The Reading Room

Alex

00:49

@bobble It may not be customizable.

@Randal'Thor You mean William Shakespeare is not a language?

@Alex Also, it depends how you read it. While you could read "provide detailed answers to this question" as referring to the post it is attached to (and hence your objection that it doesn't make sense), you could also read it as referring to the broader page in which it is saying that any answers you provide to the question at the top of the page should be detailed (with the implication that the answer it is attached to is not detailed).

In fact, I think there was a Meta post explaining this second reading.

@Alex Here's an example of the exact same notice on a question, supporting the theory that it is not customizable:

bobble

36

A: What are these notices above my post?

Post notices are short pieces of informational text that are attached to posts in order to annotate some exceptional situation. They allow ♦ moderators or bounty donors to let other users know something about the post outside of the normal channels of edits, votes, comments and answers. These an...

There are a few kinds of post notices, with "citation need" being one - I'm saying that would have been a better option

The blurb explaining "needs detailed answers" actually refers to "questions" with that notice

Alex

But it says "Most answers with this notification" which implies that the notification is meant for answers.

It seems the citation needed is more for sites where citations are required.

bobble

01:05

Well yeah, but the explanation of why it would be applied to an answer - that the answer would be better off as a comment - doesn't apply here

Anyhow, I wasn't suggesting that the current post notice is wrong

Just that perhaps antigen would have been better

I'm very confused with myself why I'm even arguing the point

Alex

"Most answers with this notification are really better suited to be comments"

@bobble Because it's fun.

bobble

I am not having fun

Alex

Intellectual gymnastics.

bobble

I am in fact getting more and more annoyed that you can't seem to understand what I'm saying, so I'm leaving

Dear goodness I'm angry

bobble

01:32

Okay, let's see if I can explain myself

I was trying to ask Rand a specific question. The intent was to just ask him, and not involve anyone else.

Someone else comes along and starts saying, as far as it looks to me, that my question had no merit, asking it was useless, and that everything was perfectly hunky-sorry

I try to explain why my I asked and the merit I see. The other user, understandably, thinks I'm trying to argue and starts arguing back.

But I'm not arguing. I'm trying to just say "this question is fine, please stop" without actually saying that, because etiquette.

I keep getting more desperate because I can't seem to say anything that has merit, in the other user's eyes, and I am not having fun in the argument

To be fair, the other user probably wasn't trying to say that my question was meritless and stupid, but that's how I interpreted it so that was what I was defending, and that was what I apparently failed to convey

It's like one person thinks they're playing tag, but the person they're chasing doesn't want to be touched. One person's having fun and the other is... not

And that's bobble's public mental breakdown for today

Mithical

@Alex Sure, but we've used them in the past here. Just because they're generally used one way doesn't mean it's unreasonable to use them in a different scenario, if it makes sense in context.

Alex

01:47

@bobble Thank you for explaining that. I apologize if it seemed like I was arguing or indicating that your question had no merit.

bobble

Wow, looks like I missed a bunch of stupid-spellcheck typos because of how blindly desperate I was

perhaps "another" would, "explain why (-my) I", "chasing (+just) doesn't"

Alex

@Mithical My point (which admittedly may not have been clear) wasn't really to address whether the "needs citation" notice is appropriate to be used here. It was rather to say that the existence of the "needs citation" notice doesn't automatically imply that the "needs detailed answers" reason is not appropriate, given that there is another use case for which the former reason exists.

Mithical

02:03

True.

bobble

Also entirely orthogonal to my original question "did you [Rand] mean to use a different post notice?"

verbose

H'm I wonder whether Randolph's Rupert Bear question qualifies for a textual-history tag.

bobble

I was wondering if it needed an author tag

Also seems my tagging queued were buried above

Mithical

@bobble don't think so, but I could see it

It's more about how it affects our reading of their relationship - the power dynamics etc.

bobble

I'll defer to you on that one

When I post questions here it means I'm unsure how to tag; if I'm sure I just edit away

verbose

02:35

@bobble I don't think so. The question is about the relationship between the two characters, not about Ma'ii's character specifically (or Magdalena's).

@bobble Interesting. I'd say no, because our [tag:identification-requet

@bobble Interesting. I'd say no, because in our identification-request questions, the asker wants to identify a work they have read; this question is about a movie that a particular character rents. It's simply a plot element that the asker can't remember, not a request to identify a particular literary work.

bobble

I'm not sure if it falls under Rand's intention for the expanded definition

verbose

@Alex That's what I thought it meant.

Alex

@verbose The second one?

Mithical

@verbose By the way, it's been sitting unanswered for a year if anyone wants to answer it... *hint hint*

verbose

02:54

@Alex yes, I thought the post notice meant that the question being answered needed a more detailed answer than the one given.

@Mithical I haven't read any of the the-sixth-world books, sadly.

Alex

Yes, that is apparently what it means, though it doesn't seem obvious at first glance. Particularly when you take into account that it says "Want to improve this post?" and then immediately "Provide detailed answers to this question", where the first "this" is apparently referring to the actual answer post, which might lead one to interpret the second "this" in the same manner and thus be confused.

I have a vague memory of making this exact mistake, and having it explained to me, but a quick search in the various Metas and Chats that I frequent doesn't turn up anything.

verbose

@Lucas I could not understand your question, tbh. (1) What makes the increasingly disadvantaged situation of freed slaves in postcolonial societies a "reversal of fortune"? Reversal of fortune means that someone has lost wealth that they used to have. The freed slaves weren't particularly fortunate to begin with. Assuming your argument is correct, they were on par with free migrants from Europe, but I don't see how increasing inequality between the two groups is a reversal of fortune.

(2) What kind of fictional examples are you looking for? India was never a slave society—there were enough poor and desperate native workers that European colonizers didn't need to bring in slaves. So if you're looking for a novel that talks about how freed slaves used to be equal economically to migrants from Europe, but their fortunes diverged, Indian fiction wouldn't provide this.

(3) Presumably you're familiar with Noel Ignatiev's How the Irish Became White.

verbose

04:01

12

Q: What did it mean to be a Grecian in late-18th Century British schools?

Near the beginning of CS Forester's novel Mr Midshipman Hornblower, which begins in 1793, the titular Hornblower arrives on board his first ship, where the captain asks about his schooling: "How far did your education go?" "I was a Grecian at school, sir." "So you can construe Xenophon as well a...

How do I search for closed questions?

bobble

@verbose closed:yes

For more search help, there are several places to click. I'll set up some screenshots

From anywhere, if you click on the search bar at the top, you can navigate to help by clicking on "Search help"

From any (internal) search result page, you can make a help popup appear by clicking on "Advanced Search Tips"

At the bottom of that popup, you can navigate to help by clicking on "visit our help page"

That help page (with pretty good documentation of the more obscure search stuff) is here: literature.stackexchange.com/help/searching

@verbose see above?

verbose

04:27

@bobble Thanks!

bobble

Can I use you to attempt a reproduction of a bug, quick?

or, actually - @Mithical, around to repro a bug quick?

Mithical

04:42

On my phone but I can try

bobble

d'yah see the tags out of order on meta-SF&F?

wow, that logo is unreadable

my reference for why discussion should be first (besides overwhelming experience)

11

A: Discovering the order of [product-discovery]

When tags on a post are saved to the database, they are sorted in the following order: Required Moderator By number of posts (desc) using the tag The sort order of the tags is determined at the time that the tags are saved. This is not calculated when the post is displayed - it takes the saved ...

Mithical

confirmed

bobble

please post a bug report either there or main-meta?

unless there's a duplicate

Mithical

will do when I have a chance to write something

bobble

:thumbsup:

Alex

05:10

Fixed.

bobble

Why'd you do that?

Seriously, why?

The whole point is to use it as an example of a bug; editing it to un-jigger the bug means that we'd have to hunt for another example

Sorry at the tone there

just got really shocked

Hmm, looking at the revisions it looks like discussion got displaced when Rand edited featured into the post (Revision 2)

Alex

The example remains. Editing the tags just forces a recalculation of tag order. The "wrong" order went into effect on Revision 2 and can still be seen.

bobble

It's a lot more visually stunning when visible from the main page

Alex

Here's another one if you want the visual stunningness:

7

Q: Movie Night: Return of the Jedi (and It's a Trap!)

In honour of the impending theatrical release of Episode VII of the Star Wars film franchise, let's watch Episode VI, The Return of the Jedi: To set a "standard", let's aim to watch the 2004/2006 DVD release version. The 2011 version is only longer in one scene (as far as I can tell), and so ...

chat-event discussion movie-night

And another one.

I'd guess it's status-by-design.

Since the rules for tag order may have been different at the time of the last tag edit.

Bookworm

05:31

0

Q: Could Ewing Klipspringer be considered a gay character?

Could Ewing Klipspringer be considered a gay character? One reason that is so is because Fitzgerald describes Klipspringer as a freeloader who stays in Gatsby's house and after one party decided to live in his home. One quote is as follows: When Klipspringer had played The Love Nest he turned ar...

f-scott-fitzgerald the-great-gatsby sexuality

0

Q: Why did derry's mother wouldn't allow derry to go back to mr. Lamb

** Based on "On the Face of It" ** Why did Derry's Mother would not allow Derry to go back to Mr. Lamb . What had she heard and been warned about Mr. Lamb from others ?

susan-hill

Alex

Though I'd expect there to be more unless there was only a small window with the different rules.

verbose

05:50

@Bookworm Is this opinion-based?

Mithical

07:20

@Alex oh, that might've been when the required tags bug happened

Alex

?

Rand al'Thor

08:07

@bobble I hadn't noticed that, but unfortunately it seems like that post notice text isn't customised between questions and answers. I considered both the "needs detailed answers" and "needs citations" options, but an answer to that kind of question could easily become good by being supported with clear detailed arguments even without any citations, so I didn't want to give the impression that citations are needed to support an interpretation of a poem.

@bobble I agree with Mith and verbose on both of those.

@bobble @Mithical I know why that happened: it must've been due to a tag merge.

There was another tag on that question which appeared after the [movie-night] tag due to being less used; then at some point a mod merged that less-used tag into [discussion], which silently auto-replaced the tag on all questions where it was used, without changing its position.

I'm not 100% certain, but that's the scenario where I've seen that tag behaviour before. You could probably check with the Wayback Machine if you're so minded. I suspect that in this case the merged tag was probably [mos-eisley], which I eliminated as a tag when that chatroom no longer existed.

@verbose I think we've managed to edit it to be un-opinion-based. What do you reckon on the newest version?

Alex

@Randal'Thor The question was already tagged discussion though, so why would it remove the first tag?

Rand al'Thor

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to see deleted questions, so finding good examples to buttress the arguments above was difficult. — verbose 3 mins ago

@verbose Also, re this, only mods are able to search for deleted questions. If you tell me exactly what search terms you want to use, I can rustle up some deleted posts for you.

verbose

@Randal'Thor Two things. First, it's still opinion-based; see my comment to the question. "I find your argument that Klipspringer was gay convincing!"—"I don't!". Second, I continue to maintain that we should not be in the habit of editing OP's questions to make them fit into our site's guidelines. That's up to the OP.

@Randal'Thor I wanted to look through the list of deleted questions to see which ones were closed as opinion-based, and which as asking for recommendations.

Rand al'Thor

08:23

@verbose To the second point, it was the OP who changed the title; I simply re-worded "If you have any evidence or clarification, please add more here" (which sounds like the OP may not realise SE isn't a discussion forum) to "Is there any other evidence suggesting that Klipspringer was gay?" (which I think is saying the same thing, but phrasing it in a Q&A-oriented way rather than "add more here").

@verbose I can't search by close reason, unfortunately ... but let's see if I can rustle up some examples for you. You want links of both types, or just opinion-based?

Recommendation, opinion-based (even though finitely scoped!), probably opinion-based?, recommendation, opinion-based

verbose

@Randal'Thor Thanks!

@Randal'Thor Well, I still think it's opinion-based ... if Klipspringer didn't attend Gatsby's funeral, that rather undercuts the theory that he was in love with Gatsby, doesn't it? Maybe he is just a sponger who found Gatsby an easy touch, and was happy to live rent-free in a place that had a butler and other amenities.

See what I mean? The evidence cuts both ways, and it's really a matter of opinion which side you come down on.

Rand al'Thor

08:57

Mm, but isn't that the same with a lot of analysis questions here?

And the OP's new title "How is he characterised as a gay character" puts the focus on what evidence suggests he was gay rather than "was he or not" which might elicit more opinion-based stuff.

Alex

09:09

In general, questions asking something to the effect of "Is there evidence that Character X is gay?" seem to be well-received. E.g. this, this, this, this, and this.

verbose

@Randal'Thor I edited my answer to include some of the examples you so kindly provided

@Alex The first three aren't opinion based; the last two are.

@Randal'Thor No? The analysis based questions rely on marshaling evidence from the text and making a case. The current question is conclusionary: it presents a conclusion "Klipspringer was gay based on this evidence" and then asks for further evidence to support that flimsy conclusion.

Rand al'Thor

@verbose I don't understand the difference. A lot of analysis questions could have several different answers according to different views of the text, each of which could be supported by some evidence. If "is X gay?" and "what evidence supports reading X as gay?" are both off-topic, then what's left, how can such a question be posed?

(afk for some minutes)

verbose

@Randal'Thor I think "Is X gay" is opinion-based; I don't think "what evidence supports reading X as gay" is opinion-based. I don't think the Gatsby question is framed clearly enough as the second. I've pointed OP to a question that is so framed; it's up to OP to edit. Or, if others think the question isn't opinion-based as asked, then my close vote (and the other person's; I was the second VTC) will go nowhere, which is fine.

Well, I think "what evidence supports reading X as gay" is begging the question, actually. The question should be, "Is there evidence that supports reading X as gay?" Or "Has X been read as gay?"

b_jonas

09:32

@verbose How about “Did Arthur Conan Doyle code Holmes and Watson as a gay couple?” literature.stackexchange.com/q/9/139

Gareth Rees

I think that the right thing to do with the Gatsby question is simply to edit it into an acceptable form.

Rand al'Thor

Given that this is SE, I would interpret "Is X gay" as asking "is there evidence that supports/refutes reading X as gay", and would happily downvote/flag answers that just say "I think X is/isn't gay" without evidence.

Gareth Rees

The problem with expecting the OP to do it is that it requires a certain amount of expertise to distinguish between "is it true that X?" and "is there evidence in the text for X?"

If you are an adherent to the "documentary evidence for a fictional universe" theory of literature then these questions are the same

We have to expect that people who are unsure at the object level will be even more unsure at the theoretical level

2

Hence it will be more productive if we just edit the question into the acceptable form rather than trying to get the OP to do it

Rand al'Thor

I agree. Even for an OP who's willing to learn, it may be hard to pick up these things right away. They might learn more easily from seeing how their question gets edited and well answered than from comments advising them on how to edit while their question is downvoted/closed in the meantime. In literary terms, show vs tell.

verbose

09:48

@b_jonas That's the example I gave in the comment to the question as a model for OP to emulate

@GarethRees The issue then is that we end up editing the question into a form that is gobbledegook to the OP anyway. OP will be unsure why we edited the question as we did. Explaining that will raise the same problem as asking the OP to edit the question in the first place.

@Randal'Thor We've had at least one OP in the last few weeks who got upset our editing their question, rolled the edits back a couple times, then deleted it altogether in a huff on the grounds that they wanted an answer, not endless edits to the question.

Shaurya Anand

what is the full form of OP?

verbose

@ShauryaAnand original poster

Shaurya Anand

ok ty

verbose

@ShauryaAnand yw

Is this question about a play? If so, why is it tagged short-stories?

Inquiring minds wanna know

Gareth Rees

@verbose I disagree -- even if the OP might not be quite sure why "is it true that X?" was changed to "is there evidence for X?" (or whatever), the new form of the question is hardly "gobbledegook".

@verbose This kind of objection is very rare. (I have reworded hundreds of questions and I don't recall this happening to me.) If the OP does object, then we can try explaining to them at that point

verbose

10:00

@GarethRees okay, maybe not "gobbledegook" but still confusing to the OP. If we edit the question and don't explain why to the OP, then the OP doesn't understand the reason for the edit, and doesn't learn; if we are going through the task of explaining anyway, then the OP might as well be the person to put the question through the editing process. That's more effective as a learning mechanism anyway.

Gareth Rees

My experience is that trying to persuade the OP to edit hardly ever succeeds, whereas editing the question hardly ever fails, so it is clear which approach is more productive

verbose

@GarethRees But if we edit without explaining to the OP, that means we're editing for our benefit: because we want to keep the question on the site. How does the OP learn?

@GarethRees "More productive" in what way? Does it help the OP?

Gareth Rees

The OP learns by looking at what we did and emulating it in their future questions.

I appreciate that it would be great if we could use the question-editing process as a "teaching moment" in order to give the OP an appreciation of the theory of literature. But I have never seen this succeed.

verbose

@GarethRees In theory, yes. Do we have any evidence this has happened? I'm happy to see such evidence if it exists, but I can't recall any instance. Generally OPs who ask questions that aren't well framed don't have an enduring enough interest in literature to return to the site and ask a better-framed question later.

@GarethRees Have you seen the alternative succeed?

I mean, we all know OPs who have posted around a hundred poorly framed questions to the site, and editing them to suit the site doesn't cause that OP to ask better-framed questions.

Gareth Rees

Yes, I have seen several users who were able to improve the quality of their questions, e.g. S E, Ahmed Samir, Soumee

verbose

10:10

@GarethRees Based on prior questions we edited? That's interesting. I'll look up those users.

Gareth Rees

That was my impression based on editing these users' questions and giving them a chance

I had to fight to stop S E's questions getting closed. They were never great questions, but they often had an interesting nugget in them

But in the common case that the OP is a drive-by poster who never returns, then the only reason to interact with the question at all is for the benefit of the site, that is, to turn it into something that will be fun or interesting for someone to answer

2

Even Knight's big question-dump had a lot of interesting questions in it

verbose

@GarethRees I actually didn't think so.

I discovered that some of those were just lifted from other sites such as Quora anyway; I don't even know that he had read the works he was asking about.

Gareth Rees

It's clear that Knight did not read the works asked about, but that doesn't mean the questions are uninteresting

verbose

@GarethRees I thought they were in bad faith, and that put me off them; besides, I thought they were uninformed, which to me equates to uninteresting.

Gareth Rees

Sure, they are uninteresting to you. Not every question has to be interesting to everyone!

For example, “how but in custom and ceremony are innocence and beauty born?” is a good conundrum

verbose

10:19

@GarethRees Right, but you're claiming they were interesting per se, not that they were interesting to you :P

@GarethRees I had left a comment on that question saying OP needed to provide evidence for the claim that the poem was about Yeats contrasting the life he wanted for his daughter with Maud Gonne's. That is still to my mind a weakness of the question. I don't know why that comment got deleted, presumably by a mod.

That said, I agree it is a good line to ask about. However, the way the question is framed, with the Maud Gonne reference, is I think counterproductive if we want to attract "scholars and enthusiasts" rather than high schoolers looking for homework help.

Gareth Rees

Another example is Keats' To Autumn. This seemed obvious to me (the answer is in the title!), but then bobble pointed out that it is not obvious if you don't know the conventions of lyric poetry. So there was a "teaching moment" there after all, even if not for the OP

verbose

@GarethRees yeah, I don't think that was an interesting question, though your answer was good.

Gareth Rees

My advice on the Yeats question is to edit it into an acceptable form, since Knight has neither the expertise nor the willingness to do it

verbose

And the danger with questions like that is that they do drive down the average quality of questions on the site. I'd rather see them downvoted and deleted than rescued.

Gareth Rees

I am not as bothered as you by the fact that the question depends upon an assumption that might be false -- it would be fine to start an answer with "the question assumes that the poem is about X, but in fact there is little or no textual evidence for this ..."

verbose

10:30

@GarethRees We have a philosophical difference. I think letting poorly framed questions be downvoted and closed is a good thing; it brings up the average quality of questions on the site. I think that's more likely to help us build the kind of community we're supposedly geared toward: "scholars and enthusiasts."

Gareth Rees

That's right -- I am not at all convinced of that claim

verbose

@GarethRees Reframing is fine—I've done it myself for a number of answers. But I think someone coming to the site and seeing a bunch of poorly framed questions on the front page isn't going to click through to see that in fact, the answer handles the question in a more sophisticated way.

Gareth Rees

I have an answer in preparation for your meta question but I have been busy with other things

verbose

@GarethRees Looking forward to reading it when you are able to fit it in.

@GarethRees Advice to whom? I have no desire whatsoever to edit it.

Gareth Rees

You expressed a concern about the Yeats question lowering the average quality of the site -- my advice was aimed at addressing this concern

verbose

10:39

@GarethRees I see. Well, since I think poorly-framed questions should be downvoted and (eventually automatically) deleted, I guess we're not going to see eye to eye on this one. Besides, that flood of bad questions has thankfully fallen off the front pages.

Rand al'Thor

@verbose There are no deleted comments on that question. Maybe you're getting it mixed up with another of Knight's 95?

verbose

@Randal'Thor maybe?

Or maybe I thought of the comment and never posted it. During that flood I reached a point of having had enough. :-)

Rand al'Thor

@verbose To me, that's an argument in favour of site experts editing questions asked by inexperienced OPs. Even with all the coaching we can provide in comments, an OP's own edits may still leave the question more poorly written than what some of us might be able to make it.

Especially since many OPs need to learn not only about literature but also about how SE works. Even those of us who aren't so expert in literary studies (I count myself in this category - I've learned a lot from others on this site, but I'm still in awe of some of the answers and knowledge of people like you, Tsundoku, Gareth, etc) can help to mould a question into a better fit for SE, e.g. phrasing it to invite evidence-based answers rather than commentary, speculation, or opinion.

Another thing that might make OPs get fed up and leave (I think I've seen this happen, but can't recall a specific example) is if they edit without quite understanding the improvements proposed, then keep getting more comments and making more edits, iteratively approaching a well framed question. That might be more wearing ("what do they expect?! I can't see what they're getting at or what I should do, and I'm getting downvoted in the meantime") than one single edit from an experienced user.

verbose

55 mins ago, by verbose

Is this question about a play? If so, why is it tagged short-stories?

@Randal'Thor I think you were the one who made that tag edit. AFAI can tell, the question is about a play

ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/levt106.pdf

Rand al'Thor

10:57

I read "On the Face of It" while answering this question, but I can't remember if the story was formatted as a play or not. Both the previous questions about it have the short-stories tag, so I added it to the new one too.

Gareth Rees

@Randal'Thor The particular case I remember is this one on Persuasion, which I had to fight to get reopened, including complaining about the situation on meta. Even as a third party I felt that the situation was unnecessarily adversarial. There was simply no way that an unassisted OP could have gone through this process

Rand al'Thor

@verbose Ah, you're right. Hmm, but it's a very short play ... how does this fit with our policy to use tags like short-stories instead of individual-work tags for very short works that don't merit their own tags?

verbose

@Randal'Thor couldn't tell you, sorry

Rand al'Thor

@GarethRees Your edits there certainly helped to make the question look better, but didn't involve (as far as I can see) much rephrasing to change the form of what's actually being asked. I suspect that's a more stylistic edit than the kind of thing @verbose objects to.

I think your meta post really helped generations of later questions to not get closed in the first place.

verbose

11:29

@Randal'Thor If the goal is two-fold: (1) Help the OP get better and (2) Improve the quality of questions on this site / make a question ore interesting, I can totally get behind that— iff the editor leaves comments explaining why the edits were necessary / are an improvement. Otherwise we have drive-by posters and drive-by editors.

3

Bookworm

12:17

0

Q: Two questions on Maupassant short stories

Question 1: What is that short story by Maupassant in which a young man is upset by the past infidelities of his mistress; these infidelities should be of no concern for him since he arrived much later, but nevertheless he is angry at her. Question 2: I read somewhere that Maupassant wrote ten sh...

short-stories guy-de-maupassant

Rand al'Thor

@verbose That's a great guideline, I absolutely agree. Teaching people to fish and all that.

Maybe we can make a meta post out of that principle ... it seems like a good compromise between the desire not to hijack someone's question and the desire to improve question quality for the sake of the site.

I often leave such comments when making a drastic edit to someone else's post - like "I think this is what you were trying to say / preserves the intent of your post, but feel free to rollback if I got it wrong".

Rajorshi Koyal

14:17

There have been exceptions — the Nepali Maoists, for example, managed to partake in power after peacefully ending the civil war — but if the Indian Maoists’ denunciation of these steps taken by their Nepali counterparts are any indication, such a step does not seem to be in the offing.

I have quoted this from somewhere. I do not understand the meaning of the last line.

bobble

14:29

Rajorshi, how many times do we have to tell you, this isn't the place?

Rand al'Thor

18:54

@verbose The OP revised the Klipspringer question even more heavily, following further comments from Peter Shor. What do you think now? (It's teetering on 4 close votes atm.)

bobble

I'd really rather the question have the quotes and argument removed and put in an answer, but I'm not sure how that would go down (and the example similar question linked didn't do that)

Rand al'Thor

Sometimes there's a fine line between "show research before asking" and "don't put answers in questions".

Tsundoku

21:20

@bobble A play doesn't have a narrator, does it?

bobble

?

what inspired this question?

Tsundoku

@Pete some more edits that would be useful, besides adding "which was the first", could be: defining exactly what counts as a "book" (plays? short stories? songs?), defining "notable" or removing that requirement, defining how long the second-person narration must be (the entire book? a majority? a small section? a paragraph?). — bobble 4 mins ago

bobble

Ah, I was just listing random examples of literature-y things

You can edit it out if you want

Though, a scene-setter, under certain circumstances, could be regarded as a narrator? That's a stretch

Tsundoku

Do you mean something like the "Prologue" in some of Shakespeare's plays? People on stage always address an audience, so there is nothing unusual about them using "you". Though the example of "you" that most readily come to mind are those at the end of MND and The Tempest

So we have a lurker who is starring messages.

bobble

Should this question have name-significance and/or inspiration? (And yes, it has the latter already, but my question stands) literature.stackexchange.com/q/1818/11259

\o 'borg!

Sciborg

21:29

hello! i misclicked so i'm here now :p

Tsundoku

@bobble inspiration is appropriate there. name-significance: depends on the OP's intent.

@Sciborg A misclick. We feel so flattered :-P

Rand al'Thor

I'm not sure if the Oceania question should have name-significance. 1) Does that tag cover names of places or only of characters? 2) The question isn't about the significance of an invented name, but about why a name, used IRL for a continent as far away from Britain as you can get, is used in 1984 for the superpower including the US and UK.

Sciborg

@Tsundoku a happy accident :P

bobble

It's about the significance of why a name was used, so I thought it applied.

You can revert if you wish.

Sciborg

How have things been going in the Room of Reading?

Tsundoku

21:35

Quietly. I was reading most of the time.

Sciborg

Understandable.

Tsundoku

The Lusiads wasn't as impressive as I had hoped. I have moved on to Rabelais now.

Rand al'Thor

@Sciborg We're conducting a study of Reading.

Sciborg

@Randal'Thor Well of course, what else would this chatroom be for?

It's the Reading Room.

Obviously you're all dedicated to the study of a town in Berkshire

Rand al'Thor

Yes, we're all berks.

Tsundoku

21:39

@Randal'Thor And of Lire.

Sciborg

Every literature question on the site has secretly been about Berkshire the whole time

Gatsby? Berkshire.

Rand al'Thor

Watership Down really does open in Berkshire, I think.

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor goats?

Sciborg

All books are set in Berkshire unless specified otherwise.

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku heroic

Part of Jude the Obscure is actually set in Reading (Aldbrickham).

Tsundoku

21:44

Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol.

Sciborg

I'm amazed that i never learned about Wilde being convicted of "indecency" and writing a book in prison until this moment.

My college lit class has failed me.

Tsundoku

The Belgian historian Henri Pirenne started writing a history of medieval Europe while in prison (during World War I) - entirely from memory.

Rand al'Thor

Isn't that one of the things Oscar Wilde is most famous for nowadays?

That and the significance of being sincere.

Sciborg

Literature is not my strongest suit, admittedly

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor And that Ionian white painting?

Rand al'Thor

21:52

@Sciborg That makes sense: paper isn't a very strong material to make a suit from.

Sciborg

My strongest suit is my carbon fiber titanium one, obviously.

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor If the Macedonians had known paper, I wonder whether they would have used it for what is now known as the linothorax, armour made from linen.

Sciborg

The only thing lining my thorax is the marshmallows i'm eating right now

Tsundoku

@Sciborg All thanks to a misclick ;-)

I have two answers that are ready to go, but one is for a question that is currently closed and the other is for a question that should be closed in its current state :-/

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku The Maupassant question?

Tsundoku

22:06

@Randal'Thor The Maupassant question and the second-person narrative question.

Rand al'Thor

12

Q: What did it mean to be a Grecian in late-18th Century British schools?

Near the beginning of CS Forester's novel Mr Midshipman Hornblower, which begins in 1793, the titular Hornblower arrives on board his first ship, where the captain asks about his schooling: "How far did your education go?" "I was a Grecian at school, sir." "So you can construe Xenophon as well a...

18th-century education great-britain

^ a historical-context question that would also have been on-topic here

Tsundoku

I guess he could read odes on Grecian urns ;-)

By the way, the Sorbonne issued a prohibition against learning Greek at some point in the 1530s, I think.

Rand al'Thor

22:30

I've now asked two different questions about how Graeco-Roman gods can appear in openly Christian stories.

Bookworm

22:51

1

Q: How does Bacchus fit into the Christian allegory of Narnia?

The setting and story of The Chronicles of Narnia are strongly linked to Christianity: Aslan, who sacrifices himself for a traitor in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe before returning to life, represents and literally is Jesus Christ, and much has been written about the Christian symbolism a...

character-analysis c-s-lewis the-chronicles-of-narnia religion

verbose

23:52

@Randal'Thor I voted to reopen

@bobble I think name-significance is appropriate, since the question explicitly asks about why Ginny has the name she does

@bobble yeah I agree. The tag wiki excerpt doesn't say "names of individuals that appear in literature," it simply says "names." Also, names like Parbati, Ginevra, etc. aren't invented either ... people outside the literary works have those names.

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