The Reading Room - 2020-12-22

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Napoleon Wilson

12:15 AM

Uh...wouldn't a quote-identification question already be an identification request anyway?

Prince North Læraðr

@NapoleonWilson That's kind of what I was thinking, but I feel like it might be better to leave it separately?

The tag is already large enough, no?

Napoleon Wilson

12:36 AM

Probably, but generalizing the tag kind of invites these confusions to a degree.

Prince North Læraðr

I definitely do agree with that. I was thinking we could just add a little short excerpt telling people not to use it for quote-identification, but I'm not sure it'll work

1:08 AM

0

Q: Help identify the story "I did not sell my child" ends with the grown up child deserts parents

This story I read long time ago in of our class readings keeps coming back to mind but none of my Internet searches return a story except for news articles. The story goes like this: A number of children from poor families are playing together - A rich couple gets down from a cart - approaches th...

identification-request

1 hour later…

2:18 AM

@bobble On Sci Fi, I sometimes search for [-identification] as in scifi.stackexchange.com/search?q=[-identification] , because that gets both the story-identification and the smaller character-identification and episode-identification and object-identification tags. Try that on Lit now: literature.stackexchange.com/search?q=[*-identification] it only finds quote-identification questions.

@bobble I actually don't know much about tags at all. I know they exist and I can search for them, but I don't know how they get edited, synonymized, or added, for example. How do I learn?

So no, synonyms aren't as transparent as you may think.

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I think that's a good idea and it might work. Also, we can be diligent about removing the identification-request tag from quote ID questions.

Prince North Læraðr

^

I think we should change the name of quote-identification to quote-source to avoid confusion too

Or even quote-source-query :P

@b_jonas that's because identification-request doesn't have any characters or hyphen at the beginning. *identification* should work?

2:21 AM

@verbose Yes, but story-identification is still a synonym to it.

2:49 AM

in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, 2 hours ago, by Babel fish

0

Q: Help identify the story "I did not sell my child" ends with the grown up child deserts parents

This story I read long time ago in of our class readings keeps coming back to mind but none of my Internet searches return a story except for news articles. The story goes like this: A number of children from poor families are playing together - A rich couple gets down from a cart - approaches th...

identification-request

^ Feed in the Restaurant still works.

3:17 AM

Is greek-literature appropriate for this question? "The Cure at Troy" isn't in Greek.

@verbose one option is to look through main-meta's tag FAQ questions

There's also Lit's tagging guidance in the help center

(that's shorter)

Prince North Læraðr

@verbose Ditto. Isn't greek-literatur for works originally written in greek?

There is guidance in the Help for various tag related privileges

Prince North Læraðr

Well, that's interesting. It was adapted from "Sophocles' play Philoctetes"

Final option is to just ask any specific questions, and I probably either know the answer or the correct keywords to search main-meta to find the answer

Prince North Læraðr

3:21 AM

@verbose I'm going to say no. That specific book wasn't published in Ancient Greek and therefore doesn't count. @Tsundoku @Randal'Thor opinions before I edit it out?

Well, actually, what is a "verse adaptation"? It all depends on the meaning of that

@bobble I don't think rerouting verbose to a bunch of external links is helpful, IMO

well that's how I learned

sorry if it's not useful

Prince North Læraðr

Well, this is a rather odd instance where I think he's asking for opinions. Also, verbose has been around for a decent amount of time.

oh I read that wrong then

Prince North Læraðr

Yeah. I think Verbose is asking about a odd tagging instance- "The Cure at Troy" isn't in Greek, but it's based off of a work which was written in Greek. The question is, is it a direct translation, or an adaptation?

I was responding to an earlier post

1 hour ago, by verbose

@bobble I actually don't know much about tags at all. I know they exist and I can search for them, but I don't know how they get edited, synonymized, or added, for example. How do I learn?

Honestly did not see their latest message

Prince North Læraðr

3:27 AM

@bobble Ohhhh, I completely misread that. My bad

I'm still not sure of the specifics of tagging here (hello, new user!), but I do know about how tagging generally works

Prince North Læraðr

@verbose Anyone can create tags. You just type a new tag in while you add them. Editing tag wikis are done by clicking on the tag and clicking the option to edit it. Synonymizing is a privilege.

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I thought I knew that, then the other day I tried creating a stéphane-mallarmé tag but couldn't. I understand now that it's because diacritics aren't allowed in Lit SE tags (booooooo!).

@bobble Actually it was useful. Thanks!

yay!

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Right, that's why I didn't just edit the q to remove the tag. Philoctetes is definitely greek-literature, but either we need to remove that tag or we need to add philoctetes and sophocles to the question

Prince North Læraðr

3:33 AM

Right

we'll wait until Randy wakes up, it's like 3 or 4 am over there right now, I think

I mean, it's @Randal'Thor's question and I presume he has some reason for the way it's currently tagged

Prince North Læraðr

@bobble It's fairly straightforward. Always add author, unless there is none. "Medium" is what we call the broad type of literature. If it's published in book form, add the book title. If not, use the appropriate medium, i.e. "oral-tradition", "poetry", "song-lyrics", etc.

Add other relevant tags for "what" you're asking (meaning, symbolism, character analysis, etc.). We don't like genres. We don't "tropes" or themes or sub-themes or specific motifs or anything else that just goes on and on in the list

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I don't even know where anybody lives. Except for Tsundoku and Gareth, who I know are in Germany and England respectively. (I'm in the San Francisco area. I honestly don't think I could live anywhere else in the US at this point. I regret not having moved to Canada when I had the chance.)

I'm still a bit fuzzy on the difference between [symbolism] or [meaning], and how to use them in conjunction with other tags.

Prince North Læraðr

@verbose I thought Tsundoku was in the Netherlands.

3:37 AM

Meaning is literal, symbolism is metaphorical

Prince North Læraðr

I personally don't like how the symbolism tag is used, but ^ yeah.

Though symbolism and meaning usually go with each other

@PrinceNorthLæraðr He's from Flanders, which is in Belgium, but he lives in Germany, is my understanding. All of Europe is just one big blob anyway. They don't even have borders!

Prince North Læraðr

@verbose Ah Belgium. Not Netherlands I don't know my geography sorry Tsundoku

@verbose I'm in the PST timezone, and in the US.

Prince North Læraðr

@verbose Very true

@verbose Hehe, I'm a SoCal guy

Rand is in England

Idk about Eddie Kal

3:39 AM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr oh so the three of us in this room rn are all Californicators.

Prince North Læraðr

Eh, not necessarily

Bobble could be in AZ, OR, or WA

Or NV

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Oh yeah that's right

Or Vancouver or the Yukon

Prince North Læraðr

It's easy to forget that there are other states besides CA, I know

I'm in the US and have complained about AP Gov in the Lair

Prince North Læraðr

We're such an amazing state and every other state pales in comparison fight me

3:40 AM

Oh right, you did say the US

@PrinceNorthLæraðr weapon of choice?

Prince North Læraðr

This big master sword, of course. And I'll recruit my redwood friends up North

@bobble Whenever anybody asks me that I always reply "Water pistols at 10 paces"

Prince North Læraðr

Oh, Mith is in the middle east, Israel, I think

Oh yeah I knew that about them

BESW no longer posts here (which is sad; he is the nicest person I've met on SE) but he's in Guam. Exotic, eh

Prince North Læraðr

3:43 AM

I accidentally confused BESW with BeastlyGerbil

Huh, I thought BESW was active on PSE

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I meant only that he doesn't post in Lit SE. I do believe he's active in SF&F and a couple others

Prince North Læraðr

No, I mean I swear BESW was active on Puzzling Stack Exchange. Can't find him though.

Also, he's one of the nicest people I've met, I should say. Randolph is up there too, as is a dude named Girish Chauhan over on Stack Oveflow

For some value of "met"

Prince North Læraðr

Randy was the first user I ever talked too

ah

Speaking of SoCal, I keep thinking that I should move to Palm Springs, coz it's so much cheaper than up here, but then I remember how overwhelmingly white it is and my heart quails

Prince North Læraðr

3:58 AM

oooof

4:17 AM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr what

1 hour later…

5:41 AM

@NapoleonWilson I thought that at first, but quote-ID not only requires a different skillset from book/story ID, but also it's really a different kind of "ID" question:

+1. Want to mention quote-identification as something separate? verbose suggested renaming that tag to something like quote-source-query, since it's not really identifying the quote in the same way as we identify books (e.g. giving its name), but rather finding the source of a quote. Also very different skillsets needed for sourcing quotes and identifying stories. — Rand al'Thor ♦ Dec 2 at 21:58

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Yep, I was planning to add something in the excerpt after we've decided on the name for the quote-ID tag. It might not cause that much misuse, since I guess people seeking quotes would be more likely to type "quote" in the tag box and use that tag even if they don't know our tagging policies.

@verbose This might help with info about synonymising and merging tags. (I've never read meta FAQs about it, just learned by doing.)

Oh sorry, I see bobble already linked you to some tag resources.

I may have linked to too many tag resources...

@verbose I think I tagged it greek-literature because A Cure at Troy is apparently a "Version"/adaptation (translation?) of a Greek play? Not sure exactly what that means, so I'm happy to be corrected if it's really a quite separate work.

6:03 AM

@Randal'Thor Maybe add the tags to the original work and author too? philoctetes sophocles

6:38 AM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr aye

@verbose It's quite sad. :(

@verbose Done, but now there's no space for a a-cure-at-troy tag.

Do you think a-cure-at-troy should be a synonym of philoctetes, or are the two works more different/separate than that?

6:57 AM

@Randal'Thor I think they are different enough to warrant their own tags. Maybe leave out philoctetes, since visitors are more likely to search for sophocles?

@Mithical “quite” in the British sense (“rather sad”) or American (“extremely sad”)?

American, I guess. I generally speak American English unless I'm extremely confused. :P

3 hours later…

9:48 AM

@Randal'Thor @verbose I wouldn't tag it greek-literature because it is not a straightforward translation. As a test, you can try to find the quoted passage in a translation. I couldn't. And the question is not trying to increase understanding of the original Greek text.

@Tsundoku that's a good point

@Randal'Thor Based on my previous comment, I wouldn't. Unless someone reads A Cure at Troy and Philoctetes side by side and decides it is a straightforward translation.

10:03 AM

Apparently Marlowe's plays are generally hard to date. Hey, I guess I do have something in common with Dr Faustus. 😐

@Tsundoku Feel free to edit and retag. I'm hardly an expert on either work, just going off the brief description on Wikipedia.

@verbose Who wrote you? That is the Gretchenfrage. .-)

Is that a cyclops smiley?

Distracted by questions about Greek literature ...

The cyclops smiley would require a mid dot, though, like this ꞏ-) Unfortunately, there is no mid comma, so you can't write a cyclops wink.

Even the the Greek psili doesn't work for this: ‍̓-)

@Tsundoku clever

Eng Lit Learner

10:17 AM

0

Q: "a moment next of such confusion" and one other question related to a sample from an old story

I would like to ask two questions regarding the following sentence: There was a moment next of such confusion that I did not see what happened to Riquette, for the sight of my companion kneeling on the dusty boards and praying with a curious sort of passionate happiness, while tears pressed betw...

meaning meaning-in-context literature

I do like Marlowe a lot (I've actually read his complete works) but the B-text of Dr Faustus is hot garbage

@verbose I haven't read all of Marlowe yet. The Jew of Malta was fun, in a way. I wonder if there are any B-movies based on Doctor Faustus :-P

0

Q: What is the pun in Fowles' The Magus?

Google has not helped me figure this out. This is from the first or second page of the book (I'm not sure exactly since my electronic copy of the book doesn't seem to have page numbers): I saw very little of my father during the war, and in his long absences I used to build up a more or less imm...

@Randal'Thor On second thought, are you asking only about the adaptation or also about Sophocles's play?

@Tsundoku Well, I'm open to an answer from any direction: whether there are relevant political themes in the original Sophocles play, or in the Heaney version, or it started from some real-world politician quoting it and others copying them.

I didn't know, until you said just now, that the passage quoted from Heaney isn't in the Sophocles play (or, if it is, it's been translated in wildly different ways).

10:26 AM

If the question is about both works, then the greek-literature tag can stay.

(I can also imagine someone posting a question specifically about politics in Philoctetes, though.)

10:58 AM

@Tsundoku Tamburlane has absolutely magnificent iambic pentameter lines. And of course, as a gay man I find Edward II quite interesting. I think Gounod wrote an opera that has something to do with Dr Faustus, is that close enough to a B-movie?

@Tsundoku and @Randal'Thor Tom Stoppard also has a play, Neutral Ground, based on Philoctetes.

I've read both Philoctetes and Neutral Ground too long ago to remember them well, but I do remember finding both of them very interesting.

@verbose By Gounod? Probably not.

It's his best known opera. I must have heard some arias from it but never the entire work.

I did see that opera once, at the Frisco Opera House (my husband and I were subscribers for many years, until he got too ill to go). I didn't particularly enjoy it. Maybe I'd've enjoyed it better with a different soprano. Bianca Castafiore was a bit overpowering

Or, in other words, I have never been hit by Gounod's Faust. :-P

@verbose Not a shattering experience, then? ;-)

Oh I was quite shattered.

Seriously, though, I tell people that opera reminds me of Bollywood movies. Preposterous plots, melodramatic situations, and people bursting into song for no apparent reason. I joke that I'm too much of a snob to say I like Bollywood, so I take that same execrable taste and disguise it as a love for opera instead.

11:14 AM

I had a subscription for the Monnaie and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels for a number of years. In fact, a school teacher had arranged that. My fist concert experience was a Haydn symphony adapted by Alban Berg (strange as that may sound) followed by Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps.

Haydn via Berg?! Whoa

Perhaps it was an early work; I can't remember. I didn't find it earth shattering. But I was impressed by Le Sacre du Printemps, from the very first dissonants.

@Bookworm Interesting how I gave a completely wrong answer to that question at first

@Tsundoku I've seen the ballet. It is quite something.

@verbose It was a performance without the ballet. But I later watched Béjart's version of the ballet on YouTube.

@Tsundoku ah

Napoleon Wilson

11:46 AM

@Randal'Thor Well, sure, that's kind of the point.

12:32 PM

@Bookworm Looks like that Maupassant challenge still pays off...

3 hours later…

3:10 PM

@verbose Good thing you fixed it before the inevitable HNQing ;-)

@NapoleonWilson I'm not sure if I get your point then.

@PrinceNorthLæraðr john-fowles the-magus

1 hour later…

Prince North Læraðr

4:19 PM

Aye

4:39 PM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Those tags can wait; your finals are more important.

Prince North Læraðr

My finals are done lol

I'll get to them today

North and I are on Christmas break

Already? I'm still in the office...

What a princely life ;-)

Prince North Læraðr

Aye :P

1 hour later…

5:45 PM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Symbolism is a very specific way of conveying (or, one might say, obscuring) meaning. Metaphor is another "technique". I don't think we have a policy about adding meaning when a question requires symbolism. In the past, I sometimes had the impression that symbolism was used where it wasn't needed.

6:00 PM

0

Q: What arguments have scholars used to characterise Kafka's The Metamorphosis as magical realism?

In comments below the question What style are Kafka's novels?, Peter Shor said, Kafka has been characterized as "magical realism". On the other hand, there are lots of people who disagree with that. (...) And: Is The Metamorphosis magical realism? It depends on how you define magical realism. ...

history-of-literature german-literature franz-kafka

2 hours later…

8:04 PM

@Bookworm HNQ (naturally).

@verbose I was interested to read in one of your recent answers that the Ur-Hamlet is lost but its existence is known from a throwaway line by Lodge. Would it make a good question to ask when more modern scholars found that line and realised that Shakespeare's Hamlet must have been based on something earlier? Or was that simply common knowledge all the way from the 17th century to the present day? cc @Tsundoku

I don't know much about how Shakespeare studies evolved through the centuries, so not sure if that'd be a stupid question or not.

@Randal'Thor Lodge's comment is not the only reference to Ur-Hamlet, if memory serves.

I guess I could make the question a bit broader, something like "how has scholarly knowledge of the Ur-Hamlet evolved over the centuries?"

That might work. That would motivate me to read that book about Kyd that I have tsundoku'd for so many years.

2 hours later…

9:49 PM

0

Q: How has knowledge of the Ur-Hamlet evolved over the centuries?

I recently read in an excellent verbose answer that the existence of the Ur-Hamlet, on which Shakespeare's Hamlet is presumed to have been based, is known from a throwaway line of Thomas Lodge, published in 1596 some years before Shakespeare's Hamlet: he walks for the most part in black under co...

history-of-literature thomas-kyd ur-hamlet

10:03 PM

@Randal'Thor I don’t know the answer offhand, so yes, it’s a good q and I’m glad you asked it!

@Tsundoku what Kyd book?

@verbose Beyond The Spanish Tragedy: A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd by Lukas Erne.

@Bookworm "an excellent verbose answer" :-)

@Bookworm So now we have our first tag for a work that does not exist :-P

10:34 PM

Ah, no, that tag has been around since September.

11:30 PM

0

Q: What short story has a soldier deliver a secret message like “shoot the messenger”?

I recall a story about a WW1 or WW2 soldier who has to cross enemy lines to deliver a message which he was not to read. In the rain and mud, fearing the ink would run (or fearing imminent capture, I forget which) the soldier reads and memorizes the message and destroys the paper. He survives to d...

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