Asimov being Asimov, he then went on to write a story about Shakespeare being summoned from the past to take a college course on his plays. He failed, of course.
According to popular legend John Lennon had a slightly different reaction to learning that his lyrics were being crudely analysed by high school teachers. He wrote "I am the Walrus".
i took a shakespeare course at university where we were asked to read troilus and cressida and compare it to its source troilus and criseyde by chaucer
i wrote that i disliked the piece because it just read like someone who recently got burned in love venting irrationally, noting that i liked shakespeare's version more because he gives the last word to pandarus(o) who uses it to comically complain about his health and i felt this beautifully subverted the assumed tragedy the characters felt subject to in their stories.. woe is me!
i failed the exam
frustrated i went looking for evidence to defend my claim(i).. though contrary to the linked comic i did find some interesting notes
first off chaucer was a source for shakespeare, but hardly the source of the work
chaucer's main source was boccaccio's il filastrato.. which was based off an earlier version known as le roman de troie by benoît de sainte-maure
but the interesting bit comes from boccaccio's version(ii) because the story itself is only 8 cantos long, even the wikipedia page says the work itself is only 8 cantos long!(iii), but there is an additional canto, a ninth canto, wherein the author, boccaccio, addresses the reader and apologises for writing the poem and states he's unsure where it came from but asserts that he was recently dumped
the course was set up that we would read a work and then write a one page response in class
here is where i voiced my distaste for chaucer 'creating', as was presented to our class, this story while appreciating shakey's subversion of the material
this garnered the 'f' for my opinions about love forlorned
then at the end of each four week period we would, in lieu of exams, choose one work to 'dive deeper on' and write a longer piece
i chose triolus because it was the one piece i got such a low score on
while 'going deeper' i ended up finding, and reading, bocaccio and sainte-maure and wrote about how all four are similar and different and how these comparisons related to my original, correct ;P, intuition
i got a 'd' with complaints to the effects of 'stick to the course material' and 'just drop it'
i think my axe grinding became the professor's honing stone, which is unfortunate that such a circumstance can occur in an as advertised educational environment
Thanks for the additional context - though it's disappointing to hear. Seems the point of teaching this kind of thing should be to encourage people to explore their own interpretations. Having a fixed path for the student to travel seems counterproductive.
i went back and found this old entry from my university days and it turns out i only used the three works: shakespeare, chaucer and boccaccio; as basis for comparison in the paper, stead all four
Why did you omit capital letters and periods and misuse ellipses in a post which attacks academic English? These choices would be annoying enough in any post but for this one in particular they undermine your credibility.
You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal.
Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history.
I'm demonstrating one natural outcome of your criticism here by using proper punctuation, capitalization, and other grammatical minutiae while knowing not the damnedest thing about the quality or literary history of Troilus and Cressida.
> You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal.
Note that I used the word "choice," indicating that I understood it to be a conscious decision rather than a lack of competence.
> Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history.
What makes you think I used them as exclusive signals? My claim wasn't that bad grammar made the parent post bad, it was that bad grammar had a negative contribution towards the overall credibility of the post.
> I'm demonstrating one natural outcome of your criticism...
Your reading comprehension might leave something to be desired, but the fact that a weak building may be built on a strong foundation does not imply that a strong building may have a weak foundation. To be clear: I am referring to your "example," not justifier's post, because I do not believe that justifier has a weak foundation, at least not with respect to grammar, which brings us back to the question of why.
Purposefully employing bad grammar in a post about English is a signal both that the writer holds strong and nontraditional opinions about English and that (s)he lacks the persuasive tact to fight one battle at a time. The way I see it, either quality alone could have led to a justified failing grade on an essay for reasons that have nothing to do with the veracity of its core claim.
Alright, I wrote my reply to you in good humor, but you've clearly taken it personally, so I'll write more plainly.
You're essentially bikeshedding [1] here. 'justifier' wrote an interesting comment that had some actual substance to it, and now you and I are engaged here in a pissing match over the value of its grammar and punctuation, and we're doing that because neither of us is well-enough educated on the actual topic of 'justifier's comment to respond substantively to it but yet we both want to express an opinion about it.
It's an ugly, ugly habit that I see a lot in HN comments, whether it's in reply to a long-form essay or in reply to a newly announced startup or a new programming language. It discourages comments and participation from more thoughtful people because they can expect whatever they write to get henpecked by other people who, having no mastery of the actual subject matter, turn instead to the most trivial-to-understand bits and pieces.
I picked on you at random to try to discourage that behavior a little. And since I'm contributing to that problem now myself, this'll be my last word about it today.
Why would you waste your time on advertising your disapproval to obviously intentional cutesy capitalization when there was content to the post? That's like getting fixated on the color of the ink that something was written in. Or not listening to someone who stuttered, or had an accent.
> Purposefully employing bad grammar in a post about English
If this post was about English, everything said in English is about English. The post was explicitly about meaning.
didn't he rather call into question someone's claim to be a race car driver based on seeing them not using their turn signal in conditions where use of the turn signal is generally expected?
i also avoid negative constructions.. look through my comment history
you will find it is completely devoid, except now for this comment, of any instances of using: no, not, never, none
do you think plato lacks credibility? have you ever read classics(o) in their original languages? theywereflippantinevenusingspacesbetweenwords(i)
i would ask that if you care to develop an opinion as to my credibility that it be based on my content rather than if i can correctly utilise a ruleset someone else created that i disagree with
but i can respect that some people are unwilling to do so
I also, by and large, avoid capitals when I feel that doing so will not distract - usually that's in chats, notes, and git commit messages - but what you're doing is much bigger than that. It's like, I don't know, vegetarianism for language. It's fascinating. I have so many questions.
What is your full ruleset, if you have it handy? Is this just a HN thing? A social media thing? An online thing? An all the time thing? Do you make exceptions for whatever kind of formal writing you might need to do (research papers, grant proposals, cover letters, posters, etc.)? Are you in STEM, and if not, what is your field? When did you start writing like this? I'm already imagining some vivid clashes with teachers/professors if you started anywhere in undergrad or below.
> What is your full ruleset, if you have it handy?
ha! this is a funny question.. when i first started doing this i wrote a note taking app that took in a ruleset and ensured you followed it.. i'm unable to find the code right now otherwise i could just drop in the json ;P
inevitably i'll forget something, but here are some highlights: remove negatives, remove absolutes and bias identifying markers when used unnecessarily, write timelessly, lists follow ':' and end with ';', parenthetical ideas are separated by a two dot '..' ellipsis, group ideas by comma ended groups where the last line is without punctuation.. with the exception of '?|!'.. then followed by a newline;
hn has its own opinions about formatting,
so this last rule is one i am unable to do on here,
but i try to compromise as much as i can
this has often gotten me in trouble on hn,
because people get offended by all of the whitespace separating my individual lines
for a while i wrote exclusively in these 'code blocks',
but i felt the scrolling was too annoying,
and got in the way of the messaging
> Is this just a HN thing? A social media thing? An online thing? An all the time thing?
to the best of my abilities it is an all the time thing.. it started as a writing thing: digital communications, journals, poetry; but then i decided to do it while speaking too
the extemporaneous aspect of speaking makes it more difficult but i find my ability to communicate clearly and in a way i feel i can be proud of is greatly improved
sometimes i am unable to find an alternative to a negative and will ask the person i am talking to to help me construct the sentence without the negative.. it's also funny when i let one slip and someone close to me calls me out on my shit and we try to reconstruct the sentence together
> Do you make exceptions for whatever kind of formal writing you might need to do (research papers, grant proposals, cover letters, posters, etc.)?
yes, certainly
i do what i can to always stay true, regardless of audience, to the content rules: negatives, absolutes, bias; but in regard to formatting i try to 'play to my audience'
when that audience is such that hypothetically i could be the one consuming my own creations: online, poetry, etc; then i use my writing style as an outlet for expression
> Are you in STEM, and if not, what is your field?
i also eschew limiting oneself to a single field, but i do involve myself in many different fields and stem are definitely some such fields
i do research in number theory, study physics and chemistry, program, do ee, write, produce visual media, play music, study health
my diversifying principle is that if i see someone doing something i greatly respect then i want to do so myself as well.. for instance, i am a huge fan of filippo brunelleschi so i designed my own dome.. i named it the domb, for dumb dome
i had to learn cad and architectural principles and also ended up developing an interesting result in euclidian geometry by working on this dome project
> When did you start writing like this? I'm already imagining some vivid clashes with teachers/professors if you started anywhere in undergrad or below.
it happened after an argument i had with a loved one over an instant messenger app
afterward, this person printed the entire thread and mailed it to me
it was a pretty intense experience, reading that argument.. especially considering when i wrote the words i was thinking they were ephemeral.. in so doing, i noticed some things about myself
first off, though i assumed the conversation was ephemeral the reality was that though the bytes indeed disappeared my words lived on in the relationship i was building with this person
in addition to wanting to nurture the relationships i am in now i also am a lover of literature and those that produce it, and as such have read many journals by writers and i just decided at that point that i wanted to only write things that i wanted a person like me in the future reading from me in some hypothetical collection of my writings
the other thing i noticed was that my best ideas were killed by my simply negating the other person.. an overly simple example: 'do you want to spend time together tonight?' 'no'vs'tonight i'm busy but what about tomorrow'
my intended message was being nullified, or mired in anger, by a lazy and impulsive reply
so this is when i started removing negative constructions from my language, from there i felt a freedom to restrict my language patterns in other ways to better match my thought patterns and help nurture my intended reception
That's fascinating. I figured you must have had some significant reason(s) to make such a drastic step. I'm glad I poked through this subthread and I'll certainly remember you!
>it's also funny when i let one slip and someone close to me calls me out on my shit and we try to reconstruct the sentence together
Did you fail the essay because the teacher disagreed with your core claim or because you used the essay as a vessel for an irrelevant grammatical crusade?
honest answer to your question: i followed grammar you would have been proud of for this submission so i assume my grammar had little affect on the grade
but seriously, is that how you want to judge? and how you think people should be judged?
am i the crusader? i am just writing how i like to write, and instead of engaging with the material people question how i present my opinion?
if i were commenting on every comment: why are you using this tired grammatical dogma that is ill suited for the immediacy of our main contemporary publishing platform; then i could agree with your sentiment, but instead this effort to uphold an assumed status quo seems the real crusade here
i am sorry my punctuation offends you, i wish there was a way that i could write how i want to write and you could read it how you want to read it
Were your grades corrected with the added information?
I think grading matrixes would be well served it they assess the writing ability of the person. That is, how well can they justify their opinion with quotes and sources, rather than what the interpretation outcome itself.
the grade stayed, i did well enough in the course that this exam was pretty negligent
the bigger issue was that this interaction negatively affected my relationship with the professor.. who was unaware of il filastrato as a source for chaucer?!, and unimpressed that i read two supplemental works that were beyond the scope of the course syllabus
also frustratingly tainted my association with shakespeare since whenever someone talks about academic shakespeare i immediately want to monologue
