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Conceptually Summarizing the Classics
- dmlorenzetti 16y agoSuch a project might have value, but I think not for the motivation stated. A lot of novels reference others, not to reference their "core concepts", but to allude to relationships between characters. There's also a fair amount of quoting and shadowing just for fun-- say, the novelistic equivalent of a Hollywood director intentionally "paying homage" to a scene in an earlier movie. This reminds me, actually, of a cross-reference in Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time." Nabokov did the translation, and obviously enjoyed himself while noting its debts to other works. One of his end-notes (to a quotation in French) read something like "The allusion is to La Femme de Trente Ans, a vulgar novelette, ending in ridiculous melodrama, by the overrated French writer Balzac."
- danielrm26 16y agoI wasn't actually thinking of novels referencing novels, but rather non-fiction referencing novels. Like, Christopher Hitchens referencing Orwell, for example.