The Reading Room

12:02 AM

Btw I am new here, so I ask this question knowing it might have been discussed before. How do people take to high theory? I mean modern critical theory. Think Yale School, Derrida, Foucault, or even newer theory.

On topic?

North Læraðr

High theory? Modern critical theory?

Can you elaborate?

In terms of textual critism, we might have some different tags for it

theory

^that's a tag involving literary theories in general

We also have literary-critism

I'm not a Lit. major though, but I'm sure @Tsundoku can explain the difference once he's awake

Eddie Kal

Thanks! I am very happy to see under the theory tag there is some great stuff from the two mods.

Bookworm

3:41 AM

0

Q: What does "beauty is only sin deep" mean?

In the short story, Reginald's Choir Treat, Saki writes: “You are really indecently vain of your appearance. A good life is infinitely preferable to good looks." "You agree with me that the two are incompatible. I always say beauty is only sin deep.” What does "beauty is only sin deep" mean...

Librarian

4:11 AM

0

Q: Suggestion: a popular culture/pop cul tag be added

I visited the Reading Room for the first time today and tossed in my two cents about the fate of manga, comics, and manhua. It then occurred to me that there is no popular-culture but there should be. Literature is a very comprehensive subject. Literary texts range from classics (think Homer and ...

discussion tags

Bookworm

4:31 AM

0

Q: What does this quote from "Reginald on the Academy" mean?

In the short story, Reginald on the Academy, Saki writes: “To be clever in the afternoon argues that one is dining nowhere in the evening.” What does this mean?

meaning short-stories saki reginald

Bookworm

4:56 AM

0

Q: Why is Reginald adverse to being painted by Sargent

In the short story, Reginald on the Academy, Saki writes: [Reginald]: "To die before being painted by Sargent is to go to Heaven prematurely." Firstly, does this quote from Reginald imply that he is adverse to being painted by Sargent (John Singer Sargent, 1856-1925), and if so why? Secondly, h...

meaning short-stories saki reginald

Bookworm

5:21 AM

0

Q: Why does Reginald advise against pioneering?

Saki begins his short story, Reginald's Choir Treat, with the following line “Never,” wrote Reginald to his most darling friend, “be a pioneer. It’s the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion.” What does "It's the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion" mean, and how does this relate t...

meaning short-stories saki reginald

0

Q: Why does Reginald consider it a failure to reach the age of thirty?

In the short story, Reginald on the Academy, Saki writes: “To have reached thirty,” said Reginald, “is to have failed in life.” Why does Reginald consider it a failure to reach the age of thirty?

meaning short-stories saki reginald

Bookworm

6:11 AM

0

Q: What is the meaning of this passage from Reginald at the Theatre

In Reginald at the Theatre, Saki writes: [Duchess]: “Oh, well, ‘dominion over palm and pine,’ you know,” quoted the Duchess hopefully; “of course we mustn’t forget that we’re all part of the great Anglo-Saxon Empire.” [Reginald]: “Which for its part is rapidly becoming a suburb of Jerusalem. ...

meaning short-stories saki reginald

Rand al'Thor

9:58 AM

@NorthLæraðr Realistically I think musical stuff is only going to be a relatively small sector of the site, maybe not worth subdividing into so many different tags.

There was a lot of debate a couple of years back about which musical things should be on-topic to ask about here. IIRC, the ex-mod Hamlet argued strongly in favour of broadening the scope, but met with a lot of pushback. Further reading:

7

Q: Are questions about music on-topic (part 2)?

This site has recently received four questions about music that go beyond looking looking at the lyrics, and ask about the sound music makes: Is Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall" supposed to be uplifting or mournful? What changes when you adapt Dickinson's "I'm Nobody" to an acoustic roc...

discussion scope

@EddieKal Two? Tsundoku is one of the main contributors to the theory tag, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to contribute much there, and I don't think Gallifreyan is active in that tag either. Maybe you're thinking of Tsundoku and Gareth Rees? (Gareth is a great contributor but not a mod)

Bookworm

10:21 AM

0

Q: What does "The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went" mean?

In Reginald on Besetting Sins: The Woman Who Told The Truth, Saki writes And at last the dreadful thing came, as the Woman had foreseen all along that it must; it was one of those paltry little truths with which she harried her waking hours. On a raw Wednesday morning, in a few ill-chosen words...

meaning short-stories saki reginald

Rand al'Thor

10:38 AM

Long string of questions today from the same user about the same short story collection, but all or almost all of them seem to be good interesting questions. I hope they'll get some good answers too.

b_jonas

@EddieKal I think it's more like that there's an older established SE site for manga: anime.stackexchange.com

@NorthLæraðr What I still don't understand is, what counts as a graphic novel? Does any novel count if there are just a few illustrations that are reproduced from the original publication because they're necessary for understanding, like some of Roald Dahl's children books or Kästner's children's books? Or does it have to be mostly illustrations with less text? And is it still a graphics novel if it's written in verse?

It's possible that I just don't understand because the genre is too new, or at least newly changing, because of the better printing technology that lets reproduce illustrations much more easier.

Is scifi.stackexchange.com/a/203799/4918 a graphic novel? It has a very large amount of graphics, and the translation reproduces the original drawings, but it doesn't look like the drawings are essential for the novel, it could easily be published with different illustrations if someone were to draw them.

Eddie Kal

2:46 PM

@Randal'Thor Was thinking of this when I said two mods with you included. I think that is a pretty good answer.

Eddie Kal

3:28 PM

@Randal'Thor Do we have a "we don't do your homework for you" policy?

I am very concerned that some words by contributors might find their way to a teacher's computer under the name of someone who either posts the question or happens upon the question via Google

Eddie Kal

4:24 PM

@Knight That would make a great question on ELL.SE. Disclaimer: not poaching.

Rand al'Thor

16

Q: Policy on questions based on homework or tests

Recently, a member of our community asked the question In what way is the poem 'Tissue' by Imtiaz Dharker related to power / conflict?. This question was based on a question from what I think is a practice test for a national exam. What's our policy on these sorts of questions?

discussion

Eddie Kal

@Randal'Thor I gotta say: you guys are probly the most laid back SE site I've visited. I greatly appreciate that. On English.SE and ELL.SE if there's clear signs a questioner is looking for someone to do their homework, the question will be closed no doubt.

Rand al'Thor

4:40 PM

@EddieKal Oh, thanks! But that answer was based on Google-fu rather than prior knowledge :-) At least I learned something from researching and writing it.

Knight

4:53 PM

@EddieKal Hello!

Eddie Kal

@Knight Hello!

Knight

Your answer was really awesome

Eddie Kal

Thanks. Glad you like it.

Knight

How you came up with such a lucid and clear explanation? It seemed like as if you were the one among Eliot, Pound and 5 others who worked on The Waste Land and other poems of Eliot.

Eddie Kal

@Knight Lol. I am fairly familiar with the Waste Land. It used to be my favorite poem. (Now I don't have one.) But also I think the biblical references are pretty clear

So you said you've read other analyses. Did you read scholarly work or just things people write on their blogs?

If you check out Eliot scholarship, Eliot's religiosity has been discussed over and over again and it is something of a consensus that he's talking about the Garden of Eden in Burnt Norton

Knight

5:03 PM

@EddieKal Just read the blogs. I couldn’t relate their analysis with the poem, as when I get alone and little rains drop fall on me (when I walk on terrace) I feel the poem no matter if I don’t understand it. I could feel the underlying feeling of meaningless of this world and immortality of human kind.

The way you have helped me, @Tsundoku helps me like that when my questions fall into his interest area and sometimes he even read things out of his reading list to help me/others

Eddie Kal

@Knight There you go. That is the greatness of Eliot.

Knight

Can you tell me something about the relationship of Eliot with Conrad?

Rand al'Thor

@EddieKal We have pretty laid-back policies in general. The site scope is very permissive, with pretty much every "is this really literature or not?" debate coming to "eh, let's allow it". We're also happy even with "basic" questions that sites like ELU would close in a heartbeat, because they can still provide a hook on which to hang a good answer.

Eddie Kal

@Knight Joseph Conrad? Sorry I don't know much about Conrad beyond Heart of Darkness, his best-known work.

Knight

5:19 PM

@EddieKal Eliot mentioned his works many times in his “Hollow Men”

Rand al'Thor

Btw, we have a the-waste-land tag which should interest you, if you haven't already been through it :-) Seems like nearly all the questions are answered, but without checking my recollection is that not all of them are well answered and an Eliot expert could probably do better.

Knight

Kurtz, “Life is very long”

Rand al'Thor

10

Q: What is the relationship between Heart of Darkness and The Hollow Men?

T.S. Eliot's poem The Hollow Men, unusually, opens with a quote from a Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: Mistah Kurtz— he dead. In most printings of the poem that I've seen, this single quote is given an entire page which is otherwise blank. If that was the author's intention, this surely ...

poetry t-s-eliot joseph-conrad

Knight

@Randal'Thor Yes. Eddie should give us something more :-)

I shall put one more question regarding Burnt Norton, it’s about the “still point of the turning world”. But before that I shall contemplate myself on it.

Eddie Kal

@Randal'Thor That is awesome. You wouldn't believe what kind of pressure I am under and how hard I have been fighting in order to drag ELL in the same direction: be more inclusive, not to shove people away to other sites for "off topic" questions. I was very upset several times in the past few months because a great deal of pressure was put on me to close some questions I considered on-topic

@Randal'Thor I am definitely no "Eliot expert". I focus more on pop cul, actually...

But in the interest of self-growth, I will make it a point to ask a question or write an answer on Lit SE, every day (self-pledge)

Rand al'Thor

5:24 PM

That surprises me a bit. I knew ELU is very strict and closes an awful lot of stuff (I often talk only half-jokingly about the level of courage necessary to post any question there), but I thought ELL was a lot more permissive. Then again, probably it is a lot more permissive than ELU but not as much so as Lit :-)

@EddieKal Oh wow, thank you! That will be awesome. (Assuming the quality is maintained, of course.)

Knight

I couldn’t understand the meaning of “serious” in “ELL is for serious English language learners “

Eddie Kal

@Knight Lol never seen that one before. Where did find that?

Rand al'Thor

Also, I use "expert" in a broader sense: not saying you have a degree in Eliot studies or something, but some amount of specific subject matter knowledge and knowing how to present a good argument can go a long way.

15

A: Who are the experts? Not us. We've grown a philosophical bezoar - let's work this through!

What is an expert? First off, let's acknowledge our weaknesses. We, the current userbase of this site, are not 'experts' - in the sense that (as far as I know) none of us are literature professors, or even have degrees in literature; none of us have jobs in libraries; none of us are professional...

Knight

@EddieKal I asked this question two years ago.

and they told me it’s so basic that it doesn’t meet site requirements.

Eddie Kal

@Randal'Thor Would love to hear your thoughts on this question as a longtime moderator with a lot more experience than me:

-1

Q: Can we really use lap as an intransitive verb?

She lapped with a flat tongue from top to bottom, over and over again lathering it with her saliva. I would personally say "lapped it with", but it seems we can use the verb as an intransitive. It seems odd though, because we see in the definition itself "something" referring to the direct obje...

word-usage verbs transitivity

Knight

5:28 PM

they said ELL is for serious learners. :-)

Eddie Kal

Do you think that question is a problem? If so how would you handle it?

Knight

Hmm.. I was treated quite hardly.

Eddie Kal

@Knight Ugh that is what I really really hate about ELU, and to a lesser degree, ELL

Haughty

Knight

I’m happy that I have met a mod like you.

Eddie Kal

ELU people always push article questions to ELL

And you are not alone. When I was a new user there I asked a single-word-challenge question on ELU. It hit the Hot Network Questions list and started to amass attention, comments, and upvotes. Out of the blue a moderator (now retired) closed it as off-topic

No explanation. Unilateral decision.

Knight

5:33 PM

:-)

Eddie Kal

New users usually don't take to Meta and lack means to "fight back".

Knight

You’re revolutionary

Eddie Kal

@Knight Aww appreciate it. :)

Mithical

@EddieKal Was it missing example usage?

(Just wondering, since that's usually what it is IME.)

Knight

@Tsundoku Welcome :)

Eddie Kal

5:35 PM

@Mithical I don't think so. It was a while ago and the question has been deleted. But from what I can remember I asked for an antonym. I gave the original word and context where the antonym would be used.

Tsundoku

@NorthLæraðr What would count in questions about operas is who wrote the libretto. Mozart did not write his own libretti, but relied on authors such as Emanuel Schikaneder and Lorenzo Da Ponte.

@EddieKal Literary theory is definitely on topic. I hope the tag wiki excerpts for theory and literary-criticism are clear enough to help new users understand what the difference is.

Eddie Kal

@Tsundoku Gotcha

Knight

@EddieKal Have a nice day! See you later.

Eddie Kal

@Knight You too. Later!

Tsundoku

We used to have a few more users who were knowledgeable about literary theory but they are no longer active here. Among the top 20 by reps I don't know anybody else who actually read literary theory.

Mithical

5:54 PM

I was thinking about messaging Hamlet and asking him for some recommendations on where to start, but decided I don't really have time at the moment.

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor realism is ambiguous, both in the history of literature and in the tag wiki. It can refer to a more general attitude towards reality and to a specific literary movement. It is something completely different from historical accuracy, since realism typically refers to the depiction of contemporary conditions.

@Mithical I made two recommendations in my literary theory suggestion, but I have a much longer list elsewhere, should anybody be interested.

@Mithical Still, I would be curious what Hamlet would recommend.

Mithical

His email's in the Reference Desk (on the starboard, I believe) ;)

Although I was thinking of DMing on Twitter

Eddie Kal

6:14 PM

@Mithical Who's Hamlet?

Tsundoku

Hamlet suggested this site on Area51 and was one of the original mods here.

Eddie Kal

@Tsundoku That user name doesn't seem to appear in users. He is no longer here I gather?

Tsundoku

No, he left the site almost three years ago, but his name is still listed on the Area51 statistics page.

I was still relatively new here when that happened.

Eddie Kal

I have no doubt I'd have had a very different SE experience had Lit SE been my first stop in the network

Should have come here a long time ago

Tsundoku

There were some intense debates here three years ago. The tone was very different from now.

I kept out of those debates and quietly edited tag wiki excerpts ...

Eddie Kal

6:22 PM

@Tsundoku What do you mean? Any meta posts I should read up on?

Tsundoku

I was referring to the tone of certain discussions in the chatroom and part of the comments on meta. I hope the site is much more welcoming now.

Eddie Kal

OIC

Tsundoku

For example, Our site can be cold, unforgiving, and unapproachable. We're driving people away. What should we do about it? received 31 upvotes.

Mithical

@Tsundoku u/111

@Tsundoku Internal mod debates were... interesting

Tsundoku

@Mithical Yes, I know. 111 was Hamlet (it's a pity his site/blog has gone), 80 was Zyera. And I went through some of the debates in both chatrooms after I became a mod here.

Eddie Kal

6:35 PM

@Tsundoku 32 now. User80 seems to have an impressive mastery of the English language. Plain language, but very eloquent.

The thing that saddens me the most is when reading mentions of deleted posts and user accounts. "Oh they are gone and I will never get to read them."

> I've seen people delete good questions because of harsh, nitpicking feedback. I've been tempted to delete high-voted answers of mine because I couldn't stop getting notifications about small details and choices of words that, really, people understood, even if they weren't as clear as they could have been.

I am like "Noooooo"

Tsundoku

Well, the deleted posts are just a matter of getting enough rep. But that doesn't bring those people back, obviously.

Eddie Kal

@Tsundoku Precisely

Tsundoku

I once went through the first 100 questions posted on this site, but I'm not aware of many that were deleted. I might check that list again.

Mithical

So like... the first four days of the site? ;)

Eddie Kal

@Tsundoku But can you see deleted posts from deleted accounts? I thought that was impossible

Tsundoku

6:42 PM

@EddieKal I thought it didn't make any difference whether the accounts had been deleted or not. If it does make a difference, however, that might explain why some URLs redirected to tags instead of questions, e.g. literature.stackexchange.com/questions/139 is neither a question nor an answer.

Mithical

No, that's just because tag wikis are a type of post, just like questions and answers (and some help center articles).

Tsundoku

OK, but literature.stackexchange.com/questions/143 gives "Page not found". I wonder if that was a question deleted be an account that no longer exists, or something entirely different.

@Mithical Actually just the first two days!

Mithical

144 as well

Eddie Kal

@Tsundoku So if a question has been deleted and the questioner has self-destroyed their account, is there a way to access the post? The question should have disappeared from the question list. And you probably can't access it from the user page either since that page is gone too

Tsundoku

@EddieKal That's why I resorted to URL hacking: just take https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/ and add a number + a slash to it. The goal was to find questions that even the feed for this room had not picked up.

Mithical

6:48 PM

@Tsundoku My guess would be a tag wiki for a tag that no longer exists.

Faded Giant

@EddieKal If you know the user number, you can still go to the user page and get a list of posts created by this user.

Eddie Kal

@FadedGiant Interesting. Didn't know that.

I assume only moderators of that site can do that?

Faded Giant

Yes. It also shows the reason why the user was deleted.

Mithical

@Tsundoku Yep; looking at literature.stackexchange.com/posts/143/revisions and literature.stackexchange.com/posts/144/revisions, those appear to be tag wikis for tags that no longer exist.

Tsundoku

I tried that just know. Here's a deleted question from a deleted user account.

@Mithical Ah, thanks. I didn't take that extra step.

Eddie Kal

6:52 PM

@Tsundoku I hit the rep bar.

Tsundoku

Ah, yes. But at least I have confirmation that deleted questions from deleted accounts can still be accessed - if you have enough reps.

Mithical

Tsundoku

That reminds me, I actually came to the site tonight to post another question or another answer, or both.

Eddie Kal

@Mithical I think that is a valid question, one I'd expect to see on meta rather than the main site. But since it was posted during perhaps the early days of this site, it appearing on the main site makes sense. Don't know why people downvoted it.

Mithical

Well, whether or not they're literature will get different answers from "should they be on-topic" :)

Eddie Kal

6:58 PM

@Mithical I'd have upvoted the answer. But I'd also have expected a better answer that cited/referenced scholarship.

Mithical

From what I recall, we wound up deciding that webcomics were off-topic (disappointingly), but other comics were on-topic.

Eddie Kal

:( sounds a bit random without knowing the discussion, just saying.

Mithical

Or, wait, it was decided that the specific question was off-topic but it never actually got closed.

ah, the good old days of posting weird questions to test the scope :)

Tsundoku

In my opinion, the answer to that question depends on one's definition of literature, and that is something there is no consensus about. So it looks like an opinion-based question.

Mithical

Which? The comics question?

Tsundoku

7:05 PM

Yes, the comics question. So no consensus in spite of the claim made in the answer.

Sorry, I had overlooked the XKCD question.

Mithical

If so, I'd agree with you - but with the caveat that that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Literature is inherently a subjective topic, so being opinion-based wouldn't be a reason to close the question, necessarily - instead, different answers could be posted making various arguments. There doesn't need to be an objectively correct answer.

Eddie Kal

@Tsundoku So if there's a whole bunch of scholars and students working on comics under lit, that doesn't convince people comics fall under literature?

books.google.com/…

Tsundoku

From the point of the definition of literature, I fear it's just an opinion-based debate. But from the point of analysis (i.e. would it be on topic), you can argue that it doesn't matter because nowadays any text can be analysed using methods to analyse literature.

Eddie Kal

scholar.google.com/…

Tsundoku

You can even analyse ads. I believe Roland Barthes did that in Mythologies.

Mithical

7:09 PM

@Tsundoku What's the point of literature besides opinion-based debate? :)

Eddie Kal

My recent struggle has to do with convincing people that a lot of things are not opinion-based. Racism is a fact, not an opinion. So is homophobia. But a lot of people have to be on their toes even when they are stating a fact: there's systemic racism in the world.

Tsundoku

When you analyse something, you can defend your case based on characteristics of the text you are analysing. But debating whether comics are literature are not is not that sort of analysis. It's a demarcation problem.

Eddie Kal

That is part of the reason that I see comics being literature not worthy of a debate.

Only when we acknowledge comics as literature can we begin to talk about the rampant homophobia, objectification of women, racism, etc. in popular comics

Tsundoku

@EddieKal I know. But that's matter of finding material that you can apply your methods to, not a matter of definition, strictly speaking.

You can analyse ads using methods from literary theory. That doesn't make those ads literature. Or at least not in a way that allows you to use the term "literature" in a meaningful way.

Eddie Kal

@Tsundoku Ads are texts to me. They have certain characteristics that mark them in a similar way that other literary texts are marked. Intertextuallity, for example.

Tsundoku

7:14 PM

@EddieKal You can analyse any type of discourse for signs of homophobia, racism, etc. That's what the last 50 years of literary theory have shown.

Eddie Kal

The way one ad mocks another is very similar to, say a movie or a painting does a pastiche

Tsundoku

I agree, but they don't need to allude to other ads in order to be subjected to analysis.

Eddie Kal

I see your point. I think the "They are also lit" stance is probably the best approach

But I still consider lit possibly the only tool to come toe-to-toe with the harsh reality of racism, homophobia, Euro-centrism, etc...

I am reluctant to ask about racism in a film on Movies.SE because I have a pretty good idea about how a question like that will be received over yonder

If I am lucky I will get responses like "What are you talking about?" "What racism?"

Tsundoku

When I was studying literature in the 1990s, I remember a professor saying that he'd rather not supervise a master thesis about Bret Easton Ellis's novel Less Than Zero, "because that wasn't literature". No doubt he would also have refused to supervise a thesis about comics. That was at a time when some universities abroad no longer frowned upon subjects like that.

Eddie Kal

If not, just downvotes and closevotes for "not clear"

Tsundoku

7:21 PM

Recently, I read a comment below a YouTube video on Derrida and deconstruction: "(...)The problem with today is that everything poststructuralism was trying to accomplish in the 70s and 80s has been completely forgotten. And that’s why we have Neo-Fascism.“

Eddie Kal

@Tsundoku That merits an instant star.

Mithical

@EddieKal I did once ask a Movies.SE question asking about something similar (referring to your point about Euro-centrism). The question kinda flopped.

Tsundoku

It may be overstating the influence of deconstruction (I don't know), but the more important thing in the context of this discussion is that deconstruction can be applied to any type of discourse: "literature", comics, film, TV, ads, ...

Eddie Kal

@Mithical Oh god Disney. Don't get me started. :)

Tsundoku

(The YouTube video was What is deconstruction? by Tim Nance. )

Mithical

7:26 PM

)

Tsundoku

Sigh

New Topic Challenge Suggestion

7:57 PM

1

A: New Literature SE Topic Challenge Suggestions Thread

Ko Un. Korean poet who has remain a top contender for the Nobel Price in Literature. Little Pilgrim could be an easy start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko_Un

Transcript for