The Reading Room

2:14 AM

Tell me, am I just not seeing how my edit deleted important information about this answer? literature.stackexchange.com/a/18163/11259

I don't think I removed anything of import but they claim I did

bobble

3:43 AM

Okay, their general attitude in the comments is "you edited this wrong, then I made a mistake hurrying to revert it, how dare you"

Unless I'm interpreting tone wrong, like I do apparently every time I try to interact with other human beings...

bobble is grumpy that they're leaving very confusing bracketed numbers in the quote that aren't even part of the quote

b_jonas

@bobble There was at least one good website about ASL vocabulary, but I don't have the link.

bobble

Feel free to edit it in if you find it

part of me wants to passive-aggressively edit their answer to remove the citation marks, then add a note "removed completely useless out-of-context citation marks" so there is a visible note that an edit was made but that would not be good

bobble should stop ranting

verbose

7:20 AM

@Randal'Thor I agree that "what does this illustration mean?" isn't a textual-history question, but "what does this illustration in this edition mean?" is. So you're right. I guess I was anticipating future editions that wouldn't necessarily have this cover. A description of a book that was only published in a single edition (or that exists only in a single manuscript) that describes the illustrations, etc. would be part of its textual history, but this question doesn't touch upon that.

Rand al'Thor

@verbose Yep, agreed.

verbose

So I think you still haven't had a chance to look at the proposed oral-tradition questions that need the additional textual-history tag, but it seems @Tsundoku is okay with all the proposed changes

I guess @bobble and @PrinceNorthLæraðr haven't yet weighed in either

or @Mithical

Rand al'Thor

@verbose I'm in the middle of typing a message about some of the oral-tradition questions :-)

verbose

oh k

Rand al'Thor

I was thinking about questions about sourcing old poems, like this or this recent one which you tagged oral-tradition.

There's an argument for tagging those with oral-tradition and textual-history, but it relies on knowing that the answer is going to be "this was originally a folk rhyme and had various versions". I'd say that's part of an answer rather than a question, so questions like that should be tagged just poetry and quote-source. The OP may well believe that it was originally written down by someone and has a single definitive version, rather than being a sort of folk-history thing.

verbose

7:35 AM

But even if the person believes it's a single definitive version that stems from an originally printed or written source, that's still a textual-history question ....

And if it circulates orally in many different forms, that's an oral-tradition question ...

And that's true regardless of whether the asker's belief is correct or mistaken ....

Mithical

@verbose Don't have the spoons to focus on tags now, sorry. Too many other things going on

verbose

It's about how the question is framed, and I think both those questions are framed as textual-history questions. "What is the original source?" is always a textual-history question, regardless of whether the original source turns out to be oral or written

@Mithical Ah. Hope things ease up for you soon! Hope you had a good Passover

Mithical

:)

verbose

There was this one time when my friend Kanef was telling me about the mural of a seder he had commissioned for his dining room and I listened with increasing puzzlement and finally I said, "Kanef, I knew you were Jewish but I didn't think you were observant, so it's interesting that you chose to have a seder painted on your dining room wall" and he looked at me with a raised eyebrow and said, "S-A-T-Y-R"

Stupid American accent. I don't pronounce those two words alike at all

Mithical

Bwahahaha. I've made puns in the past involving those two words

Rand al'Thor

7:48 AM

@verbose Hmm, but does that mean all quote-source questions should be textual-history? So many of them are about quotes which have mutated over time.

verbose

@Randal'Thor No, I don't think "Where is this quote from?" is by definition about the history of a text. But I do think questions about the original source of an entire work (poem, nursery rhyme) is about textual-history. I guess I don't think a quote counts as a text? It's part of a text.

Rand al'Thor

@verbose I generally think questions should be tagged according to what the OP thinks it's about, without adding tags that come from knowing some part of the answer. That means any OP who's sufficiently knowledgeable about our tagging system can ask a correctly tagged question without needing it to be edited. (Same principle led me to say no to adding author tags to solved ID questions.)

So if the OP doesn't know it's an oral tradition and assumes it was a written thing, IMO we can explain the textual history in an answer but not add the oral-tradition tag to the question.

verbose

Oh I agree. The answer to a quote-source question might go into textual history, but not necessarily? If someone says, "what is the source of the saying 'to gild the lily'" and Gareth responds with "In Shakespeare's King John, the phrase is "to gild refined gold, to paint the lily' and the variant 'gild the lily' was first recorded 150 years later in this newspaper" then that's a textual-history answer. It doesn't mean the question is textual-history.

But I thought those questions were assuming an oral tradition.

Rand al'Thor

@verbose On this site, we seem to allow questions about sourcing quotes even if they're not really from what we'd call "literature" - implicitly, are we counting quotes as (small) pieces of literature by themselves, to make those questions on-topic?

verbose

@verbose I mean, the one to which I added the tag was anyway. The asker distinctly said there are many versions floating around ... and I assumed those were oral rather than written. Most things that vary widely are oral tradition, no?

@Randal'Thor I guess it's more a question of giving the question the benefit of the doubt? We don't know whether the source of the quote is a literary one or not until we know the answer.

I mean, it doesn't bother me to consider quotes on-topic but I wouldn't say that they are literature by definition

I've sort of lost the thread of the discussion. What are we trying to determine?

Rand al'Thor

8:04 AM

@verbose I double-checked. Old question: doesn't mention variations, says "would be interested to know if it has any definite origins?" - but a definite origin would probably preclude it being an oral tradition. New question: does mention variations (so I agree textual-history applies), says "is it known who wrote it?" which may suggest it not being an oral tradition.

I think most people, who aren't particularly knowledgeable about literature or folklore or storytelling, vastly underestimate the power and ubiquity of oral traditions, and might not even think that a poem was passed down orally before being committed to writing.

verbose

have to be afk for a bit sorry (need to go do dishes) but are we asking whether that specific question has to be tagged oral-tradition or whether it has to have textual-history or both?

Rand al'Thor

We even have an answer on Lit meta (with 5 upvotes! and 7 downvotes) saying that stories couldn't last long as oral traditions because people would forget.

@verbose Sorry, maybe there are some overlapping issues here. One is whether questions like these two about old rhymes should be tagged oral-tradition or not; the other is more general, about whether quote-source questions about quotes that changed over time should be tagged textual-history or not.

verbose

8:27 AM

back. My dishes are done. Unlike those of you slovenly/slatternly brats with the overflowing sinks

@Randal'Thor Ah, thanks for clarifying. Lemme think

Okay, looking at this question I'd say it needs [textual-history] but you're right, there's a good case it doesn't need oral-tradition because the asker doesn't give any indication that the source might be oral.

wrt this one again, I'd say it needs textual-history. I'd argue it needs oral-tradition because the question does say it might not have definite origins. And I think history-of-literature doesn't belong with this question. It's about the history of one particular text, not about some literary trend or movement or trope down the ages.

wrt to [quote-source] questions, I think it would depend on the question. If the question is "I have seen several versions of this quote, where does it come from originally and how did it change?" it's a textual-history question too. If it simply says, "what is the origin of this quote?" it's not.

What do you think?

I'd say this question, which I asked and tagged myself, also needs history-of-literature removed and replaced with textual-history

In fact Imma write up another list now about that history-of-literature tag and replacements with textual-history

Does this question need history-of-literature? It currently has that tag. Does it need inspiration? It currently doesn't have that tag.

Rand al'Thor

8:45 AM

@verbose :-D that meta is going to have the longest thread of answers ever. history-of-literature is a bigger tag than any of the others we've looked at so far, and then there's quote-source too.

verbose

Does this question by @Tsundoku need history-of-literature, which it currently has? Looking at the tag wiki, I don't see how it fits.

Rand al'Thor

So we agree on tagging for the new poem-history question. For the old one, I agree it doesn't need history-of-literature, but still don't agree on textual-history or oral-tradition, because the question doesn't mention either different versions or that it originated orally (only implicitly suggests a possibility that it might not have definite origins).

@verbose OK, agreed. The former case is where textual-history is mentioned in the question, even if it might also appear in answers in the latter case.

@verbose agreed

@verbose agreed, history-of-literature should be replaced by inspiration

verbose

@Randal'Thor done

Rand al'Thor

@verbose Hmm, I guess the question is about historical facts related to literature? Bit of an odd case really.

verbose

@Randal'Thor yes, but that would be historical-context, which doesn't quite fit either

Rand al'Thor

9:01 AM

I think history-of-lit is closer. It's not about the context in history of a piece of literature, but it's about the history of literary figures.

Maybe neither tag fits though, as you say.

Let's see what Tsundoku says.

verbose

@Randal'Thor I think your ten-foot willy needs an oral-tradition tag as well.

I'm not sure this question of @Tsundoku's needs history-of-literature either. Could make a case for textual-history though it's not about a specific text

Rand al'Thor

@verbose ROFL. That was not a message I expected to see in my inbox.

But yes, agreed.

I think I've done all the necessary retagging for publication questions, that tag is ready to be merged into textual-history. Not sure if I should do it now or wait in case more people will weigh in here or on meta.

@verbose Oh, North did:

16 hours ago, by Prince North Læraðr

I just looked at the meta post about the publication and I agree with Verbose's answer

verbose

9:22 AM

@Randal'Thor It didn't take very long, actually. I'm done

as for quote-source, the only one there that needs a retag to textual-history is the Thomas Grey one we were discussing, so I just changed it.

Rand al'Thor

@verbose That one still needs quote-source as well, right? It's asking about the original source of a quote, even if also about how it's changed since its original version.

verbose

@Randal'Thor It's asking about the original source of the complete poem ... not of a quotation

so I didn't think quote-source applied

I think of quote-source as being more of a "what work is this from?" rather than "where is this work from?"

those are two different sorts of questions

the latter being textual-history

Rand al'Thor

9:43 AM

Hmm, you're right. Almost all the quote-source questions are about things that are clearly excerpts taken from some unknown context of a larger piece of writing.

So if someone has a complete poem whose original source they're seeking - even something so short that it might be fewer words than a quote from a quote-source question - then it should just be tagged poetry and textual-history? Not any source or ID tag?

verbose

@Randal'Thor oh good, though it's about the general issue rather than about the individual answers with each suggested change

@Randal'Thor I would think so, yes. Like if it were Pound's "In a station of the metro" and the person said, "what poem are these lines from" and tagged it as "quote source" then sure, leave it as tagged, but if the question is "where did this poem first appear" and the person tags it as "quote source" I'd say change it to "textual history"

verbose

10:09 AM

And if the person quotes the entire poem and says "whom is this poem by and what is it called" that's an id request

So I guess it depends on what the asker is asking

Rand al'Thor

Fair enough.

Then these traditional-rhyme questions are in a bit of a grey area between "where did this first appear" and "whom is it by and what is it called".

The older one which I answered even asks if there's a term for this type of poem, so I guess that should have a terminology tag too.

verbose

@Randal'Thor yup

@Randal'Thor yeah I guess it really depends on the asker's framing. The answer might be about textual history or about identification or about both, but the asker might focus more on one rather than the other (and I'm guessing the asker will lean more toward identification)

Rand al'Thor

I've just gone through oral-tradition and your answer about it. I agree with everything except Thomas McElwain as Ali Haydar - that question is about the name used by a translator/chronicler, not about changes in the text itself.

verbose

@Randal'Thor okay

Rand al'Thor

Why textual-history for the Fraktur question?

verbose

10:23 AM

@Randal'Thor "Why was this book set in Fraktur when it was not the norm in that era" is about the historical circumstances of the specific text. It is very on point for the kind of things textual scholars look at. Usually it's in the context of dating an otherwise undated print volume (or a damaged one that has the date page missing). "This typeface wasn't around until 1848, so the book must have been printed after then."

So in this case the question is a specific textual history question. Okay, the asker was wrong about the text, but that is not strictly speaking relevant

Or "we know this book was printed in Italy because this sort of paper didn't make it to England from Italy until 1922"

Rather like art historians who date paintings by looking at the paints

Imma edit the tag wiki for history-of-literature to say "don't ask about the history of one specific text"

Rand al'Thor

Ah OK. I was interpreting the question as a broad "was this common practice in publishing" rather than "why was it done for this specific book", but I suppose both are relevant.

@verbose Good call.

verbose

10:43 AM

One sad thing about the Os Lusíadas challenge was that nobody asked any question about postcolonial readings of the work. I couldn't come up with a good / specific enough question to ask though I did read some very interesting essays on the subject

Rand al'Thor

11:00 AM

I think all the required manual edits for publication and publishing have been done now (I didn't change the fingerprint one, as we discussed here, and the Neverending Story one will change if/when editions gets merged).

Then there's a half-dozen to edit for editions, a half-dozen for oral-tradition, and about a dozen for history-of-literature (I haven't checked your last meta answer yet, and there's overlap with some of the others).

verbose

11:14 AM

@Randal'Thor fantastic, thanks!

b_jonas

12:00 PM

@verbose Yeah. Books from before about 1930 often don't have a publication date, name of illustrator, or name of translator.

@verbose lol

good luck figuring out how the tagging should work.

Rand al'Thor

12:15 PM

@b_jonas That's been quite the task for me and verbose these last couple of days.

b_jonas

12:55 PM

I am, admittedly, less interested in this. I don't see why it's so important to distinguish between oral-tradition and textual-history. I'd just use the latter and make oral a synonym.

or perhaps use both but not care much about how precise they are when you don't know in advance which one you want.

Rand al'Thor

1:19 PM

@b_jonas textual-history can refer to a lot more than oral traditions.

Any story which has been published in different editions, or originally as a manuscript and later printed, or has had changes to its cover art, could have textual-history questions asked about it even if it never started off as an oral tradition.

You might remember this SFF question - that'd be textual-history if it were here. Or questions about how the text of Shakespeare's plays has varied through different folios and quartos and whatnot.

@verbose One more thing to take into account before merging things into textual-history is synonyms. Do we want to keep editions and publication as synonyms, so that someone typing those words into the tag box will find textual-history? (If yes, it's as simple as me clicking a checkbox during the merge process.) Another synonym that might be useful to create is versions.

I think editions and versions would be useful as synonyms, but I'm less sure about publication: there might still be a risk of people confusing it with publishing.

b_jonas

@Randal'Thor Yes, I know.

Prince North Læraðr

4:58 PM

@verbose Sorry, I haven't been on Meta or the chat lately. Catch me up on what I'm missing out on?

Rand al'Thor

@PrinceNorthLæraðr He meant the recent discussion of mass retagging of questions as textual-history. I pointed out that you did mention it here, but just about the general issue rather than the long lists of retag candidates.

Prince North Læraðr

Ah, I see

Hm, I'm not sure I agree with oral tradition being textual history

For starters, oral literature is built on the fact that it's not comprised of a text, but word of mouth over generations, so tagging it as "textual-history" seems paradoxical at the very least, if not outright contradictory

Rand al'Thor

@PrinceNorthLæraðr We had a discussion about that already, lemme link the messages and see if you're convinced ...

yesterday, by Rand al'Thor

@bobble Hmm, that raises an interesting question: the tag name textual-history presupposes the existence of a text, but asking about a story's transition from oral to written form is much the same type of question as asking about transition from manuscript to printed form.

yesterday, by verbose

@Randal'Thor I don't think "text" = "written document"; see 8a in Merriam-Webster. That's how it's typically used in literary studies.

Prince North Læraðr

If the question is specifically asking about the transition from oral to writing, then textual-history makes a lot of sense, but I don't think it needs to replace oral history or automatically tagged with oral-literature

Rand al'Thor

Oh, definitely not replacing that tag. The only tags which we're talking about getting rid of completely in favour of textual-history are publication and editions.

(This answer lists only those questions tagged oral-tradition that would be affected by the addition of textual-history. These questions are mistagged or incompletely tagged.The other questions with the oral-tradition tag are fine.) — verbose yesterday

Prince North Læraðr

5:08 PM

Ah, okay. I must be misunderstanding the meta

(And yes, I wholehearted agree that textual-history would get rid of the need for publication and editions)

Rand al'Thor

The meta answers about publishing, oral-tradition, and history-of-literature don't list all the questions in those tags, just the few that may need editing with textual-history.

Prince North Læraðr

Hm, I could get behind textual-history in the context of asking about the historical context behind a work of oral-tradition or the transition from oral to writing

Rand al'Thor

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Great! That's the part I most want to get buy-in for, because mod-merging tags isn't reversible.

Prince North Læraðr

What's the difference between history of literature and textual history though?

Ah, textual history asks for specific editions or publications. I see

@Randal'Thor All for it. I love tag efficiency :)

@Randal'Thor So if I were to ask about the development of Cinderella over time, that would be a textual-history question, correct?

(though the question might be closed as "too broad" :P)

Rand al'Thor

5:25 PM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr History of literature is more about literature as a whole, like "what was the first story featuring this trope" or "how did this meter become standard in poetry" or "how did the Great Vowel Shift influence literature". Textual history is more about specific works, like "when was the first printed version of this book" or "why did this passage change between different editions" or "who first wrote down this story".

Prince North Læraðr

Ah, makes sense

Rand al'Thor

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Yep.

Prince North Læraðr

History of literature ---> broad historical context behind certain literature stuff; textual history ---> history behind specific works of literature

bobble

(I've agreed with everything I've seen in chat/meta, by the way)

Rand al'Thor

6:06 PM

So we have agreement from the tree, the crown, and the 'doku, while the Mith is too busy.

Bookworm

8:34 PM

0

Q: How to prevent your work from getting stolen?

I have written a book recently, and I want to share it so it can be reviewed, but I am worried over that it might get stolen if I do so. So is there way, like a watermark or signature, to protect it, showing that the work belongs to me?

plagiarism

Bookworm

9:46 PM

0

Q: What does "His business here that night might have been just as much with those two men as with his brother and sister" mean here?

In "The Markenmore Mystery" (1922) by J. S. Fletcher, the chief constable was talking to two lawyers about Guy Markenmore who had been murdered two days ago after his meeting with two men at "Sceptre Inn"? “What puzzles me considerably,” observed the Chief Constable, “is—how did those two men wh...

meaning the-markenmore-mystery j-s-fletcher

verbose

10:22 PM

@Bookworm Related: literature.stackexchange.com/q/1737/289

@Randal'Thor I agree that keeping editions as a synonym would be helpful and that publication would not. As for versions, I'm thinking not a synonym? Questions about versions aren't always about textual history. If there's a story that's told in one form in France and another in Namibia, that could be an oral-traditions question rather than a textual-history one, depending on how it's framed.

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Depends on how you ask, but yes, it seems to me it would very likely be textual-history and possibly oral-tradition as well.

verbose

10:43 PM

since @PrinceNorthLæraðr wears a l'lle crown on top of his avi, does that make him a bobblehead?

bobble

in The Sphinx's Lair, Oct 8 '20 at 15:29, by North Læraðr

@bobble May I add the crown to my profile picture

verbose

@bobble ah

bobble

a little later:

in The Sphinx's Lair, Oct 8 '20 at 20:47, by North Læraðr

You know, @bobble you're a great crown and all, but this is making me feel too much like a pretty princess. I HATE looking like a pretty princess

verbose

@bobble 🤨

bobble

when he re-added that's how I first got linked to here

in The Sphinx's Lair, Oct 19 '20 at 14:18, by North Læraðr

@bobble So I'm in another chatroom called "The Reading Room" (Literature SE's chatroom), and I got asked about the crown XD

verbose

10:58 PM

@bobble ah

Bookworm

0

Q: The theme of "Ode on Solitude" by Alexander Pope

Here is the poem "Ode on Solitude" by Alexander Pope: Happy the man, whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air, In his own ground. Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire, Whose ...

poetry theme alexander-pope

bobble

thank you for coming to my history lesson

@Bookworm in case anyone is wondering, no, I did not write out all the   manually; I used an online find-and-replace tool

verbose

@bobble ah. Can you share the link? I manually type out   a lot

bobble

unit-conversion.info/texttools/replace-text (though a search of "replace all online" will bring up others). Since they helpfully had regular spaces where the   should be, I set it to find " " (three spaces, to avoid accidentally hitting any double-spaces at the end of lines) and replace with "   "

verbose

@bobble thanks! and very clever

bobble

11:04 PM

and chat stripped my triple-space down to only a single-space. wonderful

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