578 Chapters (with Nicholas Dames) | My Last Book (with Hamid Dabashi)

The History of Literature

Jacke Wilson

History, Books, Arts

4.6 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 31 December 2023

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nicholas Dames (The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century) started his latest project with a seemingly simple question: Why do books have chapters? In this episode, as we turn from one year to the next, Jacke talks to an expert in segmentation. PLUS Hamid Dabashi (The Persian Prince: The Rise and Resurrection of an Imperial Archetype) stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/donate. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the Podgolomorate Network and LIT Hub Radio.
0:07.0	Hello, we live our lives governed by fictitious concepts. We say we're at the end of one year and starting a new one, but that's something
0:18.5	that's just made up. There is no December turning to January in nature.
0:24.0	And yet it's impossible to think of our lives as we understand them without that idea.
0:29.0	An old year going out, a new year coming in, a fresh beginning, a marking of past and future, these are
0:36.6	deeply engraved in our mind in the concept of a year, and so too with another metaphor a chapter turning at this time of year we might
0:47.8	try to understand an old year ending in a new one beginning and that might in fact
0:52.4	be the way we understand it.
0:54.0	Ah, one chapter is complete. A new chapter is about to begin.
1:00.0	It's a little strange when you think of it.
1:04.0	And one man-made concoction can be used to explain another.
1:09.0	But that's how deep these are.
1:11.0	They don't feel artificial. They feel real. We all know what it's like to end one
1:15.2	chapter and start the next. We all know what a chapter is. Or do we? Is a chapter something that's so ubiquitous and so essential it has essentially become invisible?
1:29.7	Can you define a chapter?
1:32.0	How? By length? you define a chapter how?
1:33.3	By length?
1:34.3	Well, we've all seen short chapters and long chapters, and we've seen books with lots of chapters,
1:40.2	and those with very few chapters or none at all.
1:45.0	What is a chapter?
1:46.7	Have books always had them?
1:48.9	Where did they come from?
	...

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