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Bookworm
Bookworm
1:45 AM
0
Q: Why did Mama put the poison in his tea

Matrim CauthonIn the novel Purple Hibiscus, Mama kills Papa by putting poison in the tea that he shared with his children, which is not lost on Kambilli. “Why did you put it in his tea?” I asked Mama, rising. My voice was loud. I was almost screaming. “Why in his tea?” It seems like a pretty important th...

purple-hibiscus
 
 
7 hours later…
BESW
BESW
8:55 AM
BTW, in March I attended a lecture on "Yapese Dance as Literature" which used George McFadden's definition as a springboard:
> Works in language by which a community defines itself through the course of its history.
I found it very interesting that this conceptualization of literature eschews entirely any concern about medium or format, in favor of the work's role in society. By this vision not all written works are literature, and many non-lexical works are.
It empowers the rather worrisome "literary canon" notion, though it's open enough to interpretation regarding deliberation and intent (or lack thereof) in how a community chooses what works define it.
...I should probably read some McFadden.
All I've got here are my notes from the lecture.
This is not to say that it's a workable definition of literature for this site, not by a long shot.
It's an interesting, useful, actively applied definition of literature that steps away from the scope of discussion we've been having, and is probably a good illustration of how flexible the concept can be.
Ah, here we go:
> I should say, then, that literature is a canon which consists of those works in language by which a community defines itself through the course of its history. It includes works primarily artistic and also those whose aesthetic qualities are only secondary. The self-defining activity of the community is conducted in the light of the works, as its members have come to read them (or concretize them)
- McFadden, George. 1978. ‘Literature’: a many-sided process.
That PDF looks like a good read, actually.
 
BESW
BESW
9:34 AM
an 1891 manuscript gifted by a writer to her friend had two endings, each hidden behind a paper door—earliest print… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/900398567151423490
Tweeted by xfoml on August 23, 2017 at 4:45 PM
 
Bookworm
Bookworm
0
Q: Why do some books have colors on the edges of the pages?

MithrandirOn some books, I've noticed that they have colors on the edges of the pages. For instance, on my Tikkun : And on a G'mara (part of the Talmud): What is the point of these colors? Are they only found on religious books?

book-collecting
 
BESW
BESW
10:14 AM
I hesitated before sharing this, but I'm still thinking about it a week later. Readers/Writers: Don't be this guy. https://t.co/tJcCPCvFem
Tweeted by JenAshleyWright on September 2, 2017 at 10:49 PM
 
 
2 hours later…
Bookworm
Bookworm
11:51 AM
-1
Q: Meaning of Rumi's quote "Lo, for I to myself am unknown, now in God's name what must I do?"

NapoleanI really like this quote but didn't get it's correct meaning. My deduction is - One is asking God that what should he do when he didn't know himself at first. What is the meaning of Rumi's quote "Lo, for I to myself am unknown, now in God's name what must I do?"

meaning quote-identification line
 
BESW
BESW
12:50 PM
let's play "Consider the Consequences!", the earliest known choose-your-path novel, together in this thread—we'll v… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/904467641212874752
Tweeted by xfoml on September 3, 2017 at 10:14 PM
 
BESW
BESW
1:01 PM
What authors want: 1) reviews 2) to know who your favorite character is and why in detail. Bullet point or essay format are both fine.
Tweeted by AmmoniteInk on September 2, 2017 at 9:05 PM
My favourite poem involving a jereboa https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/jerboa
Tweeted by sydneypadua on September 4, 2017 at 10:25 AM in reply to sydneypadua
 
Bookworm
Bookworm
1:40 PM
0
Q: Can absence of information be considered a stylistic choice?

Clangorous ChimeraIn The Road by Cormac McCarthy the names of the man and the boy are never revealed. Would this technically be considered a stylistic choice of the author? I pulled up a definition and it says "Style describes how the author describes events, objects, and ideas." Is the lack of names a style, or j...

cormac-mccarthy style
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
@BESW hmmm, yeah, I think this scope discussion would be more productive if we all did some research about how academia handles this question.
Or it doesn't have to be academia. But at least do some research.
Reddit has it's own version of expert Q&A about literature over at reddit.com/r/askliterarystudies
Not everyone there is an academic, and the quality of answers tends to be hit or miss, but a surprising number of people there are academics (this doesn't mean they are right or that they write good answers, of course). Take their stuff with a grain of salt, but it might be useful.
Here are some of their threads on the subject.
Spending ten or so minutes perusing these threads would sharpen everyone's thinking on this issue.
I do of course worry that in these conversations, we are loosing sight of what a scope is actually for.
A scope is useful as a way to form a community.
Having a strict definition is only useful if it helps form a community.
 
BESW
BESW
2:00 PM
We seem to still be suffering from Beta Amnesia.
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
My impression is that people are ignoring the "form a community" part, and focusing on the strict definition part for... reasons that aren't related to what a scope is actually for.
@BESW eternal beta amnesia
And yes, I still haven't heard an actual explanation of why these questions about instrumentals do not fit into our scope. I've heard people say that they aren't literature... and then refer to a definition of literature that won't work for this site for obvious reasons, or refer to a definition that everyone knows but that they won't specify.
I've heard arguments about a "slippery slope" but no explanation about what is bad about the thing about the bottom of the slope (We would become a site about art, not literature. Is that a bad thing? I wouldn't say it's a good thing, but if you're going to make an argument you need to explain it.)
 
BESW
BESW
I'm sure there are supportable reasons to exclude instrumentals from the site scope. I'd like to see them.
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
and with no consideration of whether there is a scope that still is about literature but doesn't include art (if you're going to make a slippery slope argument, you have to make sure that there isn't an escape hatch).
I've seen people argue that you don't have to explain why when coming up with a consensus. Let's be clear, the reason why we are reconsidering this consensus is that there is a sizable portion of this community who feels that music questions should at least be given a trial period.
But if you're going to close questions, you owe it to the person whose questions you're closing to give them an actual explanation, not a link to a meta post that has no explanation.
And if there's a dispute within a community, you can't resolve that dispute without reason and presenting your arguments and reasons.
And again, I get the impression that we have lost sight of what a scope is for. A scope is a tool to build a community. We need to find the best tool to build our community.
A scope is not intrinsically tied to the definition of the site's name. I can think of hundreds of questions about math that would be closed as off-topic on math.
In case you ask, most of these thoughts are in a meta post that has been downvoted.
-4
A: Are questions about music on-topic (part 2)?

HamletLet's start at the very beginning. What is a scope? What is its purpose? One of the reasons why Stack Exchange is different from a lot of other Q&A sites on the internet is that our sites have scopes. Unlike Yahoo Answers or Quora, where you can ask questions about any topic under the sun, each...

 
BESW
BESW
2:17 PM
I should get sleep tonight. This week I have to learn Excel well enough to teach it, read a pretentiously self-satisfied play, match typography to characters in the pretentious play and mock up a poster based on it, study the art design of the Brady Bunch intro and mock up a poster inspired by it, do the math for turning a PVC pipe into a home-made slide scanner, research phone plans, research portfolio website hosts, draft some legalese...
...and in my spare time I'd like to read a360 pages of a new RPG system.
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
@BESW fun fun fun.
 
BESW
BESW
Goodnight.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
@BESW night
I'm half-seriously considering asking can music be considered literature on the main site.
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
2:33 PM
@Mithrandir that would probably be more productive than the meta conversation, for the sole reason that people have been doing a better job backing up their claims on main than meta.
@Mithrandir actually, you should ask it. I think it would be a good question.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
I may later tonight
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
2:57 PM
I could write an answer arguing for our site's scope being the theory and practice of "reading" things. I could reasonably make an argument that the music questions could be about reading things, and so are our book-collection questions, and so on.
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
3:18 PM
Well, I've gone ahead and posted a third answer.
0
A: Are questions about music on-topic (part 2)?

HamletOur site is about the theory and practice of "reading" If we have to base our scope around a definition, this is a definition that is both flexible enough to include the things that are on-topic, and strict enough to exclude the things that aren't on-topic. Now, what are the sorts of questions...

 
doppelgreener
doppelgreener
@Hamlet I read that Merging Season blog post, and to me that analogy about a Swedish speaker and English speaker in a Turkish prison weighs for me toward why music shouldn't be on topic here. Even if we could consider it as literature, presumably music fans or practitioners would know more about didgeridoo performance communication than people coming to the site for literature.
2
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
Not entirely sure if this is me backing down on what I know is right here. But I do believe that if we have to define our scope in this way, a scope based on the idea of "reading" is the best way to do it.
@doppelgreener well, no one is saying that all questions about music should be on-topic.
Just "literary" questions about music.
 
doppelgreener
doppelgreener
Oral tradition, I would hope, is still definitely on-topic literature -- that it's spoken rather than written down ought not be an issue, especially because we'd likely have to write it down to talk about it here anyway and so the transformation is made.
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
@doppelgreener and of course, that's not something you can know without giving these questions a chance and seeing what happens.
But eh, people like my idea of our scope being about "reading". Since it's the least harmful definition, I'm going to go along with it.
 
 
2 hours later…
Shokhet
Shokhet
5:20 PM
@doppelgreener Last I checked, oral tradition is still on topic here. There was at least one meta post about that; as far as I'm aware, the topicality of oral tradition hasn't changed.
14
Q: Does Oral-Literature count as literature here?

Beastly GerbilI got into a small discussion with Hamlet (site mod), over this answer of mine. In the comments Hamlet said: Oral literature counts as literature. Just because people don't write things down doesn't make their literature less important. But I'm not sure on that. I made the point (and the co...

discussion scope
...the answers there (especially the top one) are a lot less certain than I remembered.
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
@Shokhet that top answer makes a good point about how literature != scope
And another good point about how we can't resolve this by pointing to a definition of literature.
And in the comments there's another really good point about the importance of giving these questions a trial period.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
5:37 PM
HNQ:
4
Q: Why do some books have colors on the edges of the pages?

MithrandirOn some books, I've noticed that they have colors on the edges of the pages. For instance, on my Tikkun: And on a G'mara (part of the Talmud): What is the point of these colors? Are they only found on religious books?

book-collecting
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
6:18 PM
Well, this is disapointing
-1
Q: In Peter and the Wolf, why is Peter represented by a String quartet?

HamletSergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf is a combination of a children's story and a musical composition. A narrator narrates the story while an orchestra plays the corresponding music. According to the English translation of the performance instructions: Each character of this tale is represe...

music peter-and-the-wolf sergei-prokofiev
Anyone want to vote and reopen it?
For what it's worth, Peter and the Wolf is not a standalone instrumental, there is text involved, and the instrumental is intended to accompany the text.
 
Bookworm
Bookworm
6:34 PM
0
Q: What are the ways academics have defined literature over the years?

HamletOne of the things that we've learned through this site's scope discussions is that literature has a very subjective definition. I'm curious how academics define and have defined literature. Is there any chance we could put together a list of the various definitions of literature that have been p...

history-of-literature
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
@Bookworm @BESW @Mithrandir
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
Warning you that it may be closed as too broad
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
@Mithrandir whatever.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
You also may want to make the answer community wiki if you're inviting people to edit it.
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
@Mithrandir yeah, just did
Figure if we're going to play the definition game, let's get some actual good definitions
 
Napoleon Wilson
Napoleon Wilson
6:38 PM
@Hamlet Yet the question itself seems of inherently musical nature.
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
@NapoleonWilson yep
@NapoleonWilson I guess scope does have something to do with methodology, not topic :)
 
Napoleon Wilson
Napoleon Wilson
I know you all disagree about if those questions would be on-topic or not. But given the opinion of people thinking that pure musical questions are off-topic, having a text existing in addition to it doesn't seem to change much in the actual question and its assessment under their viewpoint.
So we all know it's controversial, that question being closed is not a surprise then. Disregarding the topicality discussion, its state as an inherently musical question seems less debatable.
@Hamlet How? The topic of that question is music. ;-)
 
user15026
6:57 PM
@Hamlet but you are asking specifically about the music and nothing about the text which is, I suspect, why it got closed
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
@Ash can you separate the text from the music in a composition like this?
 
Napoleon Wilson
Napoleon Wilson
Maybe not. So maybe the question can be rephrased to concentrate more on the connections between both, rather than just asking why strings fit better than brass.
It's still controversial no less, but might appease some of the detractors, maybe the ones who think that the Emily Dickinson thing is a valid question for example.
Sometimes massaging the wording a little more and providing additional context and motivation can help already. But of course if the primary purpose was that of a scope-challenging question, adjusting it to fit into scope might also be counter-productive.
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
7:13 PM
@NapoleonWilson I might end up doing that later, but at the moment I'm just interested in seeing if people participate constructively
 
Napoleon Wilson
Napoleon Wilson
Sure. As said, if it's supposed to challenge scope, it makes sense to go a more extreme way.
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
@NapoleonWilson yep
Of course, it would be interesting to see if people edit the question, and how they edit it.
 
Napoleon Wilson
Napoleon Wilson
But of course that also means turning down the expectations a little and not being surprised when people don't bother too much about some textual form existing in addition to the music. Sometimes they have to be helped to grasp the full picture that you might already have on the matter.
@Hamlet Also true.
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
If a new community member asked this question, and assuming that music without a relationship to text is off-topic, I would hope that we would edit the question rather than turning that new community member away. But eh, lets see what happens.
 
Napoleon Wilson
Napoleon Wilson
That's a noble goal, of course. But the edit threshold might be much higher from (1) a moderator/experienced user asking it and (2) people closing it to make a statement about the scope challenge it was supposed to be. I'm not sure people know you're fine with it being edited to begin with.
 
 
2 hours later…
Hamlet
Hamlet
9:20 PM
I'm voting to re-open. We've got questions about illustrations and book materials; the music in Peter and the Wolf is an auditory equivalent of the illustrations in a heavily-illustrated picture book. This argument might not fly with purely instrumental works, but Peter is not purely instrumental. It has critical lexical elements that would be part of any good answer. — BESW 20 mins ago
:)
Now I got to ask a question about music that has no textual component.
 
Gilles
Gilles
9:34 PM
I'm trying to think up questions on other forms of expression: painting, sculpture, dancing, flowers… All of these have codes, like music, so by the extended definition you're arguing for, they're on-topic
but I know extremely little about these topics and I don't have time to research in the near future
 
BESW
BESW
10:04 PM
The Worst Band in the Universe
The Worst Band In The Universe is a science fiction children's book written and illustrated by Graeme Base published in 1999 by Harry N. Abrams, Inc.. The book comes with a CD containing music based on a music competition that occurs in the middle of the story. Like many of Base's books, the book has minimal text written in verse along with large detailed pictures. The inspiration for the story came from the author's wanting to write something about music, having played in a band prior to his career as an author and illustrator. == Plot summary == The story follows the adventures of a young groob...
 
 
2 hours later…
BESW
BESW
11:51 PM
New York Times review: CAMERA LUCIDA: Reflections on Photography by Roland Barthes, 1980.
Regulars of the chat, and literary theory enthusiasts, will recognize the author.
 

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