026

5:33 AM

I really need to read more Le Guin.

Shokhet

6:12 AM

@skullpatrol Agreed

@Ash Same

Mithrandir

12:52 PM

I don't understand why this is attracting downvotes.

-1

Q: How and why were pronoun genders changed in "Winter's King"?

While reading up on the works of the great, recently deceased, author Ursula le Guin, I found the following tidbit on Wikipedia about her short story "Winter's King": Le Guin revised the story, focusing on pronoun gender, for its inclusion in her 1975 short story collection The Wind's Twelve ...

short-stories ursula-le-guin

Rand al'Thor

4:40 PM

@Mithrandir Probably because I missed a bit on the same Wikipedia page which essentially answered the question.

Yasskier's answer does go into more detail though.

Rand al'Thor

5:11 PM

in ðiː ˌɪŋkɒmpɹɨˈhɛnsɨbəɫ ˈɻʷuːm, 16 hours ago, by Robusto

From a social point of view most SF has been incredibly regressive and unimaginative. All those Galactic Empires, taken straight from the British Empire of 1880. All those planets—with 80 trillion miles between them!—conceived of as warring nation-states, or as colonies to be exploited, or to be nudged by the benevolent Imperium of Earth towards self-development—the White Man’s Burden all over again. The Rotary Club on Alpha Centauri, that’s the size of it. —Ursula K. LeGuin

Bookworm

5:26 PM

0

Q: Medea's hidden symbols of speaking

Medea while discussin with Yason talks with:excessive zeal and lack of reasoning.Does this always happen with those who are in love?

meaning symbolism history-of-literature greek-literature

Bookworm

9:26 PM

0

Q: Children's story set in a kingdom where so many candles burn, it is never dark. The King is afraid in the dark. Story may have been Dutch

A children's novel, aimed at perhaps 7–10 year olds, set in a kingdom where the night has been banished by burning many candles. I believe the story was originally in English, but I must have read it in Dutch and it may have been written in Dutch or another non-English language originally. It w...

story-identification

Hamlet

10:01 PM

I think the best way to describe Le Guin is as a "fictional ethnographer." Which for me is very different from a science fiction writer.

But then again I would characterize Asimov's Foundation as fantasy, not science fiction. I would probably characterize Le Guin's fiction as being anti-fantasy.

I'm slightly biased in that the only SF writers whose works have impressed me are Stanislaw Lem and Philip K. Dick.

I consider fantasy to be the most boring genre in terms of ideas. Boring as in tired, unoriginal, or in Le Guin's words, a "safe sterile laboratory."

Not entirely sure if Pratchett goes under fantasy in terms of the themes he considers, but in terms of ideas and insight his work is no different from someone like Asimov.

In theory science fiction and fantasy should be one of the most interesting genres, but the boringness perhaps speaks to the true nature of what science and fantasy are in our society.

> From a social point of view most SF has been incredibly regressive and unimaginative. All those Galactic Empires, taken straight from the British Empire of 1880. All those planets—with 80 trillion miles between them!—conceived of as warring nation-states, or as colonies to be exploited, or to be nudged by the benevolent Imperium of Earth towards self-development—the White Man’s Burden all over again. The Rotary Club on Alpha Centauri, that’s the size of it. —Ursula K. LeGuin

and so on and so forth

Feeds

10:32 PM

It's #VirginiaWoolf's 136 birthday! In honor of her birthday, check out our questions about her works on Literature Stack Exchange: https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/virginia-woolf?mixed=1

Tweeted by StackLiterature on January 24, 2018 at 10:17 PM

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