The Reading Room - 2020-09-07

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2:09 AM

0

Q: Why is "The Vanishing Half" set in Louisiana?

Author Brit Bennett's new novel has hit and stayed on The New York Times fiction best-seller list for months as of now. I have not been able to get a copy. Reading the reviews and synopsis makes me want to read it as soon as I get a chance. I applaud Bennett's bold and novel approach to the extre...

race-issues modern-american-literature black-literature

6 hours later…

8:02 AM

@NorthLæraðr Ok, but can you do that also without the music? If a pantomime theater play has a plot, is that also on topic?

3 hours later…

11:29 AM

@b_jonas Instead of discussing this in a hypothetical fashion, it would be better to post a question about a pantomime and see what the community thinks of it.

0

Q: Where can I find sources that could help me to write about Parody of human feelings in Beckett's novel "Molloy"?

My college assignment is to write about Parody in Beckett's Molloy and I need to write about the Parody of human feelings in this novel too. I would appreciate if someone could tell me which sources and bibliography to use. Thank you in advance.

literary-device

0

Q: What's the meaning of the dream in Agnon's "The Kerchief"?

In S. Y. Agnon's short story "The Kerchief", there's an entire section (section 4) dedicated to a dream that the protagonist would have when his father was selling things in Lashkowitz: And while lying and meditating thus, my eyes would close of their own accord; and before they did entirely I w...

short-stories hebrew-literature s-y-agnon

3 hours later…

2:43 PM

We've recently overtaken both Interpersonal Skills and DevOps (two slightly younger sites) in question count. I think there is now no SE site which is younger than Lit but with more questions (i.e. nothing has overtaken us and stayed ahead).

2

3:00 PM

Latin Language, which is almost one year older than us, is still ahead of us. If we keep up our QPD, I expect we will overtake them as well (and a number of other sites that are older than ours).

So the question about bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-nuk! got migrated after all. I'm grateful for the existence of copy & paste...

^ Someone should star this just to see how the sidebar deals that that long string ;-)

@Tsundoku You know that you can star it yourself ;-)

@NorthLæraðr New tags for you: molloy, the-vanishing-half, brit-bennett.

@FadedGiant I know, I know. But I don't want to be the guy who stars all his own messages.

3:33 PM

@Tsundoku I am surprised. I didn't think ELU people would let go of that question.

So in such a situation, does the earned ELU rep disappear?

In the conversion are the rep and score recalculated or carry over directly from ELU?

@EddieKal If this answer on Meta SE still reflects current practice, users should keep the reps gained on the source site and gain new reps on the target site, unless the question is deleted.

But as you've probably found out, question owners don't always follow migrated questions to the target site.

3:54 PM

@Tsundoku Good for them

The top answerer has just joined lit

4:07 PM

@Bookworm Did somebody say H - N - Q?

2 hours later…

6:05 PM

It's always interesting to see which of the posters follows a migrated Q&A over to the new site.

Sometimes we gain good news users that way, like Ahmed Samir who's been one of our top askers the last few months and originally came here following an ELU migration.

@Tsundoku The comments on the second answer might lead to another interesting question about that word: namely, is the hyphenation in the word by design or just due to typesetting restrictions?

2 hours later…

7:48 PM

@Randal'Thor That's an interesting point. I should dig out my copy of Finnegans Wake.

@Randal'Thor To the chagrin of ELL?

@EddieKal That's for you to tell us ;-)

8:05 PM

twitter.com/palafo/status/1299192071870468103

1 hour later…

9:16 PM

1

Q: Why did Jeanbernat cut off Frère Archangias' ear?

In La faute de l'abbé Mouret by Émile Zola, Jeanbernat threatens to cut off Frère Archangias' ear (book 3, chapter 5) and then does so (final chapter). Jeanbernat has clear reasons for hating Archangias, but why does his assault take this form? Is it some literary or biblical reference that I'm ...

french-literature emile-zola la-faute-de-l-abbe-mouret

0

Q: When and how was the manuscript of Fratricide Punished / Der bestrafte Brudermord lost?

Yesterday, I asked a question about the relationship between the Ur-Hamlet and Fratricide Punished / Der bestrafte Brudermord. The Wikipedia page about Fratricide Punished says that the play was first published in its entirety in 1781 even though it may have been written as early as 1586. However...

german-literature editions der-bestrafte-brudermord

9:30 PM

@Randal'Thor Nice

@Tsundoku Thanks

@EddieKal I just wanted to let you know that we DON'T tag things by genre to identify things, and there was a discussion regarding what to do with genre tags in general

I've noticed that you've created genre tags for the last two or so questions, so I just wanted to let you know, in case you weren't aware :)

A good rule of thumb to remember: If it's a long piece of work that's been published, [author] and [title] and [language] if necessary. If it's a short piece of work (poem, short story, song, folk lore, etc.) the appropriate medium tag replaces the name of the work, and add the [author] and [language].

So a question about "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost would be poetry, robert-frost, and whatever you're asking about

If you're curious about what distinguishes between a genre and a medium, ask yourself, "Can this X tag replace the title adequately?"

@Randal'Thor @Tsundoku ^That above btw is kind of what I'm thinking is the rule of thumb for using genre/medium tags. So like folk-tale or oral-tradition can replace the title, but musical or something wouldn't be necessary

The only exception I've been considering is manga. I'm not sure if this is something that I really want to do (or if the community thinks is okay), but I was thinking, what if we use manga as a sort of replacement(?) for japanese-literature? I normally wouldn't do this, but manga is such a... different medium of literature. But it's also highly cultural, since a manga isn't manga if it isn't Japanese

So basically a question about manga could be [series title], [author], and [manga]. It would separate people who say specialized in Japanese literature from those who care about manga? They seem like separate enough specialties. But if the manga tag is used, I don't think japanese-literature isn't necessary with the manga, because that's redundant. Manga is Japanese literature. If it isn't Japanese, I'm pretty sure it isn't manga. Though I could be wrong

If manga doesn't have to be Japanese, then we can just slash that tag too.

9:48 PM

@NorthLæraðr Why would japanese-literature be redundant? We haven't stopped tagging johann-wolfgang-von-goethe questions with german-literature, for example.

@Tsundoku Because that's an author...?

@Tsundoku I guess because manga is such a distinct idk form?

It's mostly to conserve "tag space". If we keep both japanese-literature and manga, that's FOUR tags for one question

One type of question

@NorthLæraðr Can't you take all the typical manga conventions to create a manga in a language other than Japanese?

@Tsundoku You could, but I'm not sure it's really manga at that point. The best example is "manhua", Korean for "cartoon". It reads like Western comics (left to right, top to bottom) with similar box panel style to Western literature, but has a lot of the manga conventions in terms of drawing style

But it's NOT manga. I'm no expert though, so we may need to consult someone from the Anime and Manga SE

@NorthLæraðr Who says it wouldn't be manga?

user image

I must be tripping

9:54 PM

@EddieKal Those are language tags

Though some of those should be deleted

@NorthLæraðr Original English-language manga.

@Tsundoku Hmm okay then I think we should get rid of the manga tag

@EddieKal Yes, literature is on topic here ;-)

@NorthLæraðr Hmm interesting. It would appear reasonable, but I don't think you'd reach consistency this way

@EddieKal No it is highly consistent. You use those tags for works published in those original language

9:56 PM

Except English.

@Tsundoku Wow beat you to it

The site is heavily biased towards English anyway.

I was waiting to say that since this morning

The implication is problematic unless nobody talks about it, ever

@EddieKal It's been discussed. @Tsundoku mind pulling up that meta discussion?

American literature is just literature, since it is written in English?

9:58 PM

(I personally think English literature should be tagged english-literature but I don't think the votes agreed with me.)

And how should a book written in two languages be tagged?

both tags?

6

Q: How should we tag questions about English-language literature?

After a lot of different questions about the issue of tags based on languages and/or countries, we eventually came to the conclusion that tags such as russian-literature are useful even on questions about specific works; furthermore, we also clarified that such tags should refer to languages and ...

discussion tags

@EddieKal It's what's written in the original language. If a book happens to be published in several languages originally, then yes. This does NOT count translations, I don't think

That's not as frequent as you'd think. Maybe for ancient works where both Greek and Latin may be viable?

@NorthLæraðr Okay so before I link you to the book, let's say we have a book on hand

It's written in two languages, one being English

Or Isaac Bashevis Singer's works, which he wrote in Yiddish and then self-translated.

10:01 PM

And you only tag it with the other language?

That's not what the book's about

@Mithical Good example

@EddieKal Did you read the meta post about why English literature isn't tagged English-literature?

2

Q: Why does "Satan in Goray" abruptly change in style at the end?

When I glanced at the Goodreads page for Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer (translated by Jacob Sloan), part of this review caught my eye: Unfortunately the ending did fall a bit short. It was forced & rushed, needlessly Singer tried changing his style in order to give the story a more ...

isaac-bashevis-singer yiddish-literature satan-in-goray

That one he didn't translate, but the one I'm in the middle of he did.

@NorthLæraðr I am on my third round and haven't found a paragraph about multilingual texts. Show me a link?

@Mithical I would say that, strictly speaking, Singer's book would need yiddish-literature if they were originally published in Yiddish.

(Der König der Felder, The King of the Fields. I don't speak Yiddish but my grandmother does. I'm reading it in English.)

10:05 PM

If we have no access to the manuscript but only to the published English translation, than the question is about the English text only.

@EddieKal Technically, I'm not sure how one publishes a book simultaneous in multiple languages. Can you give me a work that is in fact published in multiple languages?

@NorthLæraðr Have multilingual texts been discussed on Lit Meta? Or are we pretending they have?

They were either published originally in Yiddish or released simultaneously, I believe.

Well if they haven't they haven't

@NorthLæraðr You can perfectly write a book in one language and interleave it with texts in another language. Of course, that reduces the readership to people who know both languages.

10:07 PM

@EddieKal I don't think so.

@EddieKal I don't understand the antagonism. I don't think we have discussed this. I was just saying in your case, it would be just that language

The purpose of a language tag is to find experts within that language make it easier to navigate

Like I said, I already saw inconsistency. I could easily link you to a book of such kind, but while I was presenting the issue you point me to a post I consider only marginally relevant. The problem is that practice itself privileges the English language and the bigger problem is a lot of people are not even aware of that

@Tsundoku (playing the devil's advocate) "Why would they ever do that?"

"If they write in, say, English and another language, they apparently know English well enough to write and get published in, why would they want to disrupt the flow of language by bringing another language into the mix?"

@EddieKal The post was to clarify why we don't tag English. I was asking if you actually read the post before asking about what to do with duel works if it's X language and English

@NorthLæraðr Sure I've read it and I think it is a good start to a potentially healthy discussion

Multilingual puns are the best. You have to be a maven to understand them, though. ;)

10:12 PM

@EddieKal People have been known to (or at least accused of) deliberately using a difficult and complex language. Using two languages has a somewhat similar effect. But I imagine publisher's don't like it; it goes against their marketing strategies.

@EddieKal Am I wrong to assume that it is perhaps a work of manga which employs this ;)?

@NorthLæraðr Sorry not even close

No cigar then

This hits a bit close to heart for me

And for a lot of people

A different type of bilingual books is Wie man Deutscher wird in 50 einfachen Schritten / How to be German in 50 easy steps, which has the same content in English and in German.

(If anyone gets the above pun please let me know. In the meantime, I'm for sleep. Night, folks.)

Because living in a multicultural environment some people strive to keep it real that all languages and cultures should be viewed and considered equally

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza is a 1987 semi-autobiographical work by Gloria E. Anzaldúa that examines the Chicano and Latino experience through the lens of issues such as gender, identity, race, and colonialism. Borderlands is considered to be Anzaldúa’s most well-known work and a pioneering piece of Chicana literature.In an interview, Anzaldúa claims to have drawn inspiration from the ethnic and social community of her youth as well as from her experiences as a woman of color in academia. Scholars also argue that Anzaldúa re-conceptualized the theory of the "mestiza" from the Chicano...

This is nothing fancy just a book accounting the Latin American experience. A story of pain and struggle

10:16 PM

@Mithical Maven is a word you can find in English dictionaries but I didn't know it came from Yiddish.

I really don't know how I'd feel seeing this book pigeonholed in "Spanish literature"

@Tsundoku Didn't know either.

Interesting.

Starred before I got it. (I don't know if I got it right now)

spanish-literature is not Spanish literature. Nevertheless, tagging that book spanish-literature would not reflect the fact that the book is in more than one language.

I understand. I still think the "spanish" part and only "spanish" is not appropriate for that example

And for that matter it'd come into some thorny issues with other similar works of literature too

@EddieKal I understand your concern, but I don't think this necessitates the "English" tag

Exactly how much of such a work must be written in another language then?

@NorthLæraðr My view is we could work further on tagging, but I really don't have a good handle on it. I think even the ELL tags are a mess after all these years, but I haven't done much about them either

10:29 PM

@EddieKal As someone who works a LOT on tagging stuff here, I empathize with that. But I'm not sure how you could even begin to tackle that

Here I think we need to remember what the tag is doing. If it's English-Spanish say, we're looking for Spanish speaking experts. So tagging it just "Spanish-literature" and clarifying that the book is in both Spanish and English in the question should suffice

Having both "English" and "Spanish" makes the question look confusing just looking at the tags. What does that even mean? The tag should give a "quick glance summary".

Ofc just "Spanish-literature" isn't sufficient, but a tag isn't a "tell-all"

Your question does bring up an interesting point though. How does one tag the Christian Bible? [Hebrew] and [Greek]?

@NorthLæraðr Ha! I was also going to raise that issue and check how we had tagged questions about the Bible until now.

Well, so far, the-bible has no questions about the book itself; the tag has only been used for questions about other works that may have drawn inspiration from Biblical texts.

@Tsundoku Actually, it would be Hebrew, Greekm and Aramaic.

10:45 PM

@NorthLæraðr Depending on which part the question is about.

@Tsundoku we coudl just send it to BHSE and let them deal with it ;-)

@NorthLæraðr Unless the question is about literary aspects. I can think of at least two Bible questions now that have nothing to do with hermeneutics or theology.

@Tsundoku hm

@NorthLæraðr You don't believe me?

@Tsundoku i do. im just sure not to do

10:57 PM

user image

Nice round numbers, but they aren't meant to last.

@Tsundoku Nice

11:47 PM

0

Q: Need help in appreciating the significance of 'The Tale of Genjii'

While spending one complete year each on the study of Japanese and Chinese literature (in translation), it was a pleasure to experience the cultural differences among the Western body of writings and their emergence in ancient sagas, historical depictions and the short story and novel, and the st...

japanese-literature interpretation beauty-and-sadness

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Sep '207

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