Lanx Satura

Introduction

This is the master 'MetaBlog' for the Lanx Satura project. It will include:

1. Further explanations of what I am trying to do with these blogs in general.
2. Brainstorming about blogs or technical features I'm thinking of adding.
3. General mulling over of what blogs such as these are good for, what authors might work well (or not) in this format, and why.
4. Announcements, for instance whenever a new blog is launched (see next entry), or when someone else launches a blog along the same lines, or when there is a brief interruption of posting on all blogs because of illness, overwork, or an out-of-town trip.

For all but the last category, I hope to attract helpful comments.

Announcement: Blogs 1-3

I launched the first two Lanx Satura lit-blogs last Monday, March 1st:

1. Gracián's Oráculo Manual
2. Ambrose Bierce: Write It Right, A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults

They should each now display seven daily posts, though I'm a day behind on Gracián, whose Spanish is turning out to be harder than anticipated. I should be able to catch up later today.

Last night, I launched my third weblog:

3. M. R. James: Ghost Stories

This differs in several respects from the first two:

1. Entries will be posted weekly, rather than daily.
2. James' text will be posted in separate files, linked from the blog, and I will also build a separate index file when there are enough of them to be worth indexing. This is partly because they are entire short stories rather than single paragraphs, but mostly because it allows the use of the right margin for notes.
3. I am hoping that readers will help me supply these explanatory notes, asking questions that need to be answered, or offering answers to questions that need to be asked, or have been asked by others.
4. Since possible questions and answers cover a lot of ground, I will have four separate comment-threads for each story: literary, historical-geographical, linguistic-exegetical, and typographical-formatting. These are explained on the James blog.

Please note that I am still working on the formats of my blogs, particularly for the archive files, which are still quite ugly, though usable.

The Project So Far

Things have been very busy at my day job, but the results of the first two weeks of the Lanx Satura project are:

1. Gracián’s Oráculo Manual has been stalled for a week after six daily entries. It is taking longer than I thought it would to translate each entry, but they also seem to demand more than one day each to ponder. I will soon decide whether to try to establish a more regular, though slower, schedule — three posts per week would finish the job in two years — and whether to include my own interpretative questions and comments in each post. The latter would provide some compensation for the retardation of the posting schedule.
2. Bierce’s Write It Right is chugging along, one post per day, with only one of them particularly late so far. (I was up very late Thursday preparing Latin tests, so Friday’s post was nearly a day late.)
3. M. R. James: Ghost Stories is more or less on schedule, with the second story, “Lost Hearts”, just posted, though I have not yet added any notes.

All I need now is readers and comments, and time to add a few more authors and some posts here on authors I would like others to provide.

Another James Story

Latest developments:

1. I have posted the third story in M. R. James: Ghost Stories, “The Mezzotint”, with a couple of explanatory notes. Many more are needed. Comments offering questions or answers are welcome.
2. I have still not decided what to do with Gracián’s Oráculo Manual, still stalled after six entries. Not only have I not had time to add more, I’m not nearly done chewing over the first six.
3. Bierce: Write It Right is on schedule, though well over 80% of the comments so far have been porn-spam. Apologies to any reader who saw any of them before they were deleted.