Commission for European Standards: Literary [+clarification]

Journal daniil's Journal: Commission for European Standards: Literary [+clarification] 4

Journal by daniil on Friday October 07, 2005 @05:14PM

Ed. Perhaps I should've made it more clear that it's satire. Sorry for the confusion; it wasn't intentional.

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The Hungarian Writers' Union has been informed by a source in Brussels that, after a series of confidential conferences, an agreement is imminent on obligatory literary standards for all EU member states. Our correspondent has been able to obtain this draft copy of the chapter relating to the novel only.

Chapter CVIII. Prose Fiction (The Novel and Related Genres)

The formal criteria for narrative forms called Prose shall be understood henceforward as follows:

1) A volume of text not less than 116 pages and not more than 367 pages should be called a Novel. Any such text shorter than that is a Short Story, and as such, will not be supported by the European Union. Anything longer than such a text will cease to exist.

2) For Font Size, see also Paragraphs A and B of Chapter LXIII. Use of fonts over or under 12 points will result in the exclusion of the Novel from European Union support. Formatting more than 25 lines on a page and more than 60 characters in a line is prohibited.

3) For insetting, paragraph spacing and margins see Sub-Sections 234 and 235 of Chapter XVII. Any work failing to meet the requirements as laid down in Items 2 and 3 will not qualify as a Novel even if it should fulfill all other criteria.

4) The Novel must be arranged through an Action, namely into a beginning, middle, and an end, and this arrangement is obligatory. This trinity is defined as Action-Bow. In the absence of an Action-Bow, a Novel is not allowed to be published, distributed, or written in the territory of any Member State of the European Union.

5) The Novel must contain Dialogue and Author's Text. A work lacking either of these will not qualify as a Novel and will not be supported.

6) The ideal ratio between Dialogue and Author's Text is 2 : 1. A maximum divergence of + or 12 per cent is tolerable. Any divergence of a larger order will result in the disqualification of the work from European Union support.

7) The words used in a Novel must conform 99 per cent to the Common Word Stock of the language concerned. (For the definition of Common Word, see Family Standards of the European Union, Chapter on Mother, Sub-Section on Mother Tongue.) Every European Union Member State is permitted a maximum of 5 000 Common Words. The determination of these falls within the competence of the Academy of Sciences of every Member State of the European Union. By 31 December 2004, these Common Words will be published by the Member States at their own cost in a minimum of half a million copies, and are to be made available also on CD-ROM. If the total of words other than those contained in the Common Word Stock thus determined does not exceed 1 per cent, the Novel is to be tolerated; an excess of 2 per cent will disqualify the Novel from support. A divergence of 1.5 per cent will be judged by an International Literary Committee of Arbitration whether it is tolerable or not; the decision of this Committee is subject to the approval of the Supreme Language Court (SLC) of the European Union (the SLC is to be composed as follows: two members from each of the States whose membership of the European Union dates from before the 2004 current enlargement and one member each from the states acquiring membership in 2004, with the exception of Poland which, in recognition of the importance of its agriculture, may have three members). Rulings of the SLC are final.

8) In content, a Novel is required to describe an Action begun, developed, and completed in any of the languages of the Member States of the European Union, subject to the restrictions detailed above.

Read the rest of this fine essay here.

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