Setting and Timelessness

>>10030356
Part of the reason why Shakespeare has survived so well is because it's mostly dialogue, so the reader is forced to imagine the scenes as he pleases. Dante wrote about somewhere that does not exist on our plane.

You've got the cogs turning, anon. Can you think of any other writers like Dante and Shakespeare who feel timeless? Certainly many of the famous philosophers from Dante's era are long forgotten, yet he's still here.

>>10030356
Another playwright who has scenes that are open to interpretation and is seen as timeless is Samuel Beckett.

Perhaps that's one advantage of theater, is that the settings are adaptable to any era so long as the dialogue is timeless.

Novels are a bit trickier because all of them can come to pass because they're more rooted in style and fashion. Some might have timeless themes, but fashion and manners change, therefore they need footnotes. Nonetheless, think about how popular Jane Austen is with normie girls despite how many footnotes there are in a given Penguin or Oxford edition to explain the strange customs or words that no longer exist in England.

>If part of the job of literature is to capture some aspect of the timeless nature of the human condition
Why do you think this is part of the job of literature? Why must literature be timeless, why must writing represent timelessness, and how do we even begin to define and understand the human condition given its mutability?

>does rapid evolution of technology and it's importance in the modern world not cost the work
I honestly don't understand what you mean here. Are you suggesting, for example, that because we use solar energy instead of burning moss in a cave that contemporary technology is somehow removed from human evolution? You come off as a Luddite.

>How do you deal with this?
OP, I consider whether the motherfucker is a contemporary writer or has a mental illness, then read the text, and finally judge its contents based on common sense. Clearly things are going to evolve past an author's ability to conceive of the future, and clearly I have no business dismissing pertinent observations based on observational shortcomings. Take the writing with a grain of salt, cherrypick what's interesting to you, and judge the work based on your own criteria, not some sort of impossible timeline.

>footnotes
I I were to write something, which I wouldn't since I'm not arrogant and self-absorbed, I wouldn't worry about footnotes. Footnotes are for explanation to people who are interested. Including them in my own text would assume quite arrogantly I could convey my thoughts in a manner that future audiences would understand and that my explanations would be clear and relevant. More than likely, through my experiences reading footnotes from stupid fucking past authors, that's not the case—that my own explanations would fall flat. If my work were to end up being important, then someone whose job it is to convey the importance of my work to gullible readers would offer footnotes. It's not the author's job.

Any other questions you could resolve by Googling "Western canon," "literature and timelessness," and "historical writing"?

>>10030389
>Why do you think this is part of the job of literature? Why must literature be timeless, why must writing represent timelessness
That's a fair question. "must" is, I would claim, the wrong word. It doesn't have to, but that is undoubtedly part of its value. Something like Sophocles' Antigone, for example, is not just an entertaining story from a far away world, and if it were just that, then it probably wouldn't be as widely read today as it is. But rather, it captures issues which we can still appreciate and recognize today, and will probably continue to be applicable in some form for as long as "humans" as we recognize them continue to exist.

>Are you suggesting, for example, that because we use solar energy instead of burning moss in a cave that contemporary technology is somehow removed from human evolution?
I think you misunderstood. Specifically I also didn't mean or mention human evolution at all, rather the evolution of technology.
Think about this: For how much of human history has a courier delivering a message been relevant? What about sending a telegram via Western Union?
Not only the orders-of-magnitude difference in time is noteworthy, but also the fact that a courier continues to be something which we can well imagine using in certain situations, whereas the latter is completely obsolete and will likely never be relevant again.

Also the point regarding footnotes, again, I didn't mean the author might have to compensate with footnotes, rather the future editor/publisher.

>>10030448
So then, and please forgive me for being direct, what do you see as universal in Antigone? Appealing to the play's age and contemporary conversations around it points to its relevancy but doesn't suggest timelessness. What about it to contemporary readers in this contemporary time with their contemporary values resonates, and would those things necessarily resonate with generations in which you'll not be a part?

I really like your courier example. It can be explored and hypothesized into robotics and non-human agency, so the concern about time becomes particularly relevant. I think contemporary modes of delivery will be obsolete to future readers, if there are any readers, but they will nonetheless be easily explained by editors who can draw parallels between form and function between past and future. Good point here, and I agree with the implication that this case in particular won't become too antiquated.

>>10030498
>>>10030448
>Appealing to the play's age and contemporary conversations around it points to its relevancy but doesn't suggest timelessness.
I hadn't drawn this distinction, so I guess that is part of what I was thinking of, still I think the following themes, for example, have some claim to 'timelessness':
>conflicting duties (Antigone: religious vs. secular duty, familial duty?; Kreon: duty as a leader vs. as a father)
>the difficulties that come with asserting your authority over others
>can you go too far in standing up for what you believe is right? (-> martyrdom? dragging others into it? neglecting other duties, towards family and so on?)
>the difficulty of being a messenger of bad news

>It can be explored and hypothesized into robotics and non-human agency
Interesting, could you elaborate?