Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 August 12

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August 12

Ur-Horatio Hornblower

What is the first series of novels following the progress of a single character? Clarityfiend (talk) 04:53, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

I suppose it depends on how you define "novel". Epic cycles are as old as literature itself, and common characters appear throughout them. Odysseus, for example, appears in both Homeric epics as well as the Aeneid from centuries later (as Ulixes), as well as numerous other stories. If you want to get to real novels (prose fiction written by identifiable authors), then there are many pre-20th century series of novels which track a single character; for example the The d'Artagnan Romances (the Three Musketeers novels) which follow the life of a French musketeer from a young man to an old man, and those were written some 80 years before the Hornblower novels. Also, what's a series of novels as distinct from a multi-volume work; Tristram Shandy was published in 9 volumes over 9 years in the 1750s-1760s. Is that one novel, or 9 novels? The question itself depends on finding the first of things which are not well defined. --Jayron32 05:09, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Ignoring the red herrings of poetry and serialised novels, The Leatherstocking Tales were earlier than D'Artagnan, and are the best bet I can find. Novel sequence mentions various possibilities you could follow up, but many (such as Trollope) don't focus on one character. Henry^Flower 08:56, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

I was going to suggest Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years, when I remembered that Robinson Crusoe has a sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Up to you whether you want to count two as a series of novels. --Wrongfilter (talk) 09:08, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

In the 20th century, Richard Hannay is the hero of five novels starting in 1915. From my childhood bookshelf, James Bigglesworth was the subject of "nearly a hundred volumes" of fiction, starting in 1932. Alansplodge (talk) 10:47, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

If you regard the Old Testament as a set of sequential narrations and the protagonist as a character the Bible may well qualify. It is a bestseller and not unknown to those who can cope with >140 letters.

Of course, the current version goes back to prehistory, the Big Bang and oral traditions, but so does Homer. I am not qualified to comment on the development of the dramatis persona(e) of the oevre.

In the beginning was the word, as somebody mused confusedly, sitting idly in front of an empty scroll of parchment. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:42, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Odysseus doesn't qualify, as he isn't the central character of either The Iliad or The Aeneid. The books of the Bible don't have a single unifying protagonist. So I guess that leaves Natty Bumppo, who edges out D'Artagnan by a couple of years. Clarityfiend (talk) 19:05, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Don Quixote is generally treated as a single novel today but was two separate works published in 1605 and 1615. Part Two was written after the first was published so I think it qualifies as a sequel. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:52, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

I think this hits at a wider question namely what is meant by a 'series of novels'. For example according to Journey to the West, there is at least one other sequel A Supplement to the Journey to the West written by someone else and also actually occurring between parts of the main novel. I'm not sure if we know enough about the history of Journey to the West that we can say whether it was first published as one novel either. Nil Einne (talk) 13:18, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Yongli Emperor and Christianity

Did the Yongli Emperor convert to Christianity through the effort of Polish Jesuit Michał Boym? It seems his wife, mother, stepmother and son were converted by not the emperor himself. KAVEBEAR (talk) 05:29, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

'The missionary who brought Catholicism into the Southern Ming Dynasty was Andre-Xavier Koffler. Within the palace, the minister of the court, Pang Tianshou, advised people to accept Christianity. This way of doing missionary work, working from the inside-out, was one of the tactics for the conversion of the Southern Ming Dynasty. As many of the Western missionaries said, “The spread of Catholicism in the palace was due to the combined efforts of Pang Tianshou and Koffler”' See On the Story of the Jesuits’ Action in the Southern Ming Dynasty from Shanghai University. According to that article, Boym was Koffler's successor. Alansplodge (talk) 10:21, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Hodey-ho di-ho di-ho

There's a refrain that's something of a trope in this kind of music. See Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher, 1931. There it starts with "Hidey-hi, oh," usually it's expanded into twice as many syllables. Did Calloway come up with this or are there earlier examples? Temerarius (talk) 17:13, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

The usually reliable etymonline.com credits Calloway with the first use: "Calloway recalled in his autobiography that the song came first and the chorus was later improvised when he forgot the lyrics during a radio broadcast. [Harlem Renaissance Lives, Oxford, 2009]". Alansplodge (talk) 19:51, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

I found a preview of Harlem Renaissance Lives from the African American National Biography (edited by Henry Louis Gates, Evelyn Brooks) which also details Blanche Calloway, Cab's sister, who used the phrase in a slightly earlier work, "Just a Crazy Song", which she recorded in early 1931. The book notes that "the two likely collaborated with one another and borrowed frequently from each other's acts" (p. 97). Alansplodge (talk) 20:02, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Collective term for continent, country, state, city, etc.

I'm making the hangman categories list and I am debating what is the precise collective term for continents, countries, states, provinces, perfectures, territories, counties, cities, towns, etc. etc. I'm thinking about geographical location or geopolitical location. Which one is more recommended? PlanetStar 17:53, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

If you leave out continents, then geopolitical is more precise. Clarityfiend (talk) 19:09, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

It would depend on what you use as continents. The split of Eurasia into Europe and Asia (as is common) clearly has political/historical rather than geographical underpinnings. Matt Deres (talk) 22:20, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm not sure about that. The original (Ancient Greek) division was geographical: the land surrounding the Mediterranean was divided by the major waterways entering it, with the Bosporus and the Tanaïs (Don) separating Europe from Asia, and the Nile separating Asia from "Lybia" (Africa). (And in terms of culture, I'm pretty sure that the Greeks were closer to - and would have recognized themselves as being closer to - their immediate neighbours in Asia than they were to, say, the Celts or the European Scythians. And most other definitions of the Europe/Asia boundary that I've seen have been geographical (albeit rather convoluted), based on either rivers, watersheds, mountains, etc. (I will concede that that idea that there should be a boundary between "Europe" and "Asia" is probably an artifact of the Ancient Greek usage (which doesn't really make much sense when you consider that the rivers have to have sources) coupled with political/cultural differences, resulting in people coming up with such convoluted definitions of the boundary rather than just treating both as a single continent). Iapetus (talk) 10:03, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

It should be noted that we can place less blame with the Greeks than with modern classification schemes for separating Europe from Asia; from their perspective there is a rather prominent water feature (the Black Sea) which divides the two. I'm not sure how geographically aware the Greeks were that the boundary becomes arbitrary in the interior of modern Russia; for their immediate environment, the boundary was obvious. --Jayron32 14:08, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Geopolitical can be portmanteau of geographical and political, so continents can be included since they're geographical except for Europe and Asia which are political divisions of Eurasia. So there are really six geographical continents, seven if you include Zealandia. PlanetStar 23:12, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

The Geography article considers geopolitics to be a subset of geography. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:29, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

• If you leave off "continent", the collective term for the rest of them is polity. --Jayron32 14:14, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

• And if you want a simple term for game purposes, just use "place". --76.69.47.228 (talk) 14:25, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Siblings

This is a trivial matter, but can anyone find how many siblings Ira T. Wyche had? Here, It says two, but in an article titled "'Papa' Wyche, Lee Prober, Called Doughboy's General". Centralia Sentential, it says he was one of eight brothers. Is there a definitive account? Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 22:19, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

The Life of Ocracoke Native, Major General Ira Thomas Wyche (1887-1981) says: "Lorena and Lawrence Wyche’s first child, Elsie, was born in 1886 on Ocracoke Island. Her brother, Ira Thomas, followed in 1887; and another sister, Martha (Mott), was born in 1893... In 1897 Lorena Howard Wyche died suddenly, at the age of 31". Owing to his mother's early demise (if that is correct), another seven boys would be physically impossible, especially as his father died in 1900, thus ruling out any half-brothers. Alansplodge (talk) 09:35, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

BTW, the 1947 article claiming he had 7 brothers is here. Alansplodge (talk) 09:40, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

He was probably confused with his mother, who had "eight small brothers and sisters".[1] Clarityfiend (talk) 03:42, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

For what it's worth the Findagrave record for Lorena says she had three children including Ira.[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:42, 19 August 2018 (UTC)