The Reading Room

North

02:07

@Tsundoku How about a Midsummer Night's Quarantine?

@verbose I'd just go with Two Gentlemen Stuck in Venice

Rand al'Thor

04:45

@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

05:34

@North Why Venice?

Bookworm

06:38

0

Q: Why is a hardcover book better than a paperback book?

A 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

07:01

0

Q: What is the meaning of this line: "For beauty stands in the admiration only of weak minds led captive"

Read 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

Bookworm

08:10

0

Q: 1 Henry IV Act 5, Scene 3: "God keep the lead out of me"

Henry 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

Bookworm

10:04

0

Q: Portrayal of Henry Bolingbroke through different Shakespeare plays

King 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

@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?

Bookworm

14:39

0

Q: Origin of Lope de Vega poem title "La Dragontea"?

Why 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

15:02

@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.]

Rand al'Thor

16:27

@Tsundoku I thought "Henriad" was only about the tetralogy from Richard II to Henry V?

> In Shakespearean scholarship, Henriad refers to a group of William Shakespeare's history plays. It is sometimes used to refer to a group of four plays (a tetralogy), but some sources and scholars use the term to refer to eight plays. In the 19th century, Algernon Charles Swinburne used the term to refer to three plays, but that use is not current.

Tsundoku

Apparently, there are two meanings (but either excludes Henry VIII, obviously).

So which one do we pick?

Rand al'Thor

Urgh, so it's not even uniquely defined. I'm regretting creating that tag.

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

@Tsundoku Also, using X to denote a general number is mighty confusing in the context of Roman numerals :-)

Tsundoku

Fortunately, those kings weren't called Malcolm.

Rand al'Thor

16:38

@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

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

@Bookworm It was a struggle to locate the text of this poem

Tsundoku

The Malcolm who became king of Scotland at the end of Macbeth - I suppose he wasn't Malcolm X...

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

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

16:54

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

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

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

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

@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

@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

17:06

@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

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

@Tsundoku Huh, that I wasn't even aware of

Nonetheless, we do have to acknowledge that that's in the past

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

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

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

17:11

@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

@North Atrocities beget resentment, but one must avoid conflating a country (even a present one, let alone a past one) with its people.

Tsundoku

Also, it is little known that the founder of Kyokushin Karate (or Kyokushinkai) was a Korean living in Japan.

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

Korean folk tales could make a great topic challenge.

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

17:17

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

That was not a folk tale but history, by the way.

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

I don't think many people here a familiar with Chinese folktales.

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

17:38

36

Q: Suggest your Lit.SE reading challenges here!

A 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

thank you

would this fall under genre challenge?

Rand al'Thor

I guess so, but you don't need to overthink what kind of topic it counts as.

North

Okay. I guess rather than suggesting books, I would be suggesting stories

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

17:55

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

18:33

@North Have you heard of The Vegetarian by Han Kang? It won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize.

North

I have not! It's been a while since I've read Korean literature

Gallifreyan

@Tsundoku The title had me interested, but the description has me interested even more

Alas, the library copy is checked out

Tsundoku

Well, where I live, the libraries are closed. I might buy it. It's short novel, so it's probably not expensive.

North

18:50

@GarethRees Hm, I've never heard these folk tales before

Im reading them from the Gutenberg website

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

The currently highest-voted reading challenges have only three votes. That is really low.

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

@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

@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

19:04

@Gallifreyan Perhaps a new meta page every year?

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

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

I am in favour of starting a new list.

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

I'll throw my vote in as well

Gareth Rees

19:09

@Tsundoku Gales' translation of Cloud Dream of the Nine by Kim Man-jung is available here at archive.org

Tsundoku

@GarethRees Thanks. I'll bookmark that :-)

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

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

Ugh

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

19:15

@Randal'Thor I'll go ask around

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

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

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that The Cloud Dream of the Nine is folklore.

North

There is a specific book of Korean Folktale, but it's not in the Public Domain

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

19:30

Ugh it's hard to find ones that are like very close translations of the original language

Rand al'Thor

> It's about a woman who believes she is turning into a tree.

Sounds right up your street, @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

Oh, that'd be apt.

North

I think I'm going to put this picture of the tree on a book

Oh that's a perfect idea

Tsundoku

I would post The Vegetarian as a reading challenge, but I'll wait until we have a new meta post.

North

19:38

"Hi, I'm a book about a tree"

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku OK, I'll try to create one this weekend.

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

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

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

19:53

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

@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

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

20:12

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

We should probably post the new challenge post then, and I'd feature it and lock the old one

Should I do it?

Tsundoku

20:28

@Gallifreyan I thought @Randal'Thor said he would "try to create one this weekend".

Gallifreyan

My bad, missed that :D

No rush

Tsundoku

21:52

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

22:12

@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

22:39

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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