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For anybody who hasn't had the pleasure of this delightful bit of English: London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s In

For anybody who hasn't had the pleasure of this delightful bit of English: London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes —gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foothold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

jimbokun 26d ago
Delightful indeed, and shocked that an English major would struggle with that text.
- kurthr 26d ago
  Exactly, what exactly is an English major going to do, if YA novels are the pinnacle of reading achievement? I'm baffled, and reading more about it, concerned.
Levitz 26d ago
English is my second language, with that in mind, I felt it may be interesting or amusing to some the parts which were "hard" for me to understand. >Michaelmas term lately over I had no idea that "Michaelmas" was even a thing. Nor do I think I have ever encountered the formulation of "term lately over" >As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth This puzzled me, as I'd imagine, if there's no water, there surely would be no mud. Apparently a reference to the great flood which makes it make sense. >and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus This one was funny since I properly understood (I think?) that it's meant to give a feeling of the savage, untamed, natural feel of the elements taking over London. But then I thought a reference to a Megalosaurus couldn't possibly be that. And it seems it is? The rest was way easier, although I had to make sure what "Dogs, undistinguishable in mire" meant.
- butvacuum 25d ago
  It's not presently on scihub (also, $25 for access? fuck off...), but the whole study stinks of "dickens scholar checks modern reading comp, vastly overestimates familiarity with victorian england and dickens' prose.".... .... here's the bio of the first author of the paper > SUSAN CARLSON is a professor of English at Pittsburg State University, where she teaches courses on nineteenth-century British literature,
mock-possum 26d ago
I guess I’m going to go ahead and pat myself on the back for being able to easily read through this aloud. What exactly would people struggle with here?
- amiga386 26d ago
  Most people outside the UK, and a good portion inside, would not know: - what Michaelmas is (it's a somewhat archaic Christian festival in September) - what Michaelmas term is (and that it's specific to the upper courts of the UK, along with Hilary term, Easter term and Trinity term) - where Lincoln's Inn or its hall is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%27s_Inn#Old_Hall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%27s_Inn#Old_Hall) - what an "inn" is in this context (i.e. the Inns of Court are not hostelries) - what position the Lord Chancellor holds in UK law and politics - that the name of the role derives from being head of the Court of Chancery (which at the time sat in Lincoln's Inn hall) - what a chancery court does (it awards equitable reliefs) - why such a court is needed (equitable remedies provide what legal remedies cannot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equitable_remedy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equitable_remedy) Did you know all of the above while reading the second sentence?
  - andrewf 25d ago
    I knew very little of this. I know about the Inns of Court, but I didn't know this was such an Inn; I know what a chancery court is (Delaware has them!) but similarly not that it applied in this case. I've no idea what Michaelmas is, but like Christmas, I assume it's an event and/or season which occurs periodically. I could still read the text! And it's useful to read texts and understand 95%, or 80%, or even 50%! IMO "fully understand what you're reading" versus "can't understand what you're reading" is a harmfully discouraging dichotomy. You can often gloss over such things rather than struggle with them.
    - amiga386 25d ago
      I just wanted to get across that there's more detail to be wrung out of even the first line. You don't need to get all nuances on first read, but they're there. Dickens was known for his observational detail, and also he'd spent a lot of time in London courts on account of his father so knew all these terms well. You read the paragraph a lot better than most of the students being referenced by the GP (https://www.scribd.com/document/868947219/project-muse-922346 https://www.scribd.com/document/868947219/project-muse-92234...) but there was still more to be had. Everyone has their own comfort level with reading, and we do just skim things we think unimportant... I often do that until suddenly the book stops making sense, and I have to go back some pages and re-read things which I'd skipped that were clearly important. Different authors have different densities of load-bearing words. I think it's forgivable if you gloss over this first line and think it might be set in a hotel during a holiday, with some random high-ranking person, because the next 800 pages will make it pretty clear it's about a court. But I am worried that these students, hoping to get an degree in English, would rather guess what's being said, when they had the opportunity to look things up. An afternoon on Wikipedia would do them a world of good.

jimbokun 26d ago

Delightful indeed, and shocked that an English major would struggle with that text.

kurthr 26d ago
Exactly, what exactly is an English major going to do, if YA novels are the pinnacle of reading achievement? I'm baffled, and reading more about it, concerned.

Levitz 26d ago

English is my second language, with that in mind, I felt it may be interesting or amusing to some the parts which were "hard" for me to understand. >Michaelmas term lately over I had no idea that "Michaelmas" was even a thing. Nor do I think I have ever encountered the formulation of "term lately over" >As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth This puzzled me, as I'd imagine, if there's no water, there surely would be no mud. Apparently a reference to the great flood which makes it make sense. >and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus This one was funny since I properly understood (I think?) that it's meant to give a feeling of the savage, untamed, natural feel of the elements taking over London. But then I thought a reference to a Megalosaurus couldn't possibly be that. And it seems it is? The rest was way easier, although I had to make sure what "Dogs, undistinguishable in mire" meant.

butvacuum 25d ago
It's not presently on scihub (also, $25 for access? fuck off...), but the whole study stinks of "dickens scholar checks modern reading comp, vastly overestimates familiarity with victorian england and dickens' prose.".... .... here's the bio of the first author of the paper > SUSAN CARLSON is a professor of English at Pittsburg State University, where she teaches courses on nineteenth-century British literature,

mock-possum 26d ago

I guess I’m going to go ahead and pat myself on the back for being able to easily read through this aloud. What exactly would people struggle with here?

amiga386 26d ago
Most people outside the UK, and a good portion inside, would not know: - what Michaelmas is (it's a somewhat archaic Christian festival in September) - what Michaelmas term is (and that it's specific to the upper courts of the UK, along with Hilary term, Easter term and Trinity term) - where Lincoln's Inn or its hall is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%27s_Inn#Old_Hall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%27s_Inn#Old_Hall) - what an "inn" is in this context (i.e. the Inns of Court are not hostelries) - what position the Lord Chancellor holds in UK law and politics - that the name of the role derives from being head of the Court of Chancery (which at the time sat in Lincoln's Inn hall) - what a chancery court does (it awards equitable reliefs) - why such a court is needed (equitable remedies provide what legal remedies cannot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equitable_remedy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equitable_remedy) Did you know all of the above while reading the second sentence?
- andrewf 25d ago
  I knew very little of this. I know about the Inns of Court, but I didn't know this was such an Inn; I know what a chancery court is (Delaware has them!) but similarly not that it applied in this case. I've no idea what Michaelmas is, but like Christmas, I assume it's an event and/or season which occurs periodically. I could still read the text! And it's useful to read texts and understand 95%, or 80%, or even 50%! IMO "fully understand what you're reading" versus "can't understand what you're reading" is a harmfully discouraging dichotomy. You can often gloss over such things rather than struggle with them.
  - amiga386 25d ago
    I just wanted to get across that there's more detail to be wrung out of even the first line. You don't need to get all nuances on first read, but they're there. Dickens was known for his observational detail, and also he'd spent a lot of time in London courts on account of his father so knew all these terms well. You read the paragraph a lot better than most of the students being referenced by the GP (https://www.scribd.com/document/868947219/project-muse-922346 https://www.scribd.com/document/868947219/project-muse-92234...) but there was still more to be had. Everyone has their own comfort level with reading, and we do just skim things we think unimportant... I often do that until suddenly the book stops making sense, and I have to go back some pages and re-read things which I'd skipped that were clearly important. Different authors have different densities of load-bearing words. I think it's forgivable if you gloss over this first line and think it might be set in a hotel during a holiday, with some random high-ranking person, because the next 800 pages will make it pretty clear it's about a court. But I am worried that these students, hoping to get an degree in English, would rather guess what's being said, when they had the opportunity to look things up. An afternoon on Wikipedia would do them a world of good.