OK, here's a conceit. Looking at the worlds outlined in these written works of fiction [and non fiction], a Star Trek away team arrive to sort out the problem described, and are ordered to make any necessary interventions.
Starting wiith Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography.
Franklin attempts the habot of virtue, and idenifies 13 - identifying the latter with some assistance.
These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:
1. TEMPERANCE.
Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. SILENCE.
Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. ORDER.
Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. RESOLUTION.
Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. FRUGALITY.
Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i. e., waste nothing.
6. INDUSTRY.
Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. SINCERITY.
Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. JUSTICE.
Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. MODERATION.
Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. CLEANLINESS.
Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
11. TRANQUILLITY.
Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. CHASTITY.
Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
13. HUMILITY.
Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
From the point of view of an potsider entering his world, it would be hard to know how to put him straight, as he seems to be quite a few steps ahead of the rest of us.
It is Franklin himself that wants to put other people straight, or at least to offer his program to others; via an almanack, with much success it seems, and he wished to form a leaugue or society of young gentlemen dedicated to the cultivation of virtue using this approach.
So he is the one making the intervention, and an away team visiting him at his letters might bbe expected to take his ideas back to the Enterprise and spread them through the galaxy.
This reversal means the author's inner world affects the outer [albeit fictional] one; a factor at least in all the stories here, perhaps.
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On Milton's juvenalia.
I would hope the away team would find out why he was encouraged to continue with these awful pieces, and take either Milton or those that lauded this stuff on a trip to the heavens to view true wonders.
As for the individual poems.. they'd make passable hymns. I can't be bothered to look at the story each tells as I'd have to actually read them again.
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Cicero on Friendship.
What is there for an away team to do. Should them beam down to one of the original conversations on which the essay was based, or the conversation described in which Cicero arranges the speakers and their words as if he were a playwright? Or perhaps to visit the City of the time to deal with whatever threats the Rebublic are being obliquely referred to?
I think if the team beamed down to Cicero's stage, then Kirk might passionately agree with the sentiments espoused, Spock would point out certain illogicalities - "Perfect agreement? *raises eyebrow*. In my experience there is never perfect agreement between humans because their understanding is so flawed."
Bones would be passionately against whatever Jim agreed with, and outraged at Spocks cold reasoning, of course.
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The Flounder Fish Story
Who is there to rescue?
The Fisherman releases the Flounder back to the sea. The Fisherman is uncomfortable with his wife's request, but should they try to resue him from that or his wife from the sin of hubris?
Do people suffer by the granting of the wishes - King, Emperor, Pope or common people?
Here it is the Flounder, not any outside interventionists, that sorts things out.
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The Soaring Eagle and Contented Stork
Mazzini on Byron and Goethe
Now here Mazzini describes two individuals in the context of the world at the time they were writing, and contrasts them. In a way, though, he is describing the evolution of consciousness in the Western world, with htese figures as personifying different aspects of idividuality - the ego and the observer.
We could send the away team to try to make Byron and Goethe more 'adjusted' to the world they found themselves, or to help the world live up to Byron's expectations and down to Goethe's..
Or take VByron back to an heroic past, and Goethe forwards to a beurocratic future world where every event great and small is seen by The Computer.
The team could try to alter the course of Western thought, or to champion individuality, or remove the Byron and Goerthe to hasten the next phase of individuality with cooperation.
Or perhaps they could engineer a public discussion between the the figures to help them find common cause that would hasten a general epiphany in the Collective.
Or give Mazzini some therapy to heal the split in him projected onto the world.
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In the dead of night Hector's ghost appeared to warn Æneas of the impending doom to come upon the walled city of Troy.
OK, he're a clear job for the crew. Phasers on stun, knock out the soldiers in the wooden horse and beam the Greek traitor Sinon up to the ship to tell him off [where he escapes and joins forces with the Klingons or Romulans, and appears in later episodes].
Thus Priam's palace is spared, his sons live, the maidens of Troy survive to wed and raise their families in peace.
And of course Aenas has no call to leave the city to go and found Rome, as Virgil describes.
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Scheherazade and the Thousand and One Nights.
Now there's a lot of stories to sort out!
Scheherazade herself might be rescued, but she does OK herself. The away team might reasonably take the king who kills each virgin he has slept with and maroon him somewhere.
We see stories within stories, like a Russian doll, or sub-personalities within a personality.
And looking at all the stories so far, we begin to see the broadest sweep of a map.
More later.
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