= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
JoshuaZ comments on To like, or not to like? - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (85)
It may be worth noting that there's a fair bit of evidence that over the long-term, only some literary wors get a lot of attention, and this does not seem to be closely correlated with what at a specific time is widely read or considered great literature. Much of what we consider great works of literature from the 19th century were not as widely regarded as they are today, while other works have fallen by the wayside. Similar examples show up elsewhere and elsewhen. For example, The Tale of Genji was written in the middle of the Heian era when a lot of different literary experimentation was going on, and it took time for it to be recognized.
It may make sense therefore to use a test of time as a way of determining literary merit. This isn't ideal: it is possible that once a work is sufficiently well-done, the actual level of acclaim more closely resembles a random walk. I'm not sure how to test that hypothesis.
Really? My impression had been that Genji was recognized almost immediately as one of the great works of Heian literature, based on the profusion of manuscripts prepared in Shikibu's time, the countless imitators, the testimony of the Sarashina Nikki, the commentaries prepared not too long afterwards, and in particular, the very high regard of Fujiwara no Teika, one of the most important literary figures for centuries (I may be biased, since I wrote the Wikipedia entry on Teika), who worked on the manuscript.
I don't think Teika's work is great evidence since that's about 150 years after Genji is written. The rest of your arguments though I think are strong: there's way too much contemporaneous recognition of Genji to use it as an example of what I wanted it to do.
I was hoping I'd have some example from non-Western literature, I may now need to update to this sort of thing being a Western phenomenon.
How much movement of literary judgement would you consider unsurprising? Do you have a source quantifying the movement of judgement of 19th century work?
Regarding, the first question:I'm not sure. Regarding the second, I don't unfortunately have a good source for this. I My impression on this is from talking to multiple lit professors and teachers who have mentioned this phenomenon.