In more innocent days...

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by PandathePanda

I really like to read books the way they originally where created with the original language use. So "updating" words that "lost: their meaning makes me feel cheated.

I would make a distinction between editing classics that are sold to adults as classics, and editing childrens' books that are still sold specifically as childrens' books. The former should not (IMHO) be "modernised"; I can see a valid argument for modernising the former.

For example, as someone pointed out earlier in the thread, the massively popular British childrens' author Enid Bylton (whose output comprised a significant proportion of my own childhood reading) used expressions which would be considered wildly racist in today's world. It's right that modern editions of these books should be appropriately edited for today's multicultural British society, just as in the US the "Hardy Boys" and "Nancy Drew" series were. I'm a collector of early 20th-century childrens' books, and the overt racism in the original editions of the "Hardy Boys" books is pretty shocking by today's standards.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

If I am discussing the topic of fowl today, I will feel perfectly comfortable mentioning cock, a/k/a male chicken. Although granted, I would more naturally gravitate toward the term "rooster".


I have absolutely no problem with older works using words whose meanings have changed -- a reader should be able to understand, when they are reading about older times, that an older version of the language is likely to be used.
That being said, I also have absolutely no problem with modernized texts. I don't really view that as bowdlerization, since the meaning isn't being changed. It is a translation from Ye Olde Englishe to Ye Newe Englishe.

But then you have a sliding slope as nowadays someone will be offended by anything and will change wording under the prefix that it is unacceptable usage, that kind of thing leads to reading Moby Phallus. And if you think that is far fetched how about the fact Agatha Christie's '10 Little Niggers' is now renamed as 'And then there were None' even in the UK.

Edit- Yes I know this is bowdlerisation rather that word usage but let us have some fun eschwartz

[Apache]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Fair enough, but in a discussion like this where we are specifically discussing uses of archaic English, I honestly think it's helpful to use the correct names for things. You may have been joking, but I've encountered innumerable people who really do think that Shakespeare is "Old English".

I bet they were Americans and they were thinking, he is old and he is English.
Apache

[patrickt]

As is usually the case, the innocent days, or good ole days, exist in fantasy. Almost sixty years ago a friend of mine got a job in a pulp wood plant in Alabama through his father's connections with the paper industry. He was shipped off to Alabama for the summer. It started out okay except all the redneck guys in the plant talked about getting a little cock. My friend thought he'd fallen into a factory that employed only homosexuals. After a week he finally said something to an older worker who laughed and explained a cock referred to women's parts. Wow, that was a relief.

When I moved to Mexico I met an American who was studying Christian Spanish. That was his view of Spanish with all the "bad" words removed. I asked how he would buy eggs in the market since the word for eggs also meant testicles. He didn't understand the question.

[DrNefario]

Willfully misinterpreting things is half the fun.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

.

It's right that modern editions of these books should be appropriately edited for today's multicultural British society, just as in the US the "Hardy Boys" and "Nancy Drew" series were.

.

Speaking of Nancy:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...?utm_hp_ref=tw

That original heroine, though, is a far cry from the well-bred '50s-style debutante who appears in the ubiquitous yellow-spined volumes on bookstore shelves today. Back in the '30s, she was sarcastic, sometimes hot-headed. She carried a gun and drove a fabulous roadster with abandon -- not merely "as fast as the law allowed." She second-guessed herself, imperfect as anyone else, but could get herself out of dangerous scrapes alone, if need be.

The problem with modernization is where to stop.
And the orthodoxy of one era invariably becomes the "disgusting attitudes that must be exterminated" of the next.

I hope to live long enough to see the kids of the millenials decry the "intolerance and conformism" and "casual racist condescencion" of the PC era.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The problem with modernization is where to stop.
And the orthodoxy of one era invariably becomes the "disgusting attitudes that must be exterminated" of the next.

Which is precisely why long-running childrens' series are routinely re-edited every decade or two.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Which is precisely why long-running childrens' series are routinely re-edited every decade or two.

And why, eventually, the originals become sought-after classics.

My take is that instead of altering the original the material should be used for teaching cultural history on the side, letting the kids see how things were and why things have changed, letting them learn that attitudes change over time, instead of pretending that current culture has always existed and always will.

Butchering Huck Finn is not doing the kids any favors.

But that's just me.
I'm comfortable letting other people and other societies doing things their own way.

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I would make a distinction between editing classics that are sold to adults as classics, and editing childrens' books that are still sold specifically as childrens' books. The former should not (IMHO) be "modernised"; I can see a valid argument for modernising the former.

For example, as someone pointed out earlier in the thread, the massively popular British childrens' author Enid Bylton (whose output comprised a significant proportion of my own childhood reading) used expressions which would be considered wildly racist in today's world. It's right that modern editions of these books should be appropriately edited for today's multicultural British society, just as in the US the "Hardy Boys" and "Nancy Drew" series were. I'm a collector of early 20th-century childrens' books, and the overt racism in the original editions of the "Hardy Boys" books is pretty shocking by today's standards.

I totally agree but I would hope the original text were kept available. Somehow, hearing Simon Legree refer to "black Americans" just wouldn't work.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by patrickt

Somehow, hearing Simon Legree refer to "black Americans" just wouldn't work.

Nor useful in explaining why the n-word is not used in polite company.

Or why people who knew what the old west was really like (like ERB) still wrote offensive cliche native Americans or why Germans might be wicked militarists, brave and dashing heroes of nasty baby killers in the works of the same authir, depending on which decade they were published.

All books are reflections of their native time and that too is a valuable role they serve in unedited, unexpurgated firm. Put an age-restictive sticker on it if you must ("protect the children") but leave the text alone.

[HarryT]

There's a significant difference between preserving cultural artefacts (which books are) as monuments to the time that they were written, and editing books as appropriate reading material for children today. Sure, you could use an original edition of a "Hardy Boys" book as an object lesson in a school classroom on the changes in American society over the last century, but that's a different goal to providing reading material for children to read themselves; the latter should, I believe, reflect current societal attitudes to subjects such as multiculturalism.

Yes, preserve the originals, but recognise that they are inappropriate children's reading material for today's society.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by ingmar

How about a footnote, then? I for one would certainly like to read books the way the author wrote them. This is particular true for some recent P.C.-related changes that have been made to a couple of books and which, frankly, infuriate me.

There are many things that wouldn't be written today, be it single words or whole concepts or story lines (the casual misogyny in many Enid Blyton books comes to mind), but we must see those books in context, perhaps explain them if not readily understood, and then move on. Nobody is forced to read them, and those who do usually get the (historical and other) context.

Mark Twain's books are a good example too. There are words that were in common use back when he wrote his books that are far from pc today but if you change them you aren't getting the full true setting of the times.

[crich70]

There is also the case of the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis. I remember reading how some publisher was going to re-re-write them to cut any religious references out. Since the books are Christian allegory such cutting would destroy the books.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

But then you have a sliding slope as nowadays someone will be offended by anything and will change wording under the prefix that it is unacceptable usage, that kind of thing leads to reading Moby Phallus. And if you think that is far fetched how about the fact Agatha Christie's '10 Little Niggers' is now renamed as 'And then there were None' even in the UK.

Edit- Yes I know this is bowdlerisation rather that word usage but let us have some fun eschwartz

Publishers on either side of the ocean make it confusing too. Her murder on the orient express is also murder in the Calais coach I believe. The British and us publishers each had a different name for her books.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Speaking of Nancy:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...?utm_hp_ref=tw

The problem with modernization is where to stop.
And the orthodoxy of one era invariably becomes the "disgusting attitudes that must be exterminated" of the next.

I hope to live long enough to see the kids of the millenials decry the "intolerance and conformism" and "casual racist condescencion" of the PC era.

Okay, I'm at the point where I think it would be fascinating to compare them. I wonder if there are an digital versions of the original Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys books to compare to newer versions?