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Latest comment: 3 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion
@CardinalSims and LauraIngalli: - I realize that last semester's project is finished up, but a question... Checking Wikisource, I see the Longfellow translation uses "Matilda" ( [1] ). And this article uses "Matilda". And of the sources, a 2008 journal article uses "Matilda", while it's a 1992 source using "Matelda". Can I ask why it's at "Matelda" then? It seems like if Matilda is the name usually used in reliable sources, the article should be at something like Matilda (Purgatorio) or Matilda (The Divine Comedy). But maybe I'm missing some context for why the "Matelda" name deserves to be the title despite not being what the article uses in running prose. SnowFire (talk) 20:14, 29 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
@SnowFire: - You raise an excellent point. Now, I would most definitely not consider Longfellow as the ultimate authority on Dante-related spelling, so I followed your prompt and checked out recent translations (Hollander, Durling/Martinez) as well as recent scholarship (and encyclopedia entries, such as the 2000 Dante Encyclopedia). All the sources I have consulted use Matelda with an "e", which makes it more pressing to, I believe, replace the spelling of the article (esp. at the beginning, with a "Matelda, also sometimes spelled as Matilda"). As for the title, I do like the option of Matelda (The Divine Comedy). Do you think that would work even if we are not switching to Matilda? LauraIngalli (talk) 21:11, 29 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
If modern translations leave "Matelda" untranslated from the Italian (I'm a little surprised, since the 2008 Cervigni source seems to use "Matilda"), then there's no need to move the article at all - there's no other "competition" for Matelda with an e on Wikipedia, so it can stay here. The disambiguator is only needed because there are lots of articles on topics called Matilda as can be seen at the disambiguation page, so if it was decided that "Matilda" should be used, we'd need the parentheses in the title. SnowFire (talk) 21:19, 29 September 2021 (UTC)Reply
