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North
North
2:07 AM
@Tsundoku How about a Midsummer Night's Quarantine?
@verbose I'd just go with Two Gentlemen Stuck in Venice
 
 
3 hours later…
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
4:45 AM
@verbose Well if you can't answer them, who can? ;-) I've been impressed by your expert and detailed answers (especially the one about Odysseus and his wife). For your first question from last year, I already added it to my list of questions where I'll award a bounty to anyone who solves it successfully. Maybe that'll help motivate someone.
@GarethRees Well, "no" is a valid answer to "are there any specific textual clues". It's hard to prove a negative, but what I try to do in such cases is list what we do know that's closest to the unknown desired answer: along the lines of "here are the most relevant pieces of information, but none of them quite answers the question".
In fact, that might be why both of verbose's questions have stayed unanswered: because there's actually no information available to answer them, but nobody's had the confidence to post a "we don't know" answer.
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
5:34 AM
@North Why Venice?
 
 
1 hour later…
Bookworm
Bookworm
6:38 AM
0
Q: Why is a hardcover book better than a paperback book?

Mo_delfrenA biographer I follow on a social media platform once wrote "we're a hardcover household". Where does the tradition of preferences between these two options come from?

physical-books
 
Bookworm
Bookworm
7:01 AM
0
Q: What is the meaning of this line: "For beauty stands in the admiration only of weak minds led captive"

user9884Read the above line from Milton's Paradise Regained. Belial suggests to Satan to lure Christ with a woman but Satan rebukes him and utters this line. What I understood of this is that Satan is aware that he cannot lure Christ with a woman. But what is the exact meaning of the phrase "admiration o...

poetry
 
 
1 hour later…
Bookworm
Bookworm
8:10 AM
0
Q: 1 Henry IV Act 5, Scene 3: "God keep the lead out of me"

LordCrulos1337Henry IV Part 1, Act 5, Scene 3: Falstaff says ...God keep the lead out of me, I need no more weight than my own bowels. Is this referring to lead bullets? I was under the impression these were not available at the time of the battle, around the year 1400. Even the rudimentary cannon is...

william-shakespeare historical-accuracy henry-iv-part-i
 
 
2 hours later…
Bookworm
Bookworm
10:04 AM
0
Q: Portrayal of Henry Bolingbroke through different Shakespeare plays

Rand al'ThorKing Henry IV of England, also known as Henry Bolingbroke, appears in three Shakespeare plays, with two of them being named after him. In Richard II, he can be seen as the main antagonist of the play, overthrowing the titular king and claiming the throne himself, with the former king Richard bein...

character-analysis william-shakespeare historical-context henriad
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
@Bookworm I created a henriad tag since this question is relevant to the whole thing, but we do already have a tag for at least one of the individual Henriad plays. Our usual policy on series is to have a tag for the whole series and not tags for individual works within it, but I'm not sure if the Henriad is sufficiently tied together to count as a series.
I guess we should either remove the henry-iv-part-1 tag in favour of henriad, or just retag this question with henry-iv-part-1 and henry-iv-part-2 and richard-ii (and remove historical-context to make room in the tag box). @Tsundoku what do you reckon?
 
 
4 hours later…
Bookworm
Bookworm
2:39 PM
0
Q: Origin of Lope de Vega poem title "La Dragontea"?

SuncatcherWhy he titled his poem La Dragontea, what were the prerequisites? I tried to search the etymology of this word but was not successful. Yes, I know that Chinese Dragon Tea exists, but I suppose it has nothing to do with Vega's poem, because Longjing tea was named Dragon Tea by English malnguage s...

history-of-literature inspiration spanish-literature title
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
3:02 PM
@Randal'Thor As far as I know, the plays weren't originally conceived as a series. Henry VI part 1 was probably the last of the Henry VI plays. Henry VI, Part 2 and Henry VI, Part 3 weren't the original titles of those plays.
So I would reserve the tag henriad exclusively for questions that are about all of the Henry X plays (except Henry VIII, probably, which has nothing to do with the War of the Roses etc), not just one or two of them. [Update: I wrote this without checking anything. Grrr.]
 
 
1 hour later…
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
4:27 PM
@Tsundoku I thought "Henriad" was only about the tetralogy from Richard II to Henry V?
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
Apparently, there are two meanings (but either excludes Henry VIII, obviously).
So which one do we pick?
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
Urgh, so it's not even uniquely defined. I'm regretting creating that tag.
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
So there are two tetralogies. Your question is about the second tetralogy.
So, what do you think of replacing henriad with second-tetralogy?
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
@Tsundoku Also, using X to denote a general number is mighty confusing in the context of Roman numerals :-)
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
Fortunately, those kings weren't called Malcolm.
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
4:38 PM
@Tsundoku I'm thinking rather to get rid of the tag altogether and just use the individual play tags.
We couldn't use second-tetralogy as a tag name since that could be any series of four, and second-tetralogy-shakespeare is getting a bit unwieldy.
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
I did a web search for "second tetralogy" and found only references to those Shakespeare plays - contrary to my expectations. That's why I proposed it. But I have no objection to sticking to the normal play titles.
 
Gareth Rees
Gareth Rees
@Bookworm It was a struggle to locate the text of this poem
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
The Malcolm who became king of Scotland at the end of Macbeth - I suppose he wasn't Malcolm X...
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
Malcolm III, apparently. And there was a Malcolm IV but no more.
(Interesting to realise that the events of Macbeth were very close in time to the Norman invasion of England. It was that same Malcolm who swore fealty to William the Conqueror a scant decade after defeating Macbeth.)
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
It had never occurred to me to check that. I suppose Tolkien was aware of it, even though he preferred reading older literature.
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
4:54 PM
I learned a lot of interesting historical facts from Tim Severin's Viking series, about a Norseman named Thorgils who gets around to a fantastic number of places in his lifetime. Not especially well written, but taught me a lot about which things in the world were going on at roughly the same time.
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
I basically read a 600- or 700-page history of England a few years ago, but it didn't cover Scotland, I think.
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
The life of Thorgils might not be especially plausible, but it was at least temporally possible to fit the short-lived Viking colony in America, the reigns of King Cnut and Harald Hardrada and several Byzantine emperors, the rise and fall of King Macbeth, and the Norman invasion of England all into one lifetime.
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
It's actually interesting to read history books for two different countries side by side. For example, I once read a history of Korea and one of Japan, and the history of Japan, even though written by a European, was almost completely silent on the atrocities the Japanese had perpetrated in Korea.
In the early twentieth century up to the end of the Second World War, the Japanese tried to replace Korean culture with Japanese culture. During WW II, the Koreans had to adopt a Japanese name - if they didn't, no mail would be delivered to them.
History books were rewritten to give the impression that Korea had always been "Japanese".
 
North
North
@Randal'Thor Ack, crap the play is titled Two Gentlemen in Verona, I thought it was venice
@Tsundoku Ew. I'm Korean, and that's pretty... offensive.
If anything, Korea had always been more Chinese
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
@North What the Japanese did in Korea was more extreme than what I had imagined.
In the West, people know fairly little about this.
 
North
North
5:06 PM
@Tsundoku Oh it was bad. You already mentioned how they tried to get rid of the Korean culture, including their writing system. Not only this, but many women were forced as "Comfort Women", which were essentially wartime prostitutes.
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
For example, during WWII, many Koreans were working in Japan. As a consequence, there was a considerable number of Korean victims during the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
 
North
North
@Tsundoku Huh, that I wasn't even aware of
Nonetheless, we do have to acknowledge that that's in the past
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
The writing system is an interesting point: the educated classes had resisted using Hangul and preferred using the Hanz-based writing system. After the Japanese occupation, people started to prefer Hangul.
 
North
North
Too many Koreans I grew up with still harbor a lot of resentment towards Japan
Which is fair, but it's like an African-American punching a white man for being... white
@Tsundoku Funny how people do that
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
Perhaps, but I am not aware of the Japanese ever apologising for their war crimes, which makes forgiveness more difficult.
By the way, I noticed that we don't have any questions about Korean literature. Nor any reading challenge suggestions for Korean literature.
 
North
North
5:11 PM
@Tsundoku Oh, I had no idea.
I would be happy to provide a few, though I would need to do some digging. It's been a while
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
@North Atrocities beget resentment, but one must avoid conflating a country (even a present one, let alone a past one) with its people.
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
Also, it is little known that the founder of Kyokushin Karate (or Kyokushinkai) was a Korean living in Japan.
 
North
North
I was actually adopted into America when I was 7, so most of my Korean literature is limited to Korean folk tales.
@Randal'Thor Unfortunately, that's a serious issue in Korea (especially in less developed areas)
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
Korean folk tales could make a great topic challenge.
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
There is the diary of a Korean princess describing life at court, which would probably make interesting reading. Though perhaps more from a historical point of view than a literary one.
I also read about a Korean king who wanted to prepare his son for his later role as king. However, due to strict protocol, he couldn't communicate his intentions. The prince went mad. However, they couldn't get rid of him by directly killing him so they put him into a wooden box, in which he died a slow death...
 
North
North
5:17 PM
alright, I'll try to see how topic challenges are written and make a list of folk tales I would probably ask questions for
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
That was not a folk tale but history, by the way.
 
North
North
The only potential problem I foresee with the Korean folktale challenge is that some (or many, I'm not too sure how many) are very similar to Chinese ones.
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
I don't think many people here a familiar with Chinese folktales.
 
North
North
Okay
Well, in the meantime, here are some common themes in Korean folklore to look out for: evil tigers, ogres with magic, and evil spirits that are known as gwisin. They basically look like that spirit from The Ring. Extremely long black hair typically covering their face and wearing a long white garment.
Um, know what a "tteok" is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tteok
They're basically Korean sticky rice cake. They're also really good and are typically made by grandmothers in Korean folklore.
Ah, looking up all these folklore brings back happy memories
@Randal'Thor How and where do I place topic challenges?
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
5:38 PM
36
Q: Suggest your Lit.SE reading challenges here!

user80A few days ago, I asked about starting up reading challenges, with a particular goal in mind. Many of our questions are about the same authors, the same stories, the same genres, the same cultures. This isn't anyone's fault - it's just the way we were raised to read. We tend to pick out books tha...

discussion topic-challenge
 
North
North
thank you
would this fall under genre challenge?
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
I guess so, but you don't need to overthink what kind of topic it counts as.
 
North
North
Okay. I guess rather than suggesting books, I would be suggesting stories
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
What's really helpful is links to readily-available English-language resources, so that people can easily find something to read to take part in the topic challenge.
I assume that these tales aren't copyrighted, so hopefully they're available online somewhere.
 
Gareth Rees
Gareth Rees
5:55 PM
There are several collections in translation on archive.org, for example Korean Folk Tales (1913) by Im Bang and Yi Ryuk, translated by James Gale
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
6:33 PM
@North Have you heard of The Vegetarian by Han Kang? It won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.
 
North
North
I have not! It's been a while since I've read Korean literature
 
Gallifreyan
Gallifreyan
@Tsundoku The title had me interested, but the description has me interested even more
Alas, the library copy is checked out
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
Well, where I live, the libraries are closed. I might buy it. It's short novel, so it's probably not expensive.
 
North
North
6:50 PM
@GarethRees Hm, I've never heard these folk tales before
Im reading them from the Gutenberg website
 
Gallifreyan
Gallifreyan
Our campus library is only open on Fridays for 2 hours, and I'm pretty sure whoever took this copy won't return it any time soon. It's on Book Depository, though, so I think I'll order it
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
The currently highest-voted reading challenges have only three votes. That is really low.
 
North
North
@Randal'Thor These tales are as much copyrighted as Cinderella is copyrighted by the Grimm brothers. The problem is that many of these are told orally: finding reliable websites with decent translation is difficult
Many of them are just summaries and miss the actual story
I almost feel hesitant to post it, because it seems to miss the core features of literature, primarily the usage of the language
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
@GarethRees Looks interesting. James Gale also published a Korean-English dictionary, translated Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress into Korean and translated the Korean novel The Cloud Dream of the Nine (a translation that should also be in the public domain by now).
 
Gallifreyan
Gallifreyan
@Randal'Thor It also appears we haven't updated our list of challenges in the question body since July, but updating it indefinitely does not seem sustainable to me
Thoughts, anyone?
 
North
North
7:04 PM
@Gallifreyan Perhaps a new meta page every year?
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
Last year, Randal'Thor suggested starting a new reading challenges post/list.
Every year is a bit much because voting is too low.
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
Sep 1 '19 at 11:46, by Rand al'Thor
Suggestion! If we're going to reboot the topic challenges, following the most popular proposal of @ChristopheStrobbe, that means we should be announcing the topic of an Oct-Nov 2019 challenge around now, presumably either Lin Yutang or The Epic of Gilgamesh (please vote to break the tie!) How about, at the same time, creating a new rebooted meta thread for suggestions to replace @Aza's?
Sep 1 '19 at 11:46, by Rand al'Thor
The old one is getting long and clogged with many answers, while stagnating in votes - maybe not just because our meta audience is decreasing but because people aren't bothering to check back to the same thread again and again? Also, a new thread might be a way to refresh votes according to some of the principles outlined in the recent meta discussion (e.g. preference for shorter works available online). Of course we could port across lots of answers from the old thread if we still like them.
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
I am in favour of starting a new list.
 
Gallifreyan
Gallifreyan
Me too
@Randal'Thor is there a way to lock a question so that no new answers are added but old ones can be voted on?
 
North
North
I'll throw my vote in as well
 
Gareth Rees
Gareth Rees
7:09 PM
@Tsundoku Gales' translation of Cloud Dream of the Nine by Kim Man-jung is available here at archive.org
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
@GarethRees Thanks. I'll bookmark that :-)
 
North
North
@Tsundoku Should I just broaden the scope to Korean literature?
I'm only really familiar with folktales, many of which are for children
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
Our reading challenges usually focus on a single author or a single book, not an entire genre or an entire literature. So a specific book of folktales would be OK.
 
North
North
Ugh
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
@Gallifreyan Last time I asked about that, the answer was no because all locks were equivalent. But they've rebooted locks since then and I'm not sure any more.
@North That would be too broad IMO.
 
Gallifreyan
Gallifreyan
7:15 PM
@Randal'Thor I'll go ask around
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
We did have one on (all) Icelandic sagas, so just "Korean folk tales" might be OK. But at least some listed/linked examples would be nice.
 
North
North
Ugh, I can't find a definite book of Korean folktale that I recognize
@Randal'Thor Oh I have plenty of those
Or not plenty but a few
I don't think Cloud Dream of Nine is considered a folklore, but I will most definitely read it
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
Oh, I didn't mean to imply that The Cloud Dream of the Nine is folklore.
 
North
North
There is a specific book of Korean Folktale, but it's not in the Public Domain
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
There is not requirement for a book to be in the public domain. But of course it helps those who want to participate in the reading challenge.
There is an interesting story behind the translation of The Vegetarian: the translator, Deborah Smith, started teaching herself Korean only six years earlier. See How a self-taught translator created a literary masterpiece one word at a time.
 
North
North
7:30 PM
Ugh it's hard to find ones that are like very close translations of the original language
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
> It's about a woman who believes she is turning into a tree.
Sounds right up your street, @North.
 
North
North
Hey, I'm only a tree in PSE
I think I might get processed into a paper or a book here, I haven't decided yet
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
Oh, that'd be apt.
 
North
North
I think I'm going to put this picture of the tree on a book
Oh that's a perfect idea
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
I would post The Vegetarian as a reading challenge, but I'll wait until we have a new meta post.
 
North
North
7:38 PM
"Hi, I'm a book about a tree"
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
@Tsundoku OK, I'll try to create one this weekend.
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
@Randal'Thor Ah OK. I was about to ask if we should wait for more responses. If you don't get around to it, I'll do it.
@Gallifreyan If items on what will be the old list can still be voted on, we will need to compare votes on two lists when selecting the new reading challenge. Since that is rather inconvenient, I'd rather migrate the existing suggestions to the new list and start with a clean slate "vote-wise". (Not that I like throwing away those old votes, though.)
 
North
North
Okay I've finished writing my challenge (why did that take two hours ahhhhh)
Should I upload it into the old meta post? Or wait for the new one?
(This is also why I don't ask questions often in LSE because I take forever writing them. AHHHHHHHHHH)
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
Since we are still debating what exactly we'll do with the existing list, it may be a good idea to wait for the new one.
 
North
North
7:53 PM
Okay
I'm just gonna copy-paste my answer on a Google Doc and wait for the list
aight i'm out for now that was way too much brain-work
I'll be back to edit some tags
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
@Tsundoku Agreed. I'm OK with throwing away old votes because we've had more discussion since then of what makes a "good" topic challenge (e.g. availability of short accessible works in English translations, not just diversity of topics).
We can also decide which items from the old list are worth porting over. Even if some of the old ones were posted by people who deleted their accounts, someone who likes them can still copy them over. It's all CW anyway.
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
I agree. I'll probably copy over most of my suggestions.
When copying over suggestions by other users, I would acknowledge the person who originally posted the suggestion.
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
8:12 PM
There are six suggestions currently tied for top place (at only 3 votes each!), and three of them are old ones that I already downvoted.
@North Thank you for the effort :-)
 
Gallifreyan
Gallifreyan
We should probably post the new challenge post then, and I'd feature it and lock the old one
Should I do it?
 
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
8:28 PM
@Gallifreyan I thought @Randal'Thor said he would "try to create one this weekend".
 
Gallifreyan
Gallifreyan
My bad, missed that :D
No rush
 
 
1 hour later…
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
9:52 PM
I don't understand why this question about hardcover versus paperback has two close votes based on the assumption that it is opinion based.
One person's preference may be opinion based, but asking where the "tradition" comes from shouldn't be. ("Tradition" is probably not the best word, but still.)
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
10:12 PM
@Tsundoku You can see one of the close-voters from the review item, and the other one might be @Skooba who commented on the question.
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
10:39 PM
I've noticed both of them seem to close-vote more than most here. Maybe thinking of other sites' philosophies, as Gareth alluded to the other day.
 

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