The Reading Room

2:50 AM

@Randal'Thor Fine, that's an opinion, I guess? But it seems odd that the question should have been taken out of the queue and the rest of the community not even given a chance to vote on it. Moderator privileges, I know. I still disagree; I think "charged" is a fairly obvious word meaning "full of energy". Oh well. Not invested enough to make a big deal out of it.

Bookworm

3:05 AM

0

Q: How were Susan Coolidge's Katy novels received in Victorian Britain?

Susan Coolidge is the pen name of Sarah Chaucey Woolsey (1835–1905). Beginning in 1872, Coolidge published a series of stories about the Carr family. The chief character in most of them is the oldest Carr sibling, Katy. The series comprises: What Katy Did (1872) What Katy Did at School (1873) "C...

verbose

3:56 AM

@Bookworm @PrinceNorthLæraðr @bobble new tags! Be nice and do one apiece, okay? I'm trying not to play favorites

Prince North Læraðr

-_-

Share??

bobble

North can have both

I'm still struggling away at a wiki for [dragonriders-of-pern]

Prince North Læraðr

I'll do 'em tomorrow. You can do them both if you want

bobble

4:32 AM

I'm enjoying the /tools page

Tsundoku

12:31 PM

Literature in the Digital Age: from Close Reading to Distant Reading: free online course, scheduled to start on 15 March 2021.

@bobble I didn't know that could be automated. Where can I find more details about this?

Tsundoku

1:09 PM

@Librarian I think some people would want a migration path to ELU, ELL or both.

The standard migration path to ELL has been requested before, i.e. October 2018, when it did not seem worth the trouble.

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku *2018

I'd be strongly against a migration path to ELU. They close so many of their questions anyway, and most or all of the English language questions we see here would be considered "too basic" for ELU. They wouldn't thank us for dumping such questions on them.

ELL would be OK, but as I wrote on meta recently, it bears the risk of being overused. I'd rather have a close reason for "should be on ELL" and then mods can either migrate after closure or simply reopen if the question does have more literary content than close-voters realised.

verbose

1:25 PM

@Randal'Thor I agree that if a meaning/usage question in a literary context rises to the level of ELU, then it ipso facto is worth retaining here. ELL is another matter; I'd say we should have a "belongs to another site on Stack Exchange" close option that includes ELL instead of (as now) just meta.

Rand al'Thor

The "belongs on another site on SE" close option is a migration path: it automatically migrates any question closed under that option. Migration is actually always open to mods, we can enter any site on the network there not just meta, but setting up a path makes the option available to any five 500+ rep users voting to close.

I'd be against creating one in this case, because I've seen a lot of close votes cast on questions which do have some literary value/context required to answer them fully, but people think they "belong on ELL" because they're asking about the meaning of an English phrase. Once a question is migrated, it's hard to get it back, so I think there should be an additional layer of oversight here.

Hence my suggested close reason of "This question is purely about the meaning of an English word or phrase, and literary context does not help to answer it".

3

bobble

3:24 PM

@Tsundoku Here's the bot's profile, here's its entry on Stack Apps, and the whole thing is run by Lukas Rotter, who is pingable from The Sphinx's Lair.

I'm afraid I have no idea how the blasted thing works

in The Sphinx's Lair, Jan 14 at 13:36, by Lukas Rotter

Yeah, the bot just takes the answer, searches for all linked (non-duplicate) questions within it, and then evaluates those for the stats. The "suggested" format was just kept there from previous installments, which is still useful because it encourages some sort of standardized format so not everyone goes crazy with the formatting :P

Librarian

6:00 PM

1

Q: Where can I find glossaries of literary, poetic and rhetorical terms?

Many questions on Literature Stack Exchange ask about literary devices. Where can question askers (or answerers) find resources about literary, poetic and rhetorical terms?

support

b_jonas

7:02 PM

ok I've got you all a question.

0

Q: What's the significance of leap years in Poe's “The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade”

Edgar Allan Poe's story “The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade” (link to full text) has this curious sentence. This is about Scheherazade volunteering to marry the king, despite knowing that the king would kill her on the morning after the wedding. Accordingly, and although we do not fin...

edgar-allan-poe

Bookworm

1

Q: What's the significance of leap years in Poe's “The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade”

Edgar Allan Poe's story “The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade” (link to full text) has this curious sentence. This is about Scheherazade volunteering to marry the king, despite knowing that the king would kill her on the morning after the wedding. Accordingly, and although we do not fin...

short-stories edgar-allan-poe

Napoleon Wilson

Two even.

Bookworm

7:54 PM

1

Q: Why are the children in "Pilgrim' Progress" given Biblical names instead of character-based names?

In The Pilgrim's Progress, virtually all of the characters are named after their character (e.g. Mr. Pliable, Mr. Honest, Mr. Worldly Wise-Man, Mercy, etc.). However, Christian's children all have Biblical names (e.g. Matthew, Joseph, Samuel). Why is this?

name-significance pilgrims-progress john-bunyan

Gallifreyan

8:57 PM

@Randal'Thor I think one could argue here that a phrase's meaning can always be understood given sufficiently voluminous context

Tsundoku

11:08 PM

The mystery of Britain’s most famous funeral poet.

Fairy Tales: Meanings, Messages, and Morals: free online course on FutureLearn. Focuses on Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty and the Beast, and Bluebeard.

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