The Reading Room

12:54 AM

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Q: What are the similarities between Macbeth and Watchmen, specifically relating to the “tragic hero” theme

I’m trying to research themes or ideas that Watchmen by Alan Moore, and Macbeth by William Shakespeare have in common - and they should all lead into the central theme of “tragic hero”

Bookworm

7:35 AM

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Q: Look for reference of a famous quoting

There is a famous quote that I forget the reference. The saying is similar to "when you know something, it is hard to pretend not to know." A similar saying from Ludwig Wittgenstein is Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie. I think this quote from Wittgenstein delivers a different...

quote-identification

Rand al'Thor

9:30 AM

Lit SE has passed 4000 answers.

Tsundoku

11:01 AM

@Bookworm Relevant: Are questions about the themes of a work Too Broad?

Mithical

11:37 AM

Just discovered The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou on a local book swap shelf

Bookworm

1:27 PM

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Q: Shakespeare, Macbeth - Why in the end, no one is loyal for him and would work, fight for him

First, I am new to the community so I'm sorry if this question is a bad question for this forum, but I need help with my essay. At the end, when England invaded Scotland, no one was left to fight for Macbeth? I was wondering why? I also can't good quotes to prove this point. Thanks for your help

william-shakespeare quote-identification macbeth

Tsundoku

2:04 PM

@Bookworm That almost looks like an edit fight, @Randal'Thor ;-)

Rand al'Thor

Oops :-) And a double review too.

(My review finished 2 minutes later because I wrote a long comment as well.)

Knight

What does rama means in French? For example: health-orama, Frozenrama

soupe-au-rama

Rand al'Thor

2:20 PM

It's not a French word AFAIK. Do you mean the use of -orama in English?

Tsundoku

2:33 PM

Or The Free Dictionary: -orama.

North Læraðr

Wow, no new tags

Tsundoku

2:56 PM

@NorthLæraðr Not enticed by emma-watson? :-P

North Læraðr

@Tsundoku rolls eyes

Enticed in a different way ;P

Tsundoku

I really wonder whether we should create tags for people who haven't actually published anything and that we have only one question about.

@NorthLæraðr Are you afraid of getting a bad rep? ;-)

North Læraðr

@Tsundoku No, I was commenting that she's attractive looking

@Tsundoku well that question is also closed

Tsundoku

3:12 PM

@Knight And if you have questions about French, there is an SE site about that language, where I am also a mod...

@NorthLæraðr But we also have a question about a quote by Boris Spassky, who has never published anything either (unfortunately). So it's not just Emma Watson.

b_jonas

@Tsundoku don't worry, it's a tag used only once and there's no tag description or tag wiki, so the zealous SE software will automatically delete it in a month or so (unless it gets a new question or description).

and since it's a closed question that probably won't survive, we don't even have to figure out how to tag it.

North Læraðr

@Tsundoku But it wasn't vclosed

Tsundoku

I know. My point is, should we really create tags for people who have never published anything if there's only one question about them? It looks like overkill.

North Læraðr

I don't think so

Tsundoku

If they're published authors, it's OK to create tags for them. But if they aren't, why bother?

b_jonas

3:19 PM

@Tsundoku Well let me see. There was one non-closed question like that: literature.stackexchange.com/q/14702/139

Is there any other example of such questions?

Oh, that one is closed too. In that case, do we have any such question?

Tsundoku

That one was closed because it asked for a writing critique.

b_jonas

2

Q: Analysis of a self-written stanza in terms of meter?

A long time ago I used to write poetry, and there was one particular stanza that has always stuck with me and seemed inherently rhythmic, but I’m not familiar with the relevant terminology and so I’m not able to articulate what I’m hearing when I recite it. If possible, could someone please break...

poetry meter

^ That one doesn't have a tag, it seems

Tsundoku

Right, and that's OK, in my opinion.

Napoleon Wilson

3:48 PM

Oh, when I saw that tag I thought it's about a different Emma Watson who is actually an author. ;-)

But no, a tag for that Emma Watson makes about zero sense.

North Læraðr

4:11 PM

@NapoleonWilson haha

Eddie Kal

4:30 PM

@Tsundoku I don't have an opinion regarding those tags either way, but having been published is not a particularly high bar. Most people in this room are probably published

Mithical

...that depends entirely on how you define "published".

If you mean formally through a publishing house, I'm only aware of one user who occasionally pops into chat who meets those criteria (Matt Thrower).

Eddie Kal

Math papers in a journal also count.

Bookworm

5:13 PM

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Q: What's meant here by heavily-leaded?

In "The Funeral Pyre" in Dr. Thorndyke's Case-Book by R. Austin Freeman "1929", Gervis and Thorndyke were at the station where they found the bookstall keeper in the act of sticking up a placard of the evening paper, saying: On our arrival at the station, we found the bookstall keeper in the act...

short-stories r-austin-freeman

Rand al'Thor

6:15 PM

@EddieKal Not as literature ;-)

Eddie Kal

@Randal'Thor You know I'd go 12 rounds with anybody on this. But maybe not today. I need to find me some time to read Gödelian literature

Rand al'Thor

I suppose some few maths papers might be written in a poetical style :-P

When I was preparing for undergraduate maths exams, there was one examiner who wrote model solutions that really flowed like poetry. I don't know how, but somehow his solutions were always amazing to read. Beautiful handwriting too.

North Læraðr

6:40 PM

@Randal'Thor Right. y=x^2+6x+3, I'm a tree, go measure me

Rand al'Thor

There was a young fellow from Trinity,
Who took the square root of infinity.
But the number of digits
Gave him the fidgets,
So he dropped maths and took up divinity.

North Læraðr

Negative b plus or minus the square root of b
Minus 4 a times c divided by 2 a, now see
This is the quadratic formula, it's for finding the roots or
Zeros of quadratics you can't easily factor
WHEEEEE

Negative b plus or minus the square root of b
Minus 4 a times c divided by 2 a, now see
This is the quadratic formula, it's for finding the roots or
Zeros of quadratics you can't easily factor
But only works when two is the highest degree

Haha!

Rand al'Thor

6:56 PM

I've seen a proof of the Heine-Borel theorem written in iambic pentameter.

North Læraðr

SHOW ME

I mean I don't know what the Heine-Borel theorem is but

That genuinely sounds really funny

Rand al'Thor

> This theorem's more than just a little fun:
let X be all the reals from nought to one
and give me S a set of open sets
together covering the whole of X.
All X can be enclosed by a subset
of S of finite size, and so we get
that X is a compact subset of R
and then so all closed bounded subsets are.
>
> Now take a set from X and call it Y
containing all the x which satisfy
"from nought to x in n subsets from S
(some n which is of finite size, no less!)"
Since S covers all X and must contain
a single set which reaches nought, it's plain

Credit to Ben Millwood.

Gareth Rees

I know a statement of the Banach fixed-point theorem in the form of a limerick.

Gareth Rees

7:43 PM

It's a bit annoying that retagging a question bumps to the top of the front page — on a small site like literature.se we don't want to overwhelm the front page with edits, but then carrying through a retagging scheme takes many days

Tsundoku

7:59 PM

@Mithical I have published a few dozen peer-reviewed conference papers and a few journal papers. That's rather formal, I think. And a book chapter.

So that probably makes several of us in this room.

Rand al'Thor

8:16 PM

@GarethRees Agreed, but it's been asked for ad nauseam on main meta: It should be possible to retag a question without bumping it to the front page (2009), Disabling bumping for retags by hi-rep users (2011), Tool for peer-reviewed no-bump mass retagging (2011), ...

... Allow non-bumping minor edits, but review them on /review (2012), Give mods/communities better tools for large retagging jobs (2016), ...

Gareth Rees

8:40 PM

Well, anyway my plan is to tag the r-austin-freeman questions with dr-thorndyke instead of short-stories and similarly for g-k-chesterton and father-brown (where appropriate)

Rand al'Thor

Instead of, or as well as?

Gareth Rees

Could be "as well as" if people prefer

Rand al'Thor

8:56 PM

I'm not sure which is better. On the one hand, short-stories is often used to replace specific-work tags, not to supplement them. On the other hand, thinking of tags as a bat-signal for experts, someone who likes answering questions about short stories will also want to brose through those Dr Thorndyke / Father Brown questions.

Looking at the most common tags used together with short-stories, and filtering out author/language tags and generic tags, we've got father-brown, reginald, ... but not sherlock-holmes.

Gareth Rees

9:08 PM

The form tag is kind of redundant, just like we don't need poetry on questions tagged aurora-leigh. But on the other hand if it helps people looking for questions to answer, then it does no harm

Bookworm

11:06 PM

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Q: Why is Minas Tirith called "Gondor" in Return of the King by king Théoden?

As I understand it, Gondor is the big country where a lot of important stuff happens. Minas Titirh, with its series of walls going in circles, is simply the main city of Gondor. The capital if you will. So why does Théoden say things which suggest that the city is called "Gondor"? Arise, arise, ...

j-r-r-tolkien the-lord-of-the-rings

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