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> No, but it does mean it's less sophisticated than a work which does have such prose. I disagree with that take on sophistication. As a counterexample, Heming

> No, but it does mean it's less sophisticated than a work which does have such prose. I disagree with that take on sophistication. As a counterexample, Hemingway's work is a masterclass on sophisticated prose done with minimal language, but I wouldn't want to read Pride and Prejudice in Hemingway's style. There isn't one yardstick for "sophistication". The Odyssey is an interesting example of this (and one the author uses). I was taught the Fagles translation. That translation is not easy to read, and in many ways its choice of language is a distraction from studying the literature. I wouldn't pick that translation for my own children, even if I feel that they should at some point study The Odyssey, which I do. We should be treating these works as what they are: literary classics, but in a historic dialect, where part of the literary exercise is the archeological/anthropological dig through the prose. As far as I can tell, that's how the author is approaching it, and I don't think calling it out that way is lowering any bar.

pxc 2y ago
To me, 'sophisticated' connotes complexity in a way that means I'd never use it to describe something extremely simple or minimal, including Hemingway's prose— even if it meets the definition of another sense of the word. I might use other adjectives to praise it, but not 'sophisticated'. And I think any reasonable curriculum should include some 'sophisticated' texts in the narrower sense described above. I actually don't think that sophistication in the sense of worldliness is as important a thing to try to ensure in this kind of curriculum. That's more a matter of fashion or ingroup signaling than any textual feature, and you'll get it for free in any school curriculum anyway— preexisting canons will impose themselves one way or another and demonstrating fluency in the canon is the main thing that evinces sophistication (divorced from complexity) in a text (or a student, for that matter). I agree with the rest of what you're saying, though.

pxc 2y ago

To me, 'sophisticated' connotes complexity in a way that means I'd never use it to describe something extremely simple or minimal, including Hemingway's prose— even if it meets the definition of another sense of the word. I might use other adjectives to praise it, but not 'sophisticated'. And I think any reasonable curriculum should include some 'sophisticated' texts in the narrower sense described above. I actually don't think that sophistication in the sense of worldliness is as important a thing to try to ensure in this kind of curriculum. That's more a matter of fashion or ingroup signaling than any textual feature, and you'll get it for free in any school curriculum anyway— preexisting canons will impose themselves one way or another and demonstrating fluency in the canon is the main thing that evinces sophistication (divorced from complexity) in a text (or a student, for that matter). I agree with the rest of what you're saying, though.