Text 3091, 74 rader
Skriven 2005-11-27 20:22:11 av ceri@twmba.net
Ärende: Shakespeare
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From: "Rai" <ceri@twmba.net>
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Shakespeare in SMS format! 

'Literary' texts no more?
Project reduces classic works to text messages 

Thursday, November 17, 2005; Posted: 2:32 p.m. EST (19:32 GMT)
LONDON, England (AP) -- "Romeo, Romeo -- wher4 Rt thou Romeo?" 

It could be the future of Shakespeare. 

Dot mobile, a British mobile phone service aimed at students, says it plans
to condense classic works of literature into SMS text messages. The company
claims the service will be a valuable resource for studying for exams. 

Academic purists will be horrified. Hamlet's famous query, "To be or not to
be, that is the question," becomes "2b? Nt2b? ???" 

John Milton's epic poem "Paradise Lost" begins "devl kikd outa hevn coz
jelus of jesus&strts war." ("The devil is kicked out of heaven because he
is jealous of Jesus and starts a war.") 

Some may dismiss the summaries as cheat notes for the attention-deficit
generation, but John Sutherland, a University College London English
professor who consulted on the project, said they could act as a useful
memory aid. 

"The educational opportunities it offers are immense," said Sutherland, who
chaired the judging panel for this year's Booker Prize for fiction. 

Sutherland said the compressed nature of text messages allowed them to
"fillet out the important elements in a plot." 

"Take for example the ending to Jane Eyre -- 'MadwyfSetsFyr2Haus.' (Mad
wife sets fire to house.) Was ever a climax better compressed?" 

But political commentator and author Oliver Kamm said the terse texts were
"more than a travesty." 

"What you lose with text messaging in literature is what makes literature
what it is -- the imagery, the irony, the nuance," he told British
Broadcasting Corp. radio. 

"What I fear will happen with text versions of Shakespeare is that students
will be encouraged not to read the books but to settle for something else,
and people don't need excuses not to read books. They don't read enough as
it is." 

Books planned for the service include Charles Dickens' "Bleak House," whose
tale of the interminable legal suit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce is reduced to
a few snappy lines, and Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," which
describes hunky Mr. Darcy as "fit&loadd" (handsome and wealthy). 

Dot mobile said it planned to launch the service in January, with
Shakespeare's complete works available by April. The texts will be free to
subscribers to the company's phone service. 

NICKED from 
http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/11/17/literature.text.ap/index.html 

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 


Rai
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Just as easy as 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169 


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