3 ms·

I've always wondered if it is worth creating a literary map where one can follow the allusions and other type of references in different works. There is somethi

I've always wondered if it is worth creating a literary map where one can follow the allusions and other type of references in different works. There is something like that for the books of Pratchett, but I don't know whether people would find such a wiki interesting.

pmdulaney 2y ago
Sounds like a lot of work, so you would need to be highly motivated.
- gostsamo 2y ago
  It would be lots of work, but it could be easier if there are enough volunteers.
  - photonthug 2y ago
    This is a good idea, as evidenced by the existing fan wikis. People love to geek out cataloging / cross referencing their favorite worlds, and it’s not like the impulse itself is going to be limited to Harry Potter or marvel. For highbrow literary stuff though, expertise might be extra helpful and extra rare. Maybe the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy might be a better collaborative model than fan wikis or Wikipedia. Idk for sure, but I assume contributing an SEP write-up might be somewhat more of a resume-builder than contributing to other places, which may help to incentivize experts to contribute. The other problem is just copyright. People don’t expect fan wikis to include a lot of primary material naturally, but it would be frustrating to try and get new insight to literature while constantly pausing to find the source material. There’s lots of poetry in the public domain, but if you start thinking about recent stuff that’s worth a deep dive (say the postmodern canon) it gets harder.
    - gostsamo 2y ago
      This is just an idea, so any model is possible at this stage. The map would be attracting expert contributions only if the experts think that it is benefitial to them, while fans would do it just for the joy of doing it. Regarding copyright and contemporary poetry - if the copyright holders find the exposure antithetical to their interests, they will be skipped and that's it. I know though that even now I'm reading books and not catching stuff. I believe that such a resource might enrich the experience of many readers and that's why I'm toying with the idea every now and then.
zeristor 2y ago
I’m not sure how Terry Pratchett relates to poetry. There is the Annotated Alice in Wonderland, however that was seemingly more about contemporary issues at the time. I once was at a talk on Science Fiction, quite an interesting one on the authors favourites, it was though like an annotatated list of references for Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. Much as I absolutely love HHGttG I feel I missed out on how much better it actually is by not being aware of these references.
- gostsamo 2y ago
  Poetry has no monopoly on allusions and lots of books allude to other books. More importantly, Pratchett's wiki has the annotations that I'm interested in 1 and which could be useful outside of poetry. 1. example: https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/soul-music.html https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/soul-music.html
swatcoder 2y ago
So the thing about the allusions and references in literature (or any other art) is that its somewhere between hard and impossible attribute them exhaustively and conclusively. Sometimes they're intentional, explicit, and umambiguous inserts by the artist, who may or not admit to them for various readons. But more often, they're subjective associations made by an individual observer (perhaps even the artist-as-observer), with at best a dynamic and often-disputable consensus among clusters of such observers. Conceptually, each user of a system like yours might anticipate a map that's meaningfully different from that of any other user. There's still something imformative and expressive in publishing a map of "well, this is what I/we see as the allusions and references here" and visitors might be inspired to new windows on familiar works, but it mostly wouldn't have much a ground truth beneath it. It would, in fact, just be a work of art itself.
- samspot 2y ago
  I've often wanted something like this for music or video games. The "truth" of the reference doesn't much matter. The point for me is: I like this thing, now I want to try some things that are related to it. However, I would appreciate if some lines are marked as factual and have a citation that such-and-such creator listed it as a direct inspiration.
JoelMcCracken 2y ago
I have also wished such a thing existed, something like genius.com but for literature (I know there are some works of literature on there, but for numerous reasons its not a perfect match). Sometimes I end up looking at commentary on a work and it will talk about the allusions, but I only do that in the more extreme cases; to me commentaries often feel like a waste of time.

pmdulaney 2y ago

Sounds like a lot of work, so you would need to be highly motivated.

gostsamo 2y ago
It would be lots of work, but it could be easier if there are enough volunteers.
- photonthug 2y ago
  This is a good idea, as evidenced by the existing fan wikis. People love to geek out cataloging / cross referencing their favorite worlds, and it’s not like the impulse itself is going to be limited to Harry Potter or marvel. For highbrow literary stuff though, expertise might be extra helpful and extra rare. Maybe the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy might be a better collaborative model than fan wikis or Wikipedia. Idk for sure, but I assume contributing an SEP write-up might be somewhat more of a resume-builder than contributing to other places, which may help to incentivize experts to contribute. The other problem is just copyright. People don’t expect fan wikis to include a lot of primary material naturally, but it would be frustrating to try and get new insight to literature while constantly pausing to find the source material. There’s lots of poetry in the public domain, but if you start thinking about recent stuff that’s worth a deep dive (say the postmodern canon) it gets harder.
  - gostsamo 2y ago
    This is just an idea, so any model is possible at this stage. The map would be attracting expert contributions only if the experts think that it is benefitial to them, while fans would do it just for the joy of doing it. Regarding copyright and contemporary poetry - if the copyright holders find the exposure antithetical to their interests, they will be skipped and that's it. I know though that even now I'm reading books and not catching stuff. I believe that such a resource might enrich the experience of many readers and that's why I'm toying with the idea every now and then.

zeristor 2y ago

I’m not sure how Terry Pratchett relates to poetry. There is the Annotated Alice in Wonderland, however that was seemingly more about contemporary issues at the time. I once was at a talk on Science Fiction, quite an interesting one on the authors favourites, it was though like an annotatated list of references for Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. Much as I absolutely love HHGttG I feel I missed out on how much better it actually is by not being aware of these references.

gostsamo 2y ago
Poetry has no monopoly on allusions and lots of books allude to other books. More importantly, Pratchett's wiki has the annotations that I'm interested in 1 and which could be useful outside of poetry. 1. example: https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/soul-music.html https://www.lspace.org/books/apf/soul-music.html

swatcoder 2y ago

So the thing about the allusions and references in literature (or any other art) is that its somewhere between hard and impossible attribute them exhaustively and conclusively. Sometimes they're intentional, explicit, and umambiguous inserts by the artist, who may or not admit to them for various readons. But more often, they're subjective associations made by an individual observer (perhaps even the artist-as-observer), with at best a dynamic and often-disputable consensus among clusters of such observers. Conceptually, each user of a system like yours might anticipate a map that's meaningfully different from that of any other user. There's still something imformative and expressive in publishing a map of "well, this is what I/we see as the allusions and references here" and visitors might be inspired to new windows on familiar works, but it mostly wouldn't have much a ground truth beneath it. It would, in fact, just be a work of art itself.

samspot 2y ago
I've often wanted something like this for music or video games. The "truth" of the reference doesn't much matter. The point for me is: I like this thing, now I want to try some things that are related to it. However, I would appreciate if some lines are marked as factual and have a citation that such-and-such creator listed it as a direct inspiration.

JoelMcCracken 2y ago

I have also wished such a thing existed, something like genius.com but for literature (I know there are some works of literature on there, but for numerous reasons its not a perfect match). Sometimes I end up looking at commentary on a work and it will talk about the allusions, but I only do that in the more extreme cases; to me commentaries often feel like a waste of time.