The Reading Room

« first day (3337 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (1314 days later) »

12:50 AM

Q: Does anyone have any tips on witing a good attention grabber for a style analysis essay?

I have to write a style analysis essay on the short story "Was it a Dream" by Guy de Maupassant and I'm getting stuck on the attention grabber. It should be pretty easy, but it isn't. I was wondering if anyone had any tips on writing attention grabbers.

1 hour later…

user185131

2:09 AM

@Tsundoku Yes, but knowing myself, that would surely not work 😅

Rand al'Thor

8:25 AM

That was a near-instant upvote. Perhaps from whoever is following the persian-literature tag.

Bookworm

Q: What is "the seventh sphere"?

In the second part (Helen Zimmern's translation) of the Shahnameh, the youngest son Irij is killed by his brothers, who send his head back to their father Feridoun: Now when they were come to the garden of Irij, Feridoun faltered in his sorrow, and he pressed the head of the young King, his son,...

meaning cultural-context persian-literature shahnameh

Rand al'Thor

@Brahadeesh Some people even get a voluntary suspension to keep them off SE for a while.

New Topic Challenge Suggestion

A: New Literature SE Topic Challenge Suggestions Thread

The works of Isabelle Eberhardt The Swiss explorer and author Isabelle Eberhardt (1877 – 1904) led a short but eventful life. The illegitimate daughter of a Russian anarchist and a member of the Russian aristocracy, she grew up in Switzerland, where she learnt French, German, Russian, Italian, La...

Tsundoku

9:03 AM

@Bookworm That Faust question was posted by an unregistered account. If such questions get closed without providing improvement suggestions, we just lose those users.

Tsundoku

9:16 AM

I have edited Did Shakespeare draw inspiration from the characters in Cervantes's Don Quixote?. Let's see if the close voters find it acceptable now.

5 hours later…

Tsundoku

2:38 PM

@Randal'Thor Or someone who happened to be on the front page when that question was posted.

North Læraðr

3:03 PM

I'm at 199 edits...!

Dang... 309 is my next goal

I must surpass

3 hours later…

Eddie Kal

6:26 PM

Have we had a lot of Lusophone literature? Might be an area people should look into

Lusophone African and of course Lusophone American literature should be interesting to look into

1 hour later…

Rand al'Thor

7:50 PM

@EddieKal I had to look up the word Lusophone :-) but I was actually thinking the exact same thing today. Our portuguese-literature tag is very small indeed, and only exists because I specifically wanted to populate that tag and looked for something to ask in it.

There's one Lusophone topic challenge proposal, although no relation to Africa or America.

Tsundoku

@EddieKal I have thought about suggesting the Brazilian modernist author Jorge Amado.

Mithical

8:06 PM

I don't think we currently have any questions about Tagalog literature.

Tsundoku

8:20 PM

@Mithical That's something we could look into; starting from List of Tagalog literary works and checking what authors and works are available in English translations.

Eddie Kal

@Randal'Thor Oh yeah when I click on that link I can see my upvote on there.

Luís de Camões is interesting. I believe he lived and wrote on the dividing line between old and modern Portuguese

Rand al'Thor

@EddieKal Mine too, although it seems like quite a long and tricky read - not sure how many people would actually commit to it during a topic challenge.

Bit like the Tale of Genji and Shahnameh, I suppose: big old classics in their respective languages, hugely culturally important but not necessarily easy reads.

Bookworm

8:41 PM

Q: Looking for a famous quote by William Wordsworth probably relevant to the concept of the Anthropocene

I've talked to someone who studied English literature and the concept of Anthropocene recently, and the person quoted Wordsworth during our conversation. Unfortunately I can not remember the quote, but would like to find it again. My two clues are that it might contain the word "we", and that it ...