The Reading Room

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CowperKettle

3:09 AM

en.wikisource.org/wiki/…

2 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

5:31 AM

@Bookworm HNQ.

5 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

10:39 AM

@Bookworm Phew, that was a lot of research.

Tsundoku

11:21 AM

@Randal'Thor Thanks a lot :-) This shows that my since-when questions about national epics are not simply find-date-x questions. Designating specific texts as epics (or even commissioning them) teaches us something about how a certain people shapes its national identity and how they use literature to that purpose.

That teaches us a lot more about literature than story-identification questions, which this community likes a lot more.

Rand al'Thor

11:50 AM

Story-ID questions are generally easier to answer, requiring less research.

@Tsundoku It was very interesting for me to learn how special societies were created with the purpose of forging a national identity for some ethnic group, even if many of the society members weren't part of that group themselves. Makes one wonder how many more regions or ethnic groups in the world would have their own independent countries today if they'd had such societies to push for it too.

Tatarstan, like Estonia, was a part of the Russian Empire which still has its own language, religion, and ethnic group, but never formed an independent country.

The world is such a big and interesting place ...

6 hours later…

Tsundoku

6:22 PM

The question Is there any reference to check the scansion of a poem? is strictly speaking a recommendation request and therefore off topic, but we could create a meta question for books (and perhaps other resouces) that teach you how to scan verse (obviously not just for English).

This would then be a meta question that we can refer school pupils and students to.

Bookworm

Q: Is there any reference to check the scansion of a poem?

I have a poetry course this year, where we have been introduced to meter concept. We will be asked in the exam to scan a certain line of verse from a poem we have studied during the course. My question is: Is there any reference I can rely on to check if my scansion of a certain poem is correct, ...

meter

4 hours later…

Bookworm

10:36 PM

Q: How long has Pan Tadeusz been compulsory reading in Polish schools?

Pan Tadeusz or Master Thaddeus, or the Last Foray in Lithuania: A Nobility's Tale of the Years 1811–1812, in Twelve Books of Verse is an epic poem by the Polish author Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), published in 1834. According to the Wikipedia article about Pan Tadeusz it is "Poland's national epic"...