Chris Weimer

I understand. It will indeed be taken elsewhere. Thank you all for your participation.

Toto

Chris - don't let one notorious poster put you off like that. At least not until you reveal the answer.

Her pinkness saves

now, i am by no means a 'literary scholar', frankly i find the topic sorta boring. but it seems to me that the challenge is abit hobbled. from what i can deduce, the purpose of 'literary scholarship' is to deduce the works author, the topic, social conditions at the time, styles, blah de blah, blah.

it seems to me however, that such scholarship usually comes with an array of additional evidences, like location that the work was found, if it was a partial fragment, even to the extent of a general range of dates the topic would have been written in. (say for example, the earliest find of the work was in a medieval box or whatever).

wouldn't that information be relevant to this literary scholarship? I mean, couldn't i just as well go and pull a book from my basement, quote a few lines and baffle most 'scholars' not because the work was particularly hard, but simply because no other data on the work itself is given?

am i simply misunderstanding what it is you guys do? Meh, if someone could settle my confusion I'd be grateful. ^^

Spanky

Chris, I think it was YOU!

There, I said it.

Where's my fucking prize?

Or better yet. . .
chi se ne fregga!!

arabesque

What feels archaic is the syntax. I'm not convinced that the mixed syntax implies that it's a translation. If the translator bothered to use distinctly modern words and turns of phrase, he would have adjusted the syntax. I think what we have is the writer shifting back and forth between styles - here conversational, there attempting to go for a more formal written tone. I'd place the writer as a modern American who is familiar with different styles but perhaps not well enough to remain consistent.

As I mentioned in the Lounge thread, it's too hopeful to be Russian.

It is definitely not Dostoevsky, and it's too structured to be Chekhov. It doesn't feel like Chekhov at all, even in sloppy translation.

As Chris already wrote, the material is not the point. Its artistic or literary value is irrelevant. The whole point is to examine the methods scholars use to analyze any given text and to see whether they're effective at all. If a scholar can't break down and analyze "crap material" successfully, how can he be so sure that he's correct when he analyzes complicated, important texts?

This isn't about the writer's skills. It's about the reader's.

RED DAVE

At last: success, joy, I found the source.

Puzzle part 3:

If you want the source, a deposit in my PayPal account will grease the skids.

I anticipate that Chris will, of course, deny that I'm right. I pity the fool. Ignore him.

RED DAVE

Ecrasez L'infame

Clearly, the author of part 3 is a genius.

Ted Hoffman

By the way Toto, what is the reason this thread is still in BC&H?

Amaleq13

Application of the same techniques/methodologies used in Bible study.

Ted Hoffman

So one can rip off a sentence from any text, or simply make up a passage and paste it here and write "Analyze this!" and that is automatically a topic for Biblical Criticism & History?
Narrative, form and redaction criticism require context, the texts need to be dated somehow and they need to be containing some historic information or some historical information to make them worthy of studying. Often, these techniques require comparing and contrasting with related texts to identify conflicts, themes, agendas and so on.
This passage is isolated, un-dated, speaks of nothing that is of historic or historical import, focuses on an individuals thoughts and has got nothing that makes it germane to the Bible.
But thanks for explaining anyway. Let us indulge Chris and see how this end up.