The Reading Room

Q: "BlackBerry Winter" by Robert Penn Warren

Could anyone please provide a link to Robert Penn Warren's short story BlackBerry Winter? I couldn't hunt it down on the Internet despite trying hard.

3 hours later…

bobble

3:07 AM

I've reached 10 Necromancer/Revival badges! That puts me at #6 for this query

3 hours later…

verbose

6:21 AM

@Alex okay that one made me chuckle

@bobble Congratulations!

@Randal'Thor I'm not sure that one qualifies? textual-history is about the changes to a specific work. That is, if Pygmalion was printed in an edition where some of the speeches were changed, then questions about the changes, editions, etc. would be part of its textual history. But an adaptation wouldn't be, as it's a derivative work, not a different text of the same work.

1 hour later…

8:01 AM

@Tsundoku Done.

@Tsundoku How about "Recommendation or open-ended list question"?

I'm not sure what the character limit is for that part.

@Randal'Thor Yes, that would also work.

Done.

@bobble Nice! (Actually you've reached 11, but Data.SE only updates once a week.)

@verbose Hmm, but where do we draw the line between adaptations and different versions of the same text? Arguably, writing down an oral tradition is also adapting a story to a different form, and can also come with considerable changes that are necessary for the new format of the story.

@Tsundoku I also made a very slight edit to the usage guidance, adding the word "open-ended" since @verbose's relatively recent meta answer made clear the real criterion for off-topicness of such queries.

@Randal'Thor Textual history is about the stages a work went through as text. This is separate from performances and adaptations into film. That is scholarly practice.

8:40 AM

@Tsundoku What counts as "text" then, if an oral tradition is but a play or film script isn't?

9:16 AM

@Randal'Thor I have no experience with the study of oral literature. As far as I know, you write down orally transmitted stories in order to study them. Plays and films are not purely textual media.

As I mentioned before, scholars don't discuss film adaptations under the heading of "textual history".

Textual history traces what authors did with their own text and how editors prepared such texts for readers. Films and plays are not for readers but for viewers. (In the case of plays, this is often forgotten.)

10:11 AM

But then why do we use textual-history for questions about the different versions of Shakespeare plays? Is it because we're just talking about the written texts of those plays rather than different performances?

With oral traditions, there can be major differences between the traditional spoken/sung version and the version that got recorded and written down as a story or epic poem. (I've found the answer to my own question about Mem and Zin and will post it at some point if nobody else does.)

I sort of thought textual-history was used broadly for different versions of the same story.

Q: What books were common in Medieval Monasteries?

I know that these were fairly common: Aeneid by Vergil, Legenda Aurea (The Golden Legend) by Jacobus de Varagine Augustine (various books) Plato (mostly neo-Platonic texts like Plotinus and Dionysus the Aerophragite) Aristotle (various books) Vulgate bible National Chronicles (like Snorri Sturla...

history-of-literature

@Bookworm This seems very broad. Medieval monasteries in which country? of which monastic order? in which century of the medieval era? Surely there isn't a single answer spanning all those possibilities?

10:31 AM

@Bookworm List question. Huge list question ...

@Randal'Thor "Different versions" is ambiguous unless you mean different editions. Using textual-history for performances is inappropriate, in my opinion.

If you want to find out whether the tag textual-history is appropriate, check whether the question is about textual criticism. The study of performances or film adaptations is a totally different discipline.

3 hours later…

b_jonas

1:33 PM

@Bookworm Did someone point OP to Eco's Name of the Rose yet?

Q: Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Figs from Thistles: First Fig"

2:24 PM

Edna St. Vincent Millay's very short poem "Figs from Thistles: First Fig" goes as follows: My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light! A recent answer on English SE mentions an interpretation of this as being about the ...

poetry interpretation edna-st-vincent-millay

Q: What does "count twenty" mean here in The Markenmore Mystery"?

3:16 PM

In The Markenmore Mystery (1922) by J. S. Fletcher, Mr. Fransemmery, a juryman and lawyer, was talking to Mrs. Braxfield, whose daughter had married Harry Markenmore secretly, and Mrs. Braxfield was insisted on announcing that her daughter became Markenmore Lady after the death of Harry's father ...

the-markenmore-mystery j.s.fletcher

4 hours later…