Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2011 April 7

= April 7 =

Proust Questionnaires
What are some of the most famous/notorious/acclaimed Proust Questionnaire responses? Questions need not be identical to those answered by Proust, but in that vein  Skomorokh   00:21, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Oldest European novel
What is the oldest novel in the history of Europe, still continously published? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.77.82.235 (talk) 01:55, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Do you mean a work that's never been out-of-print? Ignoring this restriction, and allowing narrative poems, then The Iliad is probably the oldest European story. CS Miller (talk) 03:00, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * If we really want to restrict ourselves to novel as a single work of known provenance to a specific author, the article and section Novel and following has some interesting threads to follow. Since there is no direct attestation that Homer was really one person, or even really existed, then (again depending on how you define novel) works such as the Aeneid or the later Decameron may qualify for the OP.  -- Jayron  32  04:17, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I added a more useful (sub)title. StuRat (talk) 04:55, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * There's another way, which I just did. :) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:28, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The point of making it a subtitle is so that a F page find (or manually scanning the TOC), for the original title, would still find their Q. StuRat (talk) 05:41, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Since you specifically asked for a European novel, we can rule out Story of Sinuhe]. If you go by the definition that a novel has to be in prose (which the epics of Homer wasn't), it would probably be Satyricon by Petronius from the 1st century AD. Sadly only parts of it is extant today. The genre of the novel developed in Hellenistic times through writers such as Petroniyus, Apuleius, Heliodorus, Longus and others (as per Thomas Häag, The novel in antiquity). Although the modern psychological novel first appeared in the 18th century, some, especially the Latin novels of Petronius and Apuleius does display some modern characteristics familiar to us, more so than the Greek novels which seems to follow a more basic formula. --Saddhiyama (talk) 08:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Link to discussion the last time this came up. --Viennese Waltz 09:40, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The question in that previous discussion was "What was the first novel ever written ?" - and the answer, of course, depends on your definition of "novel". The OP's question here is somewhat narrower, but even more difficult to answer, because it also depends on how you define "Europe" and "continuously published". Is Beowulf a novel because it depicts an fictional narrative, even though it is not in prose ? Is it "continuously published" even though it only existed in manuscript form for hundreds of years ? Gandalf61 (talk) 10:10, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The link above points out the 12th century Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by a Moorish writer as one possiblity. We tend to still overlook Arabic contributions in the West. Rmhermen (talk) 13:33, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Popular English-translated Bible in Joseph Conrad's Lifetime
What translation of the Bible might Joseph Conrad have been reading in the late 19th and early 20th century? I know translations change things and can change things quite a bit, and I wanted to know if there was a universally accepted one at the time, similar to how the New American Bible is fairly popular today. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Reader who Writes (talk • contribs) 12:35, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The Authorised Version (also known as the King James Bible) would be far and away the most likely for Conrad to have read. DuncanHill (talk) 13:11, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The Douay–Rheims Bible was the standard Catholic Bible of the time while the Revised Version of the King James was issued by 1885 and quickly became popular. Rmhermen (talk) 13:21, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * If he was reading in Polish, he would have had the Catholic Jakub Wujek Bible or the Protestant Danzig Bible. See Slavic translations of the Bible. Rmhermen (talk) 13:26, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Side-note: The New American Bible is a fairly popular American Catholic version of the Bible. But the New International Version is the most popular version while the King James is still required by certain very conservative groups. Rmhermen (talk) 13:40, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't know how "popular" the Revised Version really was; it was not free from controversy at the time (and more issues have turned up since then), and it conspicuously failed to replace the KJV in many uses... AnonMoos (talk) 14:26, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * As he was a writer I think Conrad would have preferred good prose, which the AV has in spades and none of the others have in any appreciable quantity. Does anyone know if a catalogue of Conrad's personal library exists? DuncanHill (talk) 16:05, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * It's worth noting that the Joseph Conrad Society, on their page scholarly resources recommend the AV and the Book of Common Prayer as being useful for tracing Conrad's allusions. DuncanHill (talk) 16:10, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Studying philosphy at an expensive private university
What kind of people study something like philosophy at an expensive private university? Are all there wealthy? Quest09 (talk) 15:17, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Not at all. Aside from its potential inherent benefits, an undergraduate degree in philosophy is widely recognized as being a great way to get into law school. It doesn't necessarily prepare you for any particular trade right out of school, but very few things do, anymore (there are relatively few undergraduate degrees that get you relevant jobs on the strength of your major alone — it requires a bit more beyond that). You might as well ask who studies history, English, anthropology, or sociology. Note that just because one is at an expensive private university does not mean that one is paying a lot in tuition — even at places where the tuition is astounding (e.g. Harvard, Yale, whatever), most undergraduates, even ones from fairly wealthy families, do not pay full tuition. That being said, there probably are demographics that characterize philosophy majors as compared to, say, math majors. According to this page (truth status unknown), philosophy in the US has similar demographics as majors in economics, mathematics, and the natural sciences — it leans strongly towards white and male, which isn't terribly surprising, given its reputation for being a lot of naval navel gazing and its high priority on aggressive argumentation (which in my experience goes hard against the socialization of women and minorities in the United States, anyway). --Mr.98 (talk) 16:15, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't know if you misspelled it on purpose, but naval gazing is certainly a curious expression. Do they watch ships pass by? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Working worker ant (talk • contribs) 16:29, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * D'oh! Curse you, spell check! --Mr.98 (talk) 17:14, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Nautiloskepsis, perhaps? --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:43, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Several of those "so-called" Ivy League schools did, about a decade ago, introduce very liberal financial aid packages, Princeton University comes to mind, such that students who are accepted do not have a financial barrier preventing them from going. Princeton_University discusses this a bit; students who are accepted to Princeton get all of their financial aid in the form of grants, and as such Princeton, though it has a nominally high tuition, has students who graduate with very little debt load.  Additionally, Cornell University has several colleges which are actually part of the State University of New York system (see Statutory college); students admitted under those programs pay instate tuition for SUNY, and not Cornell's standard tuition, however they attend the same classes and live in the same dormitories and so are otherwise indistinguishable in the student population.  -- Jayron  32  16:25, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * This awesome sortable table from the Wall Street Journal shows a bunch of salary stats sorted by the undergraduate bachelor's degree earned by, supposedly, 1.2 million US people in the survey. It doesn't count people with master's degrees or higher.  A philosophy degree's starting median salary is apparently US$39,900, and the mid-career median salary is US$81,200.  That mid-career number beats the mid-career numbers for political science, accounting, architecture, IT, business management, and nursing.  (Though chemical engineering wins, both for the starting and mid-career median salary numbers.)  This was a 2009 survey, apparently.  An interesting feature of the Philosophy degree is that it (along with Mathematics, in a tie) has the highest percent change from starting median salary to mid-career median salary, meaning ... big big raises!  Comet Tuttle (talk) 22:12, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Mr 98's answer is perhaps restricted to the United States. In many other countries there are a large (and increasing) number of "vocational" undergraduate degrees that prepare you for a job straight out of university. One of these is law. In the UK for example law can be a single undergraduate degree. In Australia, while law is (mostly) a second degree, the majority of students now commit themselves to it at the start of university by enrolling in a "double degree" where the law degree is packaged with a "first" undergraduate degree. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 05:56, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

First class mail
Is there a maximum weight for first class mail items in the UK? Cannot find anything specified on their website, but cannot believe it is infinite.--Shantavira|feed me 15:36, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Maximum weight for any first class item is 20kg according to this page. Maimum weight for a first class letter is 100g; above that weight you have large letter and then packet. Gandalf61 (talk) 15:44, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Yup, you're quite right. A 20kg packet is possible. Thanks.--Shantavira|feed me 16:42, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
 * This should help.--TammyMoet (talk) 17:27, 7 April 2011 (UTC)


 * But that site says "No maximum weight limit". Oh well, I'm not likely to want to go over 20kg anyway.--Shantavira|feed me 08:00, 8 April 2011 (UTC)