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Gareth Rees
Gareth Rees
13:29
So, what happened to English poetry in the 15th century? 14th century poetry (Chaucer, Gower, Langland, the Gawain poet) remains readable; and so does 16th century poetry (Wyatt & Surrey onwards). But 15th century poetry (Barclay, Hoccleve, Lovelich, Lydgate, etc.) is no good!
There is an old theory that these poets were trying to write iambic verse and failing, which is not very convincing—but if not that, then what did they think they were writing? Accentual verse with an irregular number of accents per line? Or do we just not know how to pronounce the words?
C. S. Lewis wrote an essay, "The Fifteenth-Century Heroic Line" (1938), which sets out the accentual theory in a moderately convincing way. Unfortunately though, the verse is still bad! Even Lewis admits that "Nothing will make Barclay a good poet".
 
3 hours later…
Librarian
Librarian
16:30
0
Q: How should the accepted-answer feature be changed?

TsundokuIn March 2017, not very long after Literature Stack Exchange had launched, Hamlet asked, Is the accepted answer feature good for this site? In his question, he wrote, The thing about accepting an answer is it can be misinterpreted as saying that there is nothing to discuss. (…) On a site like li...

discussion accepted-answer
Bookworm
Bookworm
17:19
0
Q: Viktor Erofeyev "The Akimuds": Animal motif

Hauke ReddmannIn the SF/Fantasy/political satire "The Akimuds" by Viktor Erofeyev, selfsame Akimuds (sort of a stand-in for God, Jesus and the angels) claim they are ducks. Now, "doves" would have been obvious, from christian iconology, but ducks? I have the nagging feeling there is a Russian pun or cultural r...

meaning
0
Q: What do the "Evil Spirits" have to do with a house becoming leprous?

MithicalIn Isaac Bashevis Singer's short story "Stories From Behind the Stove", one character associates the "Evil Ones" with being capable of anything, giving a leprous house as an example: Two weeks passed. The simple people had other things to worry about. We young men in the study house did discuss ...

short-stories yiddish-literature isaac-bashevis-singer
 
5 hours later…
Bookworm
Bookworm
21:56
1
Q: I am trying to find out about a book which I enjoyed when I was a child in the late 1960s-early 1970s. It was called the moon game. It was read to me

Moira KingThis book was read to me often. It had a story & delightful pictures. It featured a white kitten playing with the moon both in the sky & on the ground in puddles. I also enjoyed reading the book when I was able to read. It was around in the 1960s

identification-request
Tsundoku
Tsundoku
22:07
I have posted an answer to the question How to refer to religious texts on this site?
Napoleon Wilson
Napoleon Wilson
22:50
As much as your general sentiment is laudable, I'm afraid it quite fails in the face of practical mutual coexistence and a working site. It reads more like an attempt to solve the broader issue of religion and its unfortunate protection from scrutiny, criticism and progress and less as a viable policy for a working site.
As much as the former is a problem in our society, I'm afraid for the latter you sometimes have to accept that people can very well be offended by certain claims and sometimes just swallowing one's atheistic pride and accepting that maybe leaving religious texts to other sites is utlimately a more pragmatic solution for a healthy being together.
Things like assuming people are actually offended on behalf of nothing but an inanimate text are logical fallacies that make one leap too much in the reasoning and really just...make no sense.
Maybe being able to include the Bible in a question for the top 3 floods in literature just isn't the best frontline for fighting one of the most humongous battles in human culture when a more pragmatic approach could lead to a not all too different outcome for the site itself, since as Gareth's answer explains in most cases discussing the truth or fictionality of whatever text is ultimately not necessary or even the site's job.

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