Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 June 11

= June 11 =

Stephen VI and liturgical languages
Every now and than in Glagolitic script someone "corrects" bull to bill in the sentence "In 885, Pope Stephen VI issued a bill to restrict spreading and reading Christian services in languages other than Latin or Greek". Guess this can be prevented with a wikilink to papal bull. Anyway, when I was checking this I found this ref from Great Moravia, page 81 and note at page 344. It mentions the letter Quia te zelo (not a bull and somewhat contested). It seems also the article is linking to the wrong Pope Stephen VI, the right one being now called Stephen V. I was hoping someone more history savy could double check my findings or suggest a better source for papal documents (guess legal matters were a bit complicated in that period). Personuser (talk) 07:10, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * There is an issue with the numbering of the popes named Stephen. The article Pope-elect Stephen explains the situation. Thus, depending on the age of sources you use, Pope Stephen V can be called Stephen VI. Xuxl (talk) 12:56, 11 June 2021 (UTC)


 * So if the document was not a bull, shouldn't we replace "issued a bull to restrict spreading and reading" by "wrote a letter (Quia te zelo) to Svatopluk I prohibiting holding"? --Lambiam 10:16, 12 June 2021 (UTC)


 * That is my understanding. To be clear, this letters had a legal status and according to papal bull the name bull was introduced later and its use may be fuzzy for this period. I also don't know if similar documents were issued in the same year, but if this was the only one, it seems possible that it wasn't binding for the whole Christianity, which the current worlding somewhat suggests, hence the hope in some historian's opinion. The situation was probably quite confusing already in the IX century. Personuser (talk) 11:48, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * According to de:Gloria in excelsis Deo (Hadrian II.), de:Industriae tuae and de:Quia te zelo fidei these papal letters dealt with the mission and liturgy in Moravia. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 22:14, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

Help in identifying a mysterious book
In 2009, French editor Éditions Payot published a book by an American author named Linnet Burden, under the title Les ombres de Chicago ("Chicago Shadows"), described as a murder mystery. It was reprinted in 2010 in a paperback edition in the prestigious Le Livre de Poche collection, so this would normally be a fairly well-documented book. The catalogue information at the Bibliothèque nationale de France site states it is the translation of a novel named Cheap. Various sites say that the author's name is a pseudonym for Chicago Tribune reporter Linnet Myers (Burden), who does have a significant on-line presence. However, there is no trace of the original novel anywhere, or indeed any sign that Myers/Burden has ever published a novel. So can anyone identify the original novel from which the translation is derived, and its date of publication. It would normally have come out in the five-year period before the initial printing of its French translation. Xuxl (talk) 15:46, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * It's possible that the (presumed) English original was never published. This is unusual but can sometimes happen when the intended publisher changes their mind or some other factor intervenes*, but the translated edition, already commissioned, nevertheless goes ahead. It's also possible that the author, though presumably a primary Anglophone, actually wrote the work in (for example) French to begin with. Again unusual, but not unknown.
 * (* Possible reasons include: the desire not to unbalance the publisher's monthly releases; the prior appearance of another book overly similar to the one in preparation; a real-world event that makes the book's subject unexpectedly sensitive; a legal objection by someone apparently or actually portrayed in the book (this delayed the appearance of Richard Adams' novel The Girl in a Swing, to my personal knowledge – the entire first printing was recalled from bookshops a week or two before publication); the retirement or death of the particular editor handling the book, with no other editor wanting to take it on; the sale of the publisher or imprint to another company that declines to publish that book or author. )
 * The English edition might also have been delayed due to similar factors, and subsequently published under a different title and or different pseudonym than that already printed in the French edition. Title changes prior to publication are by no means uncommon (ordinarily they don't come to our attention) and a change of pseudonym is also not unusual.
 * {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.0.58 (talk) 16:11, 11 June 2021 (UTC)


 * according to Linnet Burden's LinkedIn page "Current fiction and free-lance non-fiction writer. Former reporter, foreign correspondent and magazine writer for the Chicago Tribune. Author, "Les Ombres de Chicago," published in 2009 by Payot & Rivages in Paris, France". DuncanHill (talk) 16:22, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for this, to both of you. I saw she had a LinkedIn page but could not access it. So it does seem the work was never published in English, but only in a French translation. It's rather unusual for this type of book (it happened all the time for books by Eastern European dissidents before the fall of the Berlin Wall) but it's not entirely unprecedented either. Xuxl (talk) 17:23, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Perhaps someone who can access her LinkedIn page (I too cannot) would like to contact her and ask how this situation arose? It doesn't seem to me to be an intrusive or unusual question for a published writer. {The poster formely known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.0.58 (talk) 21:23, 11 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Isn't the answer a bit too obvious to pose the question? Clearly, the American publishing houses she sent the manuscript to declined to publish it. The polite rejection letters will not have revealed a solid reason behind these decisions, but it is possible that the French market has more taste for this type of policier. --Lambiam 10:03, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't care enough about the answer to bother the author directly; I just wanted to verify, for a database I'm keeping, that the English original has never been published, which appears to be the case. That said, I don't think the reason is as obvious as Lambian thinks. We're talking about two big publishing houses in France, and they normally only request translations for books that have been successful in their original language, so it's very rare for a book by an unknown author to come out in a French translation first. They do undertake translations of unpublished manuscripts for cult writers who are more popular in French than in their original language (see Derek Raymond), but that would not be the case for an unpublished writer like Linnet Burden. So there is likely an unusual story about how Payot got the book out in the first place, as it's not one whose natural audience would be in France, even though the French public does love reading American and British detective novels. Xuxl (talk) 12:34, 12 June 2021 (UTC)
 * A further thought, . Do you have (or can you get) access to an actual copy (or scan) of the book? In my experience, translated French publications usually both credit the translator and state in the indicia <> (or <<–l'Anglais>> for a British author – and yes, they do make that distinction). In this case, I would expect Le Livre de Poche to have made the circumstances clear. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.0.58 (talk) 17:05, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * The link from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, in my original question, includes this information (translated from English (United States) by Lorraine Darrow; original title Cheap. It was when I looked up that title that I came up empty, as, as now seems clear, it was never published in English. Xuxl (talk) 17:44, 13 June 2021 (UTC)
 * This site (a blog, so not a reliable source) also reckons that the English original was never published. --Viennese Waltz 17:22, 13 June 2021 (UTC)