The Reading Room

5:07 AM

@NorthLæraðr From my vantage point that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Why is close-reading allowed to exist but not other analytical tools? "Analysis" "Tools" "Analytical tools" are all non-existent.

Having close-reading but not psychoanalysis is like having one species of mosquitoes but not the Fagaceae family

Bookworm

0

Q: Why is "close reading" necessary?

Following up on this question and answer What is close reading? In literary criticism, close reading is the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of a text. A close reading emphasizes the single and the particular over the general, effected by close attention to individual words, ...

close-reading

Eddie Kal

Yes I understand the historical reasons behind it but now the whole tag system feels heavily curated and affected

@NorthLæraðr And I am afraid I disagree. If those tags were put in place as language tags, why would it even be a problem to tag a bilingual text as such? The real problem is to ignore the English language hegemony and pretend it has always been and should always be that way.

@Bookworm By the way, this question has nothing to do with our discussion about tags. It was only during the final stage of posting it that I was surprised to find outclose-reading was a tag.

@NorthLæraðr Not that it is really the thing I am honing in on, but I do think it warrants a discussion. However, those tags being language-of-origin tags was thrown out there as a given. Not that I have any objection to it--I think it is a reasonable way. I am just pointing out inconsistencies here and there.

Bookworm

5:38 AM

0

Q: Did Julian Huxley write a poem about an axolotl, and if so, what was it?

Julian Huxley was an avid science populariser, researched into the metamorphosis of axolotls, and wrote poetry. I'm pretty sure that these interests were combined in a poem I once came across, possibly in his book Essays of a Biologist. The verse that I remember best (you can see why) went someth...

poetry

Eddie Kal

I am neither for nor against (re)-instating an english-literature tag. I am simply pointing out where things get a little more complicated than they seem and you will get some kinks. How or whether at all can we iron them out? I don't know. I don't have an answer to that. But just because nobody has proposed an explicit answer to a problem doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.

Mithical

6:27 AM

@EddieKal Those all seem kinda broad; if you're asking about a specific method it makes sense to have a tag about that method. "analysis" seems way too broad.

As for why close reading is the only one that exists... it's the only one that's been asked about so far.

Eddie Kal

@Mithical Psychoanalysis is a method. Only in its absence I wondered if analysis or tools had been used.

Mithical

Okay. Have there been any questions specifically about psychoanalysis?

I don't recall seeing any.

Eddie Kal

1

Q: Freudian/psychoanalytical interpretation of the triangular relationship in Toradora!

The central theme in the Japanese light novel/manga Toradora! (とらドラ!) around which the entire story unfolds is the love triangle between the male protagonist Takasu Ryuji and his two girl friends, Aisaka Taiga and Kushieda Minori (Minorin). At the beginning of the story Ryuji has a crush on Minor...

character-analysis japanese-literature manga toradora

Mithical

Great; so we can add the tag there.

Eddie Kal

The psychoanalysis tag was later removed. Not that I am fixated on it. It feels strange to not be able to set it apart as a methodological tool

Mithical

6:33 AM

The only objection I would see is that it's not asking about the method itself.

Eddie Kal

That'd make sense and would give me a pause to consider whether it is the case

I am not sure actually

Mithical

It's asking to employ that particular method, but is not about that specific method in of itself

So... borderline.

Eddie Kal

I'd be on the fence if the guideline is "Only use a theory tag if the question is about that theory". But then again that practice would keep a lot of questions from having a proper tag

Mithical

I'll be frank here: There's almost no precedence here because we don't have a lot of people who actually know about and post about these methods.

Close reading got some attention because Hamlet was a big fan and devoted months to trying to get us to learn it.

But... that's basically it.

Eddie Kal

And I regret not having had the opportunity to be part of that learning experience. I need to know more about close reading.

Mithical

6:41 AM

14

A: Why does the poem "Naming of Parts" contrast war with nature?

This question is best answered using a technique called close reading. So unfortunately, if you're just looking for an answer about the poem "Naming of Parts", you're going to have to read about close reading first. But since close reading is a useful and important concept that explains so much a...

That's basically "Hamlet's guide to close reading".

Eddie Kal

Just throwing this out there: from a 2020 perspective, it should also be noted some scholars associated with New Criticism, the school of thought most directly linked with close reading, vehemently denied feminism, post-colonialism, and some newer schools of thought. For example some hated gender, race, or class-based analysis

That's why new criticism people have been accused of dehistoricizing literature

A text is more than a text.

Rand al'Thor

Lots of interesting discussion in here yesterday/today, and I don't have time to respond properly to all of it now, but some thoughts ...

One thing to bear in mind about tagging, at least in the SE system, is that it's an "emergent folksonomy". I've seen lots of sites where people have tried to create a totally strict and logical system for what tags are used and on what types of questions, but you can never get it perfect. People create tags according to what questions they ask and what tags they feel are needed; even with some curators retagging lots of things, they won't catch (or agree on) everything.

That explains why we have a tag for close-reading but not for all other approaches. Someone (probably a certain then-mod) created the close-reading tag and posted a number of questions to populate it; nobody has (yet) made an effort like that for e.g. psychoanalysis.

Similarly, part of the reason we don't have a tag for english-literature is that we didn't create one until it was "too late". Adding that tag to all questions about English-language stories now would require editing literally thousands of questions.

From one point of view, it does seem unfair to treat English differently from other languages: in a totally objective sense, there's no reason why English should be the default. On the other hand, this is an English-language website populated mostly by English-speaking people with the majority of questions about English literature, so, well, there's the reason for English as a "default".

Regarding dual-language works, I'd say we can put two language tags (or one if it's dual with one of the languages being English). Just like we can put two author tags for a book like good-omens written by two authors in collaboration.

(The five-tag limit is really a problem on this site sometimes ...)

Mithical

Hey, we got the tag length increased; maybe we can get max tags increased also. ;)

Eddie Kal

7:10 AM

@Randal'Thor Flogging a dead horse is boring, so I am just going to submit this to y'all's consideration before signing off and going to bed. "An English-language website populated mostly by English-speaking people" leads to English being the lingua franca which I am totally happy about.

Hey, I am a mod on ELL, a site whose sole purpose is to promote and facilitate the use of the English language and get people on board as smoothly as possible with a globalized Internet community that uses English as the lingua franca. But English as lingua franca is only issue A

But there is another side of it: English as a subject of interest. In that regard, English literature is or should be on equal footing with Mongolian literature or Turkish literature. Issue B is: we don't want to have to see the english-literature tag repeatedly, and that is because of the number of questions we get are about texts written in English.

Issues A and B are connected, granted, but not the same.

I am fine with leaving it at that because like everybody else I don't want to see a tag overpopulating the site either. But I also presenting a more balanced environment where more questions about non-English texts are asked and where as many people interested in Ferdowsi as there are in Chaucer gather here. A nice day to look forward to.

Mithical

117 + 102 + 56 + 45 + 44 + 39 + 21 + 21 + 20 + 17 + 17 + 15 + 14 + 14 + 11 + 7 + 6 + 6 + 5 + 5 + 4 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 601 questions about non-English works.

Bookworm

7:44 AM

0

Q: Why is the birthday slightly different in Ishay Ribo's "Keter Melucha"?

In Ishay Ribo's "Keter Melucha / כתר מלוכה" (a song written in early 2020 about lockdown in Israel), the opening stanza goes like this: בין תרומה לתצווה יום הולדת קצת משונה הכל רגיל כאן לכאורה במה קהל ואהבה Between T'rumah and Tetzaveh A birthday slightly strange Everything normal for the moment...

song-lyrics hebrew-literature ishay-ribo

b_jonas

8:38 AM

@EddieKal That sounds nice, but it's not worth to ask some of those questions about non-English works here, instead of a different forum, where the people who can answer those questions hang out.

Rand al'Thor

@EddieKal I totally agree that balance is a good thing: that's the point of the topic challenge endeavour, among other things. And of course English being the language of discussion doesn't equate to English literature being the default topic. Hey, if we were building this site from the ground up now, maybe I'd push for having an english-literature tag, just because I hate inconsistency :-)

But it is what it is, and I've settled for trying to increase other language tags without seeing a massively dominant english-literature tag.

Regarding the "methods of analysis" tags (or whatever we should call them), I think a tag like close-reading should be used on questions about close reading, rather than questions about a particular text which encourage answers to use close reading. That's why I removed the psychoanalysis tag from the Toradora question: following the general SE principle that "tags should describe what a question is about, not just what it contains".

The same principle we use in not tagging every question about plays with theater, or every question about Sherlock Holmes with mystery-novels, although those tags exist. (Exceptions to that principle on this site include the language tags and poetry/short-stories, which are deliberate exceptions for reasons much discussed on meta.)

I think it's not feasible to use authorial-intent on every question asking what an author intended, or close-reading on every question requesting a close reading of a text. What if an OP says they're open to any of three different approaches - do we add all the tags or none? What about frame challenge answers like "you asked just what the author meant, but here's what can be gleaned from a close reading" - should they be deleted if the tag exists?

It'd be hard to make such a system consistent, since most new askers might not even be aware of concepts such as authorial intent or close reading.

That said, I now realise the close-reading tag hasn't always been used in the way I'm suggesting. In my opinion, we should remove that tag from these two questions, leaving it on only three questions which are about close reading. @Tsundoku @Mithical what do you think?

Mithical

8:59 AM

Was actually going to raise that earlier during my discussion with Eddie, but got sidetracked. I'd agree with removing it from those.

Rand al'Thor

The tag wiki for close-reading even says "Do not use this tag merely because you think that the question's answers would involve close reading."

Bookworm

9:49 AM

0

Q: Did Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire inspire the Archers' Borsetshire?

Barsetshire is a fictional county of England, created by Anthony Trollope for his Chronicles of Barsetshire series published in the mid-19th century. The county town is the equally fictional Barchester. Borsetshire is a fictional county of England, created for the extremely long-running and popul...

inspiration setting anthony-trollope chronicles-of-barsetshire

Tsundoku

11:42 AM

@Randal'Thor No objections from my side. I'll go ahead and remove them.

I have replaced the tags and explicitly mentioned in the edit summary that this was discussed in chat.

@EddieKal Most people don't realise that New Criticism was a school of criticism originating from the American South. (I'm not claiming that all people there are backward but still...)

@EddieKal That equal footing between English and other literatures will always prove elusive here. As a native speaker of Mongolian, you can ask about the meaning of a phrase in an English text so you can figure out, e.g. how to translate it into Mongolian. But as someone who does not know Mongolian well, you can't ask a question about a Mongolian text that you find so difficult to understand that you can't even propose a translation for the English-speaking participants on this site.

That sort of relationship between English and non-English literatures will always be asymmetrical. Questions about non-English literature require that you quote an existing translation or come up with your own. No such effort is required for English texts.

@Bookworm @EddieKal "compared to just reading reading": is that intentional?

Tsundoku

12:23 PM

Since questions are sometimes downvoted or close-voted a bit too quickly, this is a reminder that improving a question and answering it within 12 hours of your edits on the question contributes towards getting a refiner badge. Our site currently has only two of those.

Bookworm

1:10 PM

0

Q: What's meant here by "unlikely neighbourhood"?

In "The Fisher of Men" in Dr. Thorndyke's Case-Book by R. Austin Freeman, Thorndyke was talking about a man who went to visit another one, saying: "Mr. Montague's destination was Isleworth, in which rather unlikely neighbourhood Mr. Jacob Lowenstein, late of Chicago, and now of Berkeley Square, h...

short-stories r-austin-freeman

b_jonas

2:30 PM

@Tsundoku Oh, that's what we have instead of the Reversal badge now? I didn't know

Eddie Kal

@Tsundoku Yes

Eddie Kal

3:03 PM

@Tsundoku Speaking of Mongolian literature I just thought of a question worth asking. Have any Mongolian writers written about the script change the way Pamuk does with Turkish?

Tsundoku

I have never read any Mongolian literature, so I have no idea. (Sounds like we should find a Mongolian work or other for a topic challenge.)

Tsundoku

3:16 PM

@Bookworm @EddieKal's question about close reading went HNQ one hour ago. Not bad for a question about methods.

Rand al'Thor

4:55 PM

@Tsundoku Congratulations!

@b_jonas No, Lifejacket and Lifeboat are the new badges replacing Reversal. Refiner (and its gold equivalent, the incredibly rare Illuminator) are older badges.

Rand al'Thor

5:24 PM

@b_jonas Or we can ask them here and hope to attract (eventually) those topic experts to this site.

Eddie Kal

@Randal'Thor hear hear

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