The Reading Room

9:24 AM

Still the same empty tag wiki excerpts: mariem-mint-derwich and elene-dariani (for which we need to do research to answer this question). ubik will disappear after the only question that uses it has been roomba'd.

1 hour later…

Q: What does "wash" mean here?

10:25 AM

In LIFE AND LETTERS OF CHARLES DARWIN Volume 2, Darwin's friend wrote in a letter to him: You enclose your sheets in old MS., so the Post Office very properly charge them as letters, 2 pence extra. I wish all their fines on MS. were worth as much. I paid 4 shillings 6 pence for such wash the oth...

meaning charles-darwin

4 hours later…

Q: Why is Russian literature considered part of Western culture when so much of Russia is in the East?

2:32 PM

Russia is a country that straddles both the East and West, and is culturally very diverse. Why and how did so much of Russian literature become part of the Western Canon? Is it because of the themes of Russian literature or because of some historical event? Please explain.

history-of-literature russian-literature

Rand al'Thor

@Bookworm Opinion-based?

Mithical

But they should provide examples of where it's considered Western.

2:53 PM

@Bookworm I don't think this is opinion-based. There are historical reasons why Russian literature has been considered part of "Western" literature. But the Western canon does not exist. Or not anymore.

I have left a comment about the meaning of "Western canon". Whose canon is it anyway?

3:05 PM

You could as well ask why Russia is counted as a European country.

(Which might expose how much that question has to do with literature.)

It's a funny thing about Russia and Europe. We learnt at school that the European continent extends up to the Ural, so that would make the part of Russia where most 19th-century literature comes from European. But that concept of continents is nonsense; it's all Eurasia, but nobody talks of Eurasian culture (for the obvious reason that that would not make sense).

However, there's also the fact that the Russian empire saw itself as the continuation of the Byzantine empire, which was the continuation of the Roman empire. That sounds very European, doesn't it?

Yet you talk about African culture in a much more overencompassing sense than Eurasian culture. Although that might not be all that more appropriate for various reasons either.

@Tsundoku Did they?

@NapoleonWilson Not my source, but anyway: Russia — the Successor of Byzantium.

Same for South and North America. There is a lot more cultural coherence than in Eurasia.

@NapoleonWilson I talk of African elephants, not of African culture. It's too diverse to generalise about in this way.

3:18 PM

Sure.

Yet there are broad cultural terms that generealize African culture into something broader, like "Afrofuturism", for example.

Ah, that's the first instance of "Afrofuturism" since May 2018. I didn't even know it existed.

Is Kafka's Metamorphosis Good? | Richard Dawkins Opens A Can Of Worms | A Conversation on Twitter

3:40 PM

Gregory B. Sadler reads some of the funniest responses to Dawkins's clueless tweet about Kafka's Metamorphosis:

►

identification-request japanese-literature

Q: Life of Clara A. Walsh

I am looking for any biographical information concerning Clara A. Walsh. She wrote "The Master-Singers of Japan," a selection of classical Japanese poetry translated into English. It was published in 1910 and reprinted in 1914 by John Murray.

1 hour later…

4:49 PM

I don't know whether there are any hidden language learning experts in here who would like to become a mod, but Language Learning SE having an pro tempore mod election next month.

I heard Tsundoku is kinda big on that topic.

Oh.

That's where I became a mod without getting elected. One of the other mods went AWOL, so a CM contacted me to ask if I wanted to become a mod.

But why is it a "special election"? Because there is no questionaire?

Oh wait, it starts on July 12? That's in a month.

It's an early announcement. I hope the election brings back a few of the regulars from some time ago.

Gow.

5:57 PM

I am just curious to know how are the online elections designed to provide confidence in the voters ? I was going through the Language Learning SE election. So, had this doubt.

I mean, transparency. How to be transparent. Is this achievable ?

6:22 PM

There are specific statistics on how the STV votes accumulate for the candidates, that will be available once the election is over.

But at the end of the day, you won't get around to simply trusting the system works and SE or whoever isn't forging your login or the numbers itself. But...that's the same with any election. If the system itself is rigged, your chances are off.

bobble

@Gow. SE releases raw vote stats after each election so you can run numbers for yourself. E.g., see the 2020 Lit mod election and click on Download the election data

Of course, if you can't trust the raw vote numbers... then the idea of an election ends up being meaningless

@Bookworm this question has been washed onto the HNQs

Rand al'Thor

6:57 PM

@bobble And finally brought Peter Shor above Matrim Cauthon.

@Tsundoku ELU chat might be a good place to mention that too. They have all sorts of language nerds in there, not only English.

2 hours later…