The Reading Room - 2020-05-01

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3:27 PM

@Randal'Thor To my mind, these tags are for different types of questions: historical-accuracy is about a book's content (regardless the historical context that influenced it), while historical-context refers to something outside the book that may have influenced it.

For example, the historical context of Hilary Mantel's novels about Thomas Cromwell is the early 21st century, while questions about their historical accuracy would need to look into Thomas Cromwell's lifetime (late 15th to mid 16th century).

The tag historical-context is clearly overused on this site.

@Tsundoku Ah, that's a fair distinction. But does the usage of the two tags reflect it? I haven't checked. I think I remember using historical-context on questions about the real-world context for events in a story, not only the setting in which the writing of the story took place.

Based on a quick glance, historical-accuracy has been used correctly but historical-context would need to be replaced or removed for a number of questions.

The "real-word context for events in a story" would require a tag called historical-content ("n" instead of "x").

Hmm. Easier than all that editing would be to have a blanket tag covering both types of historical questions: context of the events in the book and context of the creation of the book itself. Or do you think that's a distinction worth making with separate tags?

If we want to have separate tags, it might be good to rename them. I always interpreted historical-context to mean "questions about relevant context from real-world history" not necessarily "the historical context in which a book was written".

I'm in favour of making that distinction and I don't mind doing the editing :-)

I recommend against trying to make fine distinctions in the tag system because it will be difficult for people (especially newcomers) to apply them. We discussed something similar about the canon tag a while back, and based on the difficulty people had in understanding the distinction, the best thing seemed to be to put everything in one tag

3:42 PM

^ If it's difficult for me to understand and apply the distinction, how much more difficult will it be for site newcomers? :-)

But the term "canon" is inherently ambiguous, so I'm not entirely convinced by the analogy to that decision.

Right, but "historical context" is also inherent ambiguous — context of production or context of content?

doylian-historical-context and watsonian-historical-context, for the context within and outside the story?

Those names aren't serious suggestions, but we probably would need longer names to disambiguate clearly.

If we replaced historical-accuracy with accuracy, would the distinction be easier?

@GarethRees Yes, exactly.

3:46 PM

@Tsundoku Probably not.

@GarethRees "context of production" = historical-context; "context of content" = historical-accuracy (with some "poetic licence").

@Tsundoku But that's not clear from the names. If the name is unclear or ambiguous, people are naturally going to misuse the tags.

And if we replaced historical-accuracy with historical-content? And historical-context with something like context-in-history (this could cover both "pure" history - politics etc - and context in history of literature)?

I say "confundantur eos—novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius"

(merge the tags and let God sort them out)

4:05 PM

@Tsundoku "Historical content" at least is clear that it's not about context of production, but people might think it's a genre tag and start using it on all questions about historical novels. "Context in history" I think could suffer from the same ambiguity as historical-context.

Accepting tag names on the basis that they cannot be misused is a very high bar. Is historical-content good enough? (Do we get that many questions about historical novels?)

I'm still racking my brain for an alternative to historical-context or context-in-history. The name should be general enough to cover first publication, time of composition (especially before the emergence of print) or first performance (relevant to oral literature).

production-context?

But then we're veering towards the existing publication tag.

Also, there are times when the two things you're trying to distinguish sort of merge together. Like my latest Narayan question - is it about whether the camps described are accurate for when the story is set, or whether they existed in the time Narayan wrote the story? Well, either/or/both really.

publication is something different (or at least should be).

Or Gareth's man in the barrel question: is it about whether such a thing would have been referred to by a character in the time the story is set, or whether it would have been familiar to Christie's audience? Much the same thing, really.

When a story is set contemporarily, the two can be hard to pull apart.

Is there a way to merge the two tags in a broad scope that covers both context and accuracy?

Idk, just throwing out ideas

4:18 PM

@Randal'Thor The way that question is formulated, it's about historical-accuracy.

I'm browsing through the questions currently tagged historical-context, and many of them have this issue. As in, even if we had two unambiguously named tags to describe the two different things you mention, I still wouldn't know which one of them to put on each of those questions.

This one again: would the term have been familiar to Zola's audience, or was it a historical thing from the setting of the novel? Not much difference between the two.

That one doesn't require either tag, since it's more about meaning.

@Randal'Thor When making tag excerpts, do I not include that questions can be related to the life of the author, or just their works?

@NorthLæraðr Questions can also be about the author's life.

Then what does rand mean by

yesterday, by Rand al'Thor

Also, works "about or related to"? Surely it's for works by them?

4:32 PM

For as long as I have been editing tag wiki excerpts on this site, I have always written that questions can also be about the author's life (as a writer).

Yeah, and I've been doing that as well....

Moving back to the tagging distinction, it looks like historical-context and historical-accuracy have caused such a mess that I no longer object to synonymising them.

ooof

Hmm how do I make the usage guidance for rakugo... ~~well, like a responsible SE User, I'll leave it up to the mods~~

Hey, the Guy de Maupassant challenge starts today (or already did for some people)

4:50 PM

Yes, it starts today and we need to pick the topic for the June-July challenge but we have a three-way tie. I guess I'll wait a bit.

I can' really break the tie either, since I upvoted the Shanameh and the Tales of Genji

@NorthLæraðr In context, an author tag isn't for questions on works about or related to an author - it's for questions on works by the author or on the author themselves.

Looking at it again now, I guess you wrote "works" when you meant "questions".

Oh, I see the confusion

If i ask a question about snoopy being a telepath (how snoopy can understand everything that goes on in the human world but also how the other characters seemingly understand him) is that off topic?

If that question is about Snoopy from Peanuts, that would be on topic. If it's about a real dog called Snoopy, it would be off-topic.

Okay cool (yessssss)

5:06 PM

So: Any objections to merging historical-accuracy into historical-context?

none from me

@Randal'Thor?

0

Q: What features distinguish the hymnic-epic style from Standard Babylonian?

In the general introduction to Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (third edition, CDL Press, 2005) Benjamin R. Foster discusses the "Akkadian literary languages": The Babylonians believed that literature required a special idiom, using grammar, vocabulary, syntax, sound, ...

style akkadian-literature

ahhhhh, I love Peanuts by Schulz

5:25 PM

@NorthLæraðr Hmm, where's the telepathy in the first strip?

He's communicating to Charlie Brown that he should feed him at both times ;)

And then he's negotiating with Charlie Brown

It all happens pretty quickly, you can miss it if you read it too fast :P

I just see him carry that bowl at what is presumably the start of the game (without having any other context). And Charlie Brown sends him back because he only gets fed after the game.

Okay, okay, I'll change the strip

OKAY I CHANGED THE PICTURE

oh whoops mb that shouldn't be in all caps

@Tsundoku Go for it.

1

Q: Is Snoopy a telepath?

So throughout the comic strip Peanuts by Charles Schulz, Snoopy has been seen doing a fair number of ... shall we say unusual activities. These range from being a WWI Flying Ace, to his obsession with chocolate-chipped cookies (and how he's completely unfazed by the effects), to even writing (alb...

character-analysis charles-m-schulz peanuts

5:42 PM

The merging of the tag historical-accuracy into historical-context has been completed. 11 questions have been automatically retagged.

5:53 PM

@Bookworm @Tsundoku What confuses me about those ancient languages is: how do people nowadays have any clue what they sounded like?

I get how the meanings of words and glyphs could be derived: just treat an unknown language like a code to be cracked. We've even had puzzles like that solved for real on Puzzling SE. But sound?

@Randal'Thor For some languages, that is based on comments on how someone mispronounced something, rhymes, etc. I don't know how Assuriologist figure it out for Akkadian, though.

Idk

do linguists have a field dedicated to that?

Is rhyming a universal thing, or are there languages that just don't care about rhyme?

I guess similarity of sound, of one kind or another, is always going to be pleasing to the ear - whether it's rhyme, assonance, alliteration, or whatever - and that can always provide clues.

@NorthLæraðr I think it's just part of historical linguistics. I have read about how sinologists tried to reconstruct the pronunciation of Middle Chinese, for example.

@Randal'Thor I'm not aware of rhyme as a requirement for Akkadian or Sumerian poetry. (Unless I misremember what I read.)

But this guy singing in Ancient Sumerian - did he make a lot of that up himself, or is his pronunciation reliably believed to be an approximation of real Ancient Sumerian phonetics?

5:59 PM

I don't know. But I remember some Assyriologists saying that the names Gilgamesh and Enkidu had the main stress on the second syllable. (Without explaining what that was based on.)

Oh, I need to make a mental adjustment then: I'd always imagined those names with the stress on the first syllable.

With some languages, you can to some extent reason back from what you have today by figuring out things such as vowel shifts etc. But Sumerian was a language isolate, so that sounds extremely challenging.

By the way, I have expanded the tag wiki excerpt of historical-context to explain that it also covers historical accuracy.

Perfect.

Transliterations from other languages is one way in — that's how the first break into hieroglyphics was made (Thomas Young spotting the name PTOLEMY in a cartouche on the Rosetta stone)

In the case of Sumerian, the same writing system (cuneiform) was adapted for use by other languages which are not isolates, e.g. Old Persian, and that provided a way in

There are still a number of cuneiform signs that are ambiguous in the sense that there are two or more competing readings. Some publications print those transliterations in uppercase.

For deciphering Akkadian, the Behistun/Bisutun Inscription was very important. It is written in three different cuneiform script languages: Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian.

6:17 PM

@GarethRees Ahh, so they could start drawing glyph-phoneme correspondences based on other more-known languages that had evolved into modern ones?

1

Q: Looking for a book where a boy starts volunteering at a vet's office after school

There's a boy who wants to work at a vet's office, although I don't think his family/father was in favor of it. One story that stands out in my memory is helping a deaf white kitten (possibly albino) get healthy, and then it gets adopted by a truck driver/delivery man. The setting gives me a va...

story-identification

The original break into the Old Persian cuneiform was also from transliterations — scholars guessed that the names of important Persian kings like Cyrus, Xerxes, and Darius ought to appear in the inscriptions. These names were known because they had been transliterated into Greek in the writings of Herodotus and other historians

6:53 PM

You know, I'm starting to think all peanuts characters are telepathix

Telepathix sounds like an asterix character.

7:09 PM

0

Q: Does the Greek or Latin "Corpus Hermeticum" exist online anywhere in text format?

Looking for the original latin or greek Corpus Hermeticum online somewhere in text format (i.e. not a PDF). Does such a thing exist?

book-collecting

7:19 PM

@Bookworm This user's two questions need retagging. I think @Tsundoku would know best how to tag them.

I'm looking for something better than story-identification, which I also used on my last Narayan question.

How do you know when a question gets on HNQ, btw

@NorthLæraðr They are listed at stackexchange.com. We tried to create a feed that informs us about Lit SE questions that reached HNQ but that never worked.

ah

Also it's now listed in the revision history.

Like that or that.

7:33 PM

oh cool

8:14 PM

@Tsundoku The bounty is expiring today (actually right now, but IIRC there's a 24-hour grace period).

@Randal'Thor I'm working on it but it's really hard to find anything in English.

8:30 PM

@Randal'Thor Did you know that there is an Asterix character named Coronavirus?

Whoa.

I didn't.

2 hours later…

10:32 PM

@Randal'Thor Should I change my name to Tagdoku? ;-)

While researching that Kafka question, I found a paper that argues that Kafka was autistic: Kafka and Autism: The Undisclosed Logic Behind Kafka's Work.

And another that uses Kafka's work to gain a better understanding of autism: Autism and Religious Beliefs: Clues from Kafka Research.

@Tsundoku That would be funny, but would you like to be known as the tag machine of LSE?

@Tsundoku Any information pertinent to answering the bounty, though?

@NorthLæraðr The paper by Zhao is clearly relevant. The paywall does not change that.

I was talking about that research you found

what does the OP mean by secondary literature though?

@NorthLæraðr Primary literature = the work itself ("Warden of the Tomb"); secondary literature = articles / books about that work.

@NorthLæraðr There are worse platforms on which to be elected moderator ;-)

10:44 PM

@NorthLæraðr Back in November 2017 I wrote tag wiki excerpts faster than they could be reviewed.

@Tsundoku Hilarious

Heh, I'd forgotten that @Gallifreyan used to be Tim E. Lord for a while.

Count TagDooku.

Obi Won ReviewBe?

:-)

10:47 PM

Darth Tagranus?

@Randal'Thor I'd forgotten that too

Emporer Tagaltine?

@Gallifreyan The only username change I've ever made was capitalising the R and T. I feel boring.

@NorthLæraðr Palpatag.

Tsewbaka, the Wiki Warrior

I'm not even a Star Wars fan, so I hope you don't mind if I don't take up any of these suggestions ;-)

10:52 PM

@Tsundoku Why don't you ask Rand how many SW films he's seen

Neither am I.

@Gallifreyan Can you see more than all of them?

My only knowledge of Star Wars is what I've picked up by osmosis at SFF.SE.

@Tsundoku ^

Ah.

When I was still at school, classmates raved about Star Wars. But I could never watch it at home because my parents found SF just too silly. When I finally watched the original films, many years later, I was disappointed and just couldn't understand what all the fuss had been about.

I recently asked a colleague why so many people liked Star Wars. He said it was the laser swords. Sigh.

10:56 PM

@Randal'Thor Don't feel boring for that. I don't like how SE allows people to change their username so easily and how many users change their username frequently. You're doing the right thing. Also, you changed your avatar several times, so how is that boring?

@Tsundoku The people who are super fans seem to be mostly those who grew up on them.

@b_jonas I'm planning another avatar change now, actually. Need to update my profile anyway.

I just need to find more Rand al'Thor fan art that I like.

@Tsundoku No, I like Star Wars because it's films that I can enjoy together with my family. Most books or films aren't like that, our taste don't match enough. But Disney Star Wars brings us together once a year now.

user image

I sometimes say George Lucas might have become a decent film director if he hadn't done that Star Wars stuff. I liked American Grafiti more than his SW.

Is the 2020 or 2021 Star Wars film announced yet?

10:58 PM

@b_jonas Once a year? Do you watch the Holiday Special? ;-)

Or are they delaying it because the cinemas are closed?

@Randal'Thor No, I mean the new Disney Star Wars films. They made five of them in a row.

Oh no, this is turning into a SW chatroom. I'm leaving now.

And they'll probably make more.

@Tsundoku Let's talk about SW instead. By which I mean Shakespeare, William.

If we talk about that SW, a CM will barge in.

CM: Christopher Marlowe.

11:12 PM

Christopher Marlowe works in SE? I never knew.

SE: Shakespearean England.

That reminds me I wanted to post pictures of my bookshelves for "Shakespeare and friends".

user image

Top shelf: front row, with some more books in front of it :-)

user image

Second shelf, front row, with more books on top.

user image

Third shelf. I need to redo this one without the books in front :-/

11:37 PM

@Tsundoku Well when SW first came out, I believe it was a pretty big deal

SW prequels were unpopular (I thought they were okay but you know, to each their own), and the new Disney ones suck

@Randal'Thor That's a hot guy with a hot sword

@NorthLæraðr SW's first work wasn't that big of a deal, but I admit I wasn't around at the time.

@Tsundoku That's rather a strong opinion of SW you've got there

@NorthLæraðr In those days, the actors were the stars, not the authors.

11:55 PM

@Tsundoku I was trying to find a picture of someone dressed as a literal star, but couldn't

@NorthLæraðr Is this avatar close enough?

I mean...

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