The Reading Room

Q: The meaning of “Let-us-take-and-heave-him-over”

@Bookworm I don't think maiden stories are so popular these days.

bobble

@Bookworm I'm still mildly surprised every time someone assumes we do writing and not just analysis

anyhoo, off to make dinner

2 hours later…

Eng Lit Learner

2:37 AM

Just when the reasons were drowsy with blood-sucking I heard the regular—“Let-us-take-and-heave-him-over” grunt of doolie-bearers in the compound. First one doolie came in, then a second, and then a third. I heard the doolies dumped on the ground, and the shutter in front of my door shook. “That...

meaning literature

3 hours later…

Q: What do you call the "message" written before a poem?

5:12 AM

From Re Judicial by Baticuling (Jesús Balmori) in El libro de mis vidas manileñas (1928) Before the first stanza, the author begins with a little message: "Antonio Manipula, juez ... y falsificación." This provides the reader with some background on what the poem is about: some judge named Manip...

poetry terminology

1 hour later…

6:24 AM

With regard to textual-history, @Tsundoku is right. The reason a question like "when was this story first written down?" is about its textual history is that it's about the first appearance in print or manuscript of a particular work, not about the story's being adapted to a different medium.

Q: What does "exalted suffering" mean?

This passage is from The Children's Bach by Helen Gaener Spring came. In the mornings, when the first person opened the back door, the whole bulk of air in the house shifted and warmed. Women sighed in expensive dress shops, as if even to contemplate fine stuffs were too much to bear. Dexter too...

meaning the-childrens-bach helen-garner

@Tsundoku Though I'm not sure I'd entirely agree that it's only about authors and editors. Gareth's answer about the South English Legendary references two different mss. Finding out how and why the mss. are so different from each other, and which one reflects an older version of the story, would take textual scholarship, and would be part of the work's textual history. But this involves scribes and compilers rather than authors and editors.

(It's not clear that all the tales in the Legendary are by the same author, as I understand.)

(And sometimes a later mss. reflects an earlier version of the story, so it's not about just dating the mss. either, it's seeing what they derive from.)

I know I have also said that "text" doesn't just mean written/printed work, and that's true, in that films or folk tales are also "texts," but that's not what "text" refers to when we speak of a work's textual history. As @Tsundoku said, that term specifically means the history of alternative versions of a single written work.

7:15 AM

@verbose A question about differences between the oral and written versions of a story, like this, would also be textual-history, right? Or can we only talk about the textual history of the story that Khani wrote down, and the previous oral traditions that inspired it don't count as part of its textual history?

7:51 AM

@Bookworm With this question, @Alex has entered the top 40 highest-rep users.

8:05 AM

@Randal'Thor I'm leaning "no," since it's about changes Ahmad Khani made rather than about when he actually wrote the story down. However, there's an argument to be made for "yes," given the very last question you ask: "Has anyone made a study of the oral forms to be able to do a careful comparison?"

Assuming that the study relies on written-down versions of the tale, and that Khani's version is considered definitive, then the genesis of Khani's version does reflect the larger textual history of the tale.

@Randal'Thor Congratulations @Alex!

8:27 AM

Thanks for accepting the Lotos-Eaters answer, Randolph. I was rather pleased with it.

8:48 AM

I snuck into the chat rooms for Hinduism SE and Mythology and Folklore SE to highlight our current Mahabharata topic challenge. The rooms seem very dead, though, so I dunno. Also, when I left the former room, the automated confirmation dialog box said, "Do you want to leave Hinduism?" which seemed like rather a personal question; my religious beliefs are not SE's bidness, yo 🥸

Imma start a rumor that proem is a portmanteau comprising "pre" and "poem"

@verbose yw. I was always intending to accept it, just got a bit of a backlog of questions to accept answers on.

At least on Lit I don't get constantly nagged for being slow to accept answers. looks askance at Puzzling :-P

This question about the Lady of Shalott reminded me of the time when a student of mine turned in a paper consistently referring to her as the lady of Shallot. Now I keep imagining her as an onion.

Hers is indeed a many-layered, tearful story.

@Randal'Thor well it makes sense not to accept the first answer that comes along, as a more thoughtful or better-supported answer that takes some time to compose might randomly appear a day or two later.

@verbose Shallots always make me think of this riddle.

@verbose makes a chatroom called Humanity

9:06 AM

@verbose Or, y'know, a year or three later. I still maintain that Beastly Gerbil's answer is just wrong.

@Randal'Thor 'xcept I'm a misanthrope too, so...

> A misanthrope I can understand—a womanthrope, never!

@Randal'Thor nice one.

@verbose It wouldn't be the first time BG posted an answer which is just wrong.

@Randal'Thor ah

Tsundoku has done that loads of times, posted a new good answer long after a poor upvoted/accepted answer.

Or not even poor: sometimes there's a decent answer and then he comes along and posts an even better one.

9:23 AM

That's a good thing to do.

Tsundoku

Wow. This question now requires a more detailed answer than verbose's. Or the OP misclicked.

OP had a couple of decent follow-up questions in the comments. He posted them in what was the middle of the night the day I posted the answer, so I didn't get around to addressing them right away. And I'm actually rather busy with a bunch of stuff, so I've not had as much time to spend on here. I guess he posted the bounty because he thought I wasn't going to address his comments. I did expand my answer to tackle those comments, and he accepted it.

2 hours later…

11:39 AM

@Randal'Thor With fewer than 30 posts, yikes! On other sites it required several hundred posts to reach such a milestone.

The answer there has quickly made it to about the top 1% of all-time answers.

@verbose Thanks.

12:07 PM

@Alex Well, it's easier to get into the top N highest-rep users on a smaller site which doesn't have so many users or so many high-rep users.

I saw to my surprise that you aren't in the top 40 on SFF.

Apparently it takes 55k now to get into the top 40 there.

@Randal'Thor It would be cool to get there with (basically) just one tag.

I see you enjoy playing tag with the reputation leagues.

On another site it took me about 1,000 posts to get to the top 10.

@Randal'Thor 20,000 Reputation Under the Leagues

1 hour later…

b_jonas

1:29 PM

@verbose A new user who gives feedback to the answer to clarify their question. Always good to see.

On a different note, I just re-read Christine Nöstlinger's children's book Konrad oder das Kind aus der Konservbüchse, (1985) translated by Bor Ambrus as Konzerv Konrád. I've read this very long ago, when I was still a child. The story differs a lot from what I recalled: in particular there's a girl of the same age as Konrád who has a central role, which I didn't recall at all.

I recalled the premise of the book and what causes the complication, and some of the ending, but not the actual characters or most of the details of the story.

2 hours later…

Q: Is the Ramayana contained in the Mahabharata?

3:42 PM

Wikipedia says: Among the principal works and stories in the Mahābhārata are the Bhagavad Gita, the story of Damayanti, the story of Savitri and Satyavan, the story of Kacha and Devyani, the story of Ṛṣyasringa and an abbreviated version of the Rāmāyaṇa, often considered as works in their own ri...

intertextuality mahabharata sanskrit-literature ramayana

4:12 PM

@Bookworm This is probably a very naive question, but I'm trying to learn.

4:57 PM

→ 18 messages moved to Trash

2 hours later…

6:30 PM

Hey, it’s Star Wars day. May the fourth be with you!

bobble

How about the first, second, and third? They want to be wanted.

Tsundoku

6:50 PM

@bobble I think those are Star Was.