experimental forum - literature?

to discuss philosophical elements in lit? philosophical literature, themes, authors etcetcetc
just an idea. wont it be good?
from shakespeare to satre; plato to kakfa; dao de ching to zen&eArt. where discussions can revolve around their works and take a break from profound ponderings
thus people like me who have no idea what categorical imperative means can at least read and discuss books in form of literary works

— Although i am aware of the time and effort already being put into this website, if there are any new experimental forums, i would hope that literature would be one of them. The Belle Lettres, although not occupying the supreme position of philosophy, nevertheless stand dear and close to my heart.

Hi,

I like the idea of a literature forum however I’m worried that it will just merge into one of the other forums. Can you explain a little bit more about how the forum would be run and structured? I have a few ideas about how it could be run but since it’s your idea I’d like to hear your views first.

thanks

  • ben

— First of all, i’d like to say thanks for this wonderful forum. You, Pax Vitae, Skeptic, Polemarchus, the other moderators, the veteran members like Magius, and others too numerous to mention have given me a place to discuss things that i normally don’t get the chance to talk about.


— Maybe we could do it from the creative writing forum, it may not necessitate another forum. We’d all select a book we had recently read and we could discuss the plot, The protagonist or anti-hero, what he was feeling, etc. It could be somewhat like a group discussion about a novel.
— Or we could select an author and talk about his best work, his style, what makes him unique, what message he was trying to convey.
— Or the topic for discussion could be broader, like an entire genre.
— Let me know if i can be of any more assistance.

hey there…
we could start off by compiling a reading list, must haves, favourite books etcetc
why this came into mind is because for people like me, the only philosophy i encounter is through my self readings…
discuss books, themes and characters, be it douglas adams, plato’s dialogues, descartes meditations, nietzsche’s syphillis induced philosophizing with hammers, beckett’s plays, camus, dostoevsky, shakespeare, robert pirsig etcetc…
have a book of the month? or just random postings of what you’re reading now… i like your idea mr marshall
or i guess we could hang around creative writing eh? i think the forum’s enough work for the mods already?


Life’s hard on us non-uni guys, heh Jedi_Pockey? Gotta do everything ourselves. Still, it makes one tall and proud.
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this is what I had meant before I wrote my new post.

  • maybe rather than discussing the particular novels there could be discussions based on the different stylistic devices, ways of narration and/or themes and this could be demonstrated and compared via inserting links of the passages from the works discussed

  • a reading list is good in class but it would be too loathsome to ask people here to read the very same novel

I would be happy to join you in any literary discussion you care to start, just PM me. The book of the month club is rather tendentious, but I have made no effort to steer the discussion in any direction. However, the structure itself (1 book) does just that. I would dearly love to here some more suggestions.