[WikiEN-l] While we're at it, NOR line-by-line

[Phil Sandifer]

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 12:33 PM, <WJhonson at aol.com> wrote:

>
> In a message dated 4/7/2008 12:03:29 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
> snowspinner at gmail.com writes:
>
> There  are topics
> that we unquestionably should have articles about that  one cannot
> write a general overview of without relying on that oral  tradition. >>
>
>
> ---------------
> Actually, imho, we should not.
> If by oral tradition you mean "the Sun is hot" doesn't need a source I
>  would
> agree.
> If by oral tradition you mean "James Joyce was the best writer ever"
>  doesn't
> need a source, I have to disagree.
>
> Will Johnson
>
>
I mean neither, in practice - or, more accurately, I think the oral
tradition in question contains statements more obvious than "the Sun is
hot," but does not include matters of opinion. It would, I think, include
statements like "Joyce is one of the most significant authors of the 20th
century," a statement that is, I think factually true and that is true on a
level that goes beyond any given guy who says "Joyce is one of the most
significant authors of the 20th century." It's a statement that has to do
not with Joyce's aesthetic merits but with his importance and notability.
There's probably, for this, plenty of people who have incidentally commented
on Joyce's importance in an introduction, but this is a profoundly sloppy
way to do it - yes, we can find people who incidentally note Joyce's
importance, but for the most part the importance of Joyce to literary
studies is not something that is thoroughly documented in written
literature.

(I am, notably, not a Joyce scholar, and this may not be true of Joyce as
such - perhaps there is an article on "How Joyce became significant" that
traces this fact thoroughly. But you can replace Joyce with a hundred other
authors, and I am sure not all of them have thorough overviews of their
sociological importance to literary studies from good sources.)

And the amount of stuff that exists largely in the oral tradition of what is
assumed within the humanities extends well beyond things like that. We are
still an oral culture in many ways.

-Phil