"Edited for the Modern Reader"

erilar wrote:
> In article <47f97464$0$5603$607ed4bc@cv.net>, "Evelyn C. Leeper"
> <eleeper.TakeThisOut@optonline.net> wrote:
>> erilar wrote:
>>> AHA ! A "modern reader", obviously. You like your Mark Twain
>>> abridged, I take it? And I shudder to think how you want
>>> Shakespeare rewritten.
>> I hope everyone is aware that almost all editions of Shakespeare do
>> at least modernize the spelling.
>>
> It's not as if English spelling was particularly regular back
> then--just a bit messier than it has become. Changing the spelling
> is one thing; changing or cutting the words is quite another.

Changing the spelling, however, in a case like Shakespeare, often also
alters pronunciation. I can stand an edition with modernized spelling,
if it at least doesn't brutalize the text (though I *greatly* prefer
old-spelling editions), but the general practice is enough to make me
cry "bloudy murther!" If that weren't bad enough, in some cases the
altered spelling also changes the number of syllables in a word, so that
the meter is ruined.

--
Dan Clore

My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
 >> Stay informed about: "Edited for the Modern Reader" 

In the Year of the Earth Rat, the Great and Powerful Christopher
Adams declared:
> erilar wrote:
>> AHA ! A "modern reader", obviously. You like your Mark Twain
>> abridged, I take it? And I shudder to think how you want Shakespeare
>> rewritten.
>
> I can't imagine the thought processes which would unironically rank J. R. R.
> Tolkien with Mark Twain or William Shakespeare.
>

Shakespeare=Best English language author of the 17th Century
Twain=Best English language author of the 19th Century
Tolkien=Best English language author of the 20th Century

Satisfied?

--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
Franklin: We could go to war with whomever we wished, but at the
same time, act like we didn't want to. If we allow the people to
protest what the government does, then the country will be forever
blameless.
-South Park
 >> Stay informed about: "Edited for the Modern Reader" 

In the Year of the Earth Rat, the Great and Powerful Steve Hayes
declared:
> >
> Have they done that to the "King James" Bible too?
>

Yea, unlesse the texte louks lyk this, any work of the 17th Century
(or, really, anything prior to Johnson's dictionary) has had the
spelling standardized.

--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
Dollhouse girls don't have all the answers.
-Diablo Cody
 >> Stay informed about: "Edited for the Modern Reader" 

In the Year of the Earth Rat, the Great and Powerful William
December Starr declared:
> In article <65nflvF2gjar6U1.DeleteThis@mid.individual.net>,
> Sean O'Hara <seanohara.DeleteThis@gmail.com> said:
>
>> If you believe "modern people" are morons, sure. But if that's the
>> case, they should refrain from reading rather than having
>> literature dumbed down for their reading level.
>
> Altertatively, some literature really should have been edited with a
> steam-driven machete the first time around.
>

No, it shouldn't. If you don't like it, that's fine. But don't
pretend that if you can't understand it there's something wrong with it.

--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
Enid: Yeah. That'll definitely happen.
-Ghost World
 >> Stay informed about: "Edited for the Modern Reader" 

In the Year of the Earth Rat, the Great and Powerful Steve Hayes
declared:
> On Sun, 6 Apr 2008 12:44:51 -0700, "Mike Schilling"
> <mscottschilling.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> IOW, Tolkien hadn't yet figured out how much darker the sequel would
>> be than The Hobbit was.
>
> Unlikely.
>
> As in "The hobbit", Tolkien is making the reader aware that hobbits are the
> last kind of people one would expect to have heroic adventures.
>

HOME makes quite clear that he originally conceived the book as a
light-hearted children's story like "The Hobbit," but it mutated as
he worked through it. He did go back and change the tone in places,
but kept the first few chapters as a transition.

--
Sean O'Hara <http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com>
Nixon: Hello, Morbo. How's the family?
Morbo: Belligerent and numerous.
Nixon: Good man. Nixon's pro-war and pro-family.
-Futurama
 >> Stay informed about: "Edited for the Modern Reader" 

In article <drache-CCD519.09415807042008.DeleteThis@news.airstreamcomm.net>,
erilar <drache.DeleteThis@chibardun.net.invalid> said:

> Steve Hayes <hayesmstw.DeleteThis@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Have they done that to the "King James" Bible too?
>
> There are all manner of "modern" versions now. Any excerpts
> I've seen completely lack the poetry of the King James version.

And thank God for that[*1]. The Bible's a hard enough read --
usually due to being boring as hell[*2] -- without maiking the
reader fight through a distortion filter too.

*1: Figuratively speaking, of course.

*2: Ibid.

--
William December Starr <wdstarr.DeleteThis@panix.com>
 >> Stay informed about: "Edited for the Modern Reader" 

In article <65usipF2hfj5mU2.TakeThisOut@mid.individual.net>,
Sean O'Hara <seanohara.TakeThisOut@gmail.com> said:

> In the Year of the Earth Rat, the Great and Powerful William
> December Starr declared:
>
>> Altertatively, some literature really should have been edited
>> with a steam-driven machete the first time around.
>
> No, it shouldn't. If you don't like it, that's fine. But don't
> pretend that if you can't understand it there's something wrong
> with it.

Important note: "I {don't want to have to plow through} / {derive no
pleasure from reading} all this" not-equals "I can't understand this."

--
William December Starr <wdstarr.TakeThisOut@panix.com>
 >> Stay informed about: "Edited for the Modern Reader" 

Dan Clore wrote:
> erilar wrote:
>> In article <47f97464$0$5603$607ed4bc@cv.net>, "Evelyn C. Leeper"
>> <eleeper DeleteThis @optonline.net> wrote:
>>> erilar wrote:
>>>> AHA ! A "modern reader", obviously. You like your Mark Twain
>>>> abridged, I take it? And I shudder to think how you want
>>>> Shakespeare rewritten.
>>> I hope everyone is aware that almost all editions of Shakespeare do
>>> at least modernize the spelling.
>>>
>> It's not as if English spelling was particularly regular back
>> then--just a bit messier than it has become. Changing the spelling
>> is one thing; changing or cutting the words is quite another.
>
> Changing the spelling, however, in a case like Shakespeare, often also
> alters pronunciation. I can stand an edition with modernized spelling,
> if it at least doesn't brutalize the text (though I *greatly* prefer
> old-spelling editions), but the general practice is enough to make me
> cry "bloudy murther!" If that weren't bad enough, in some cases the
> altered spelling also changes the number of syllables in a word, so that
> the meter is ruined.

Well, the number of people who even know that Shakespeare had meter
seems to be decreasing, or no one would have thought that the following
was from his JULIUS CAESAR:

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the
citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a
double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the
mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood
boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in
seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with
fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto
the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done.
And I am Caesar."

But they did. <http://www.snopes.com/quotes/caesar.asp>

--
Evelyn C. Leeper
All art at some time and in some manner becomes mass entertainment,
and that if it does not it dies and is forgotten. --Raymond Chandler
 >> Stay informed about: "Edited for the Modern Reader" 

On Mon, 07 Apr 2008 09:41:58 -0500, erilar <drache.RemoveThis@chibardun.net.invalid>
wrote:

>In article <h66jv35icntl3vpbi1an6vh1tqd0bsf2fj.RemoveThis@4ax.com>,
> Steve Hayes <hayesmstw.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Have they done that to the "King James" Bible too?
>
>There are all manner of "modern" versions now. Any excerpts I've seen
>completely lack the poetry of the King James version.

I know that.

What I want to is whether the spelling of the "King James" version you see
today is the same as that in King James's own copy.


--
Steve Hayes
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/litmain.htm
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/hayesstw
http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/Methodius
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On Fri, 4 Apr 2008 23:33:17 -0700 (PDT), Ed Augusts <edaugusts.TakeThisOut@gmail.com>
wrote:
>Wouldn't a person be bordering on insanity if he took Proust's magnum
>opus and tried to edit Proust, and his work, which are
>indistinguishable, down into what sounds like the length and breadth
>and insight of a Stephen King's fourteenth novel?

What's wrong with _The Talisman_? That's one of his (and Straub's, too)
best. (Unless you're only counting solo works, in which case you mean
_Thinner_, but that one was all right, too. A little slight, yeah.)

--
chuk
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Marko Amnell wrote:
> On 6 huhti, 19:43, "Francis A. Miniter" <famini....RemoveThis@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> �I have read The Lord of the Rings more times than
>> I have any other book. �And still, or should I say still
>> more, I appreciate the richness of his prose. � There are
>> many passages where he deliberately uses vague allusion to
>> stimulate the imagination of the reader. �And it works.
>> Just look at the discussions in r.a.b.tolkien. � And for
>> first sentences, I rank the opening lines of LOTR among the
>> top five I have come across.
>
> Book recommendation. You might enjoy _The Keys of Middle-Earth:
> Discovering Medieval Literature through the Fiction of J.R.R.
> Tolkien_,
> by Stuart Lee. It's a study of which passages of medieval English
> literature inspired specific passages of Tolkien's fiction. I'll give
> you
> just one example of the sort of thing it does. In _The Hobbit_ Bilbo
> engages in a game of "riddes in the dark" underground with Gollum
> (to stop Gollum from attacking him). That's a memorable passage.
> In addition, in Peter Jackson's film Ian McKellen as Gandalf intones
> these same words "riddes in the dark" in quite another context,
> pondering over the mystery of the One Ring. Anyway, in _The Keys of
> Middle-Earth_, Stuart Lee has dug up a medieval passage about a
> game of riddles that is uncannily similar to Bilbo and Gollum's game.
> It's an Old English passage to do with such a game of riddles between
> the Biblical king Solomon and wise men from Persia. When I read this
> explanation of the phrase "riddles in the dark" I knew I had to get
> the book.
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Keys-Middle-Earth-Discovering-Medieval-Literatur...p/14039
>

Thank you very much for the recommendation. As I also am
trying to learn what I can of medieval literature, this hits
on two interests of mine,


Francis A. Miniter
 >> Stay informed about: "Edited for the Modern Reader" 

Sean O'Hara wrote:
> In the Year of the Earth Rat, the Great and Powerful Steve Hayes declared:
>> On Sun, 6 Apr 2008 12:44:51 -0700, "Mike Schilling"
>> <mscottschilling.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> IOW, Tolkien hadn't yet figured out how much darker the sequel would
>>> be than The Hobbit was.
>>
>> Unlikely.
>> As in "The hobbit", Tolkien is making the reader aware that hobbits
>> are the
>> last kind of people one would expect to have heroic adventures.
>
> HOME makes quite clear that he originally conceived the book as a
> light-hearted children's story like "The Hobbit," but it mutated as he
> worked through it. He did go back and change the tone in places, but
> kept the first few chapters as a transition.
>

He went back and changed it a lot, even after it was
published. I wonder if he ever stopped editing. What we
know now as LOTR is in fact the Revised Second Edition,
published in 1965. The first edition was 1954-55. But
between his original conception and the final achievement a
lot of time and a world war intervened. The Hobbit,
remember, was pre-war - 1937.


Francis A. Miniter
 >> Stay informed about: "Edited for the Modern Reader" 

William December Starr wrote:
> In article <drache-CCD519.09415807042008.DeleteThis@news.airstreamcomm.net>,
> erilar <drache.DeleteThis@chibardun.net.invalid> said:
>
>> Steve Hayes <hayesmstw.DeleteThis@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Have they done that to the "King James" Bible too?
>> There are all manner of "modern" versions now. Any excerpts
>> I've seen completely lack the poetry of the King James version.
>
> And thank God for that[*1]. The Bible's a hard enough read --
> usually due to being boring as hell[*2] -- without maiking the
> reader fight through a distortion filter too.
>
> *1: Figuratively speaking, of course.
>
> *2: Ibid.
>

In fact, the KJV misses a lot of actual poetry. E.g., in
Genesis, Job and the opening paean to Logos in John.


Francis A. Miniter
 >> Stay informed about: "Edited for the Modern Reader"