Talk:Henry Fielding's early plays/GA1

GA Review

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Hi, I will be reviewing this article shortly. Ricardiana (talk) 01:58, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Oh, wow. NocturneNoir will be happy to hear. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 02:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Review

Hi, this article is excellent; I have one main criticism, which I'll get to in a minute, and I am putting the article on hold for that reason. The article as a whole, though, is very good. Some of its virtues are:

• it is lucid and well-written;
• it clearly organizes a lot of information;
• it makes use of citations whenever appropriate, from reliable sources, and takes note of differences of opinions between scholars.

My main criticism is that the section on gender in the last half of "Structure and concern" is a bit confusingly written. In the initial paragraph, it sounds as if Fielding is upholding some pretty standard patriarchal ideas. I found two sentences in that paragraph confusing:

In his plays and his novels, women are used as a way to discuss the internal aspects of humans including both emotions and morality. However, Fielding does mock women who abuse their relationship with the internal, emotions, and morality in order to dominate and assume power.

It took me several reads to figure out why the "however" was there, and I think it could be re-worded without too much trouble. I take it that your point is that Fielding is sometimes critical of women as humans, and sometimes critical of them as women. (It's also striking that this paragraph is one of the very few in the article that has only one citation, despite its length - maybe another citation would help.) --The next paragraph then seems to transition to another topic, by mentioning ghosts, but then quickly returns to women, and seems to make roughly the same point. Then the next paragraph gives a dissenting view. --This isn't the world's hugest deal, but in such a well-done article this section stood out as a bit confusing and perhaps wordy. I recommend starting the whole gender section off by mentioning that there are a couple of points of view, and only then delving into first one, then the other, each in its own paragraph.

I have a couple of other comments, which are very minor. The Temple Beau is described as being "a decent success" - I wasn't sure what this meant - does it mean that it ran a long time, or took in a lot of money, or received good reviews, or all these? I'm not sure. Also, Colley Cibber is called "renowned" - my knowledge is dim here, I admit, but I thought Cibber was as disliked as he was liked, and "renowned," to my mind, implies a more positive feeling towards Cibber than it's my impression his contemporaries had.

At any rate, those are my comments. I will watch this page and update the article to Good Article status as soon as the gender section is changed. The other comments I mentioned just because it's obvious that you all have put a lot of time and loving care into this article, and I figured you would be interested in any advice to make it perfect. I may be wrong about Cibber, so I leave that to you, and I look forward to promoting the article soon.

All best, Ricardiana (talk) 02:35, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I made some changes in this version. I hope that gives you a sense of the bottom section so we can narrow down the problem. The paragraph at the top of the section only has one citation because it is from the same source (the others are from multiple sources). There are only two major feminists who have written books on Fielding's works that deal with the plays, but they are rather known (so, they are used heavily on the subject). I will keep an eye on this so I can quickly address the concerns. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:56, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for being so prompt, Ottava Rima! I think the changes you made, especially adding a sub-section, are very helpful, and I am happy to list this very good article as an official Good Article. Job well done!

(One last thing -- do consider, if you haven't already, reviewing someone else's article for GA status!)

All best, Ricardiana (talk) 03:58, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Congrats. Nice article.--Doug Coldwell ^talk 22:38, 15 March 2009 (UTC)