Talk:Ruyijun zhuan/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Caeciliusinhorto (talk · contribs) 18:56, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

I will review this article - initial comments shortly Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:56, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

General comments:

• Both the lead and the body say "it was constantly banned after its publication". It's unclear to me exactly what this means – I imagine that it has been banned several times, but perhaps that it has been banned continuously from publication to the present?

As far as I can recall the source doesn't elaborate on that either Kingoflettuce (talk) 19:15, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Checking the source, it says "banned several times"; I have changed the article text to "repeatedly banned" to clarify this. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:17, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

• The image of a snail is obviously a snail; the caption would be better to explain the relevance of the snail to the article – i.e. that Xue's penis is said to be like a snail in the text

I just removed the snail image since it wasn't so helpful to begin with Kingoflettuce (talk) 19:15, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

• The section on composition begins by restating quite a lot of the plot section above. In particular, a thirty-year-old virgin[19] who is rumoured to have "prodigious natural endowments" and is later conferred the title of "Ruyijun" or "Lord of Perfect Satisfaction" by Empress Wu Zetian after she summons him into her quarters to personally confirm said rumour entirely duplicates facts we already know from the prior section, with the exception of the fact that Xue is 30. I would suggest fitting that into the plot summary and cutting the rest, leaving something like:

Ruyijun zhuan chronicles Wu Zetian's rise to power, while detailing her numerous sexual encounters, especially with the male protagonist Xue Aocao. Apart from Xue, all of the empress' lovers depicted in Ruyijun zhuan are historical figures.

Done, with just a sliver of extra info remaining Kingoflettuce (talk) 19:15, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

• Ruyijun zhuan is forty-seven pages long: I don't think "pages" is super useful as an unqualified measure of length. Does this mean that the original manuscript is 47 pages, or the 1763 first printed edition, or some other edition, or the English translation? Even typesetting can make an enormous difference! Can you clarify what this refers to? (To take an example from my own speciality, translations of Sappho 16 run from half a page of the Loeb edition, to nearly two (rather larger!) pages in Carson's If Not, Winter)

If I'm not mistaken the source doesn't clarify what that refers to either. Just remove? That said, the English translation isn't only 47 pages long, I don't think. Kingoflettuce (talk) 19:15, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Stone's translation is 20ish pages long and he writes that the Ruyijun zhuan "barely amounts to forty-five [no idea how I initially saw that as forty-seven, my bad] pages and is written in condensed classical Chinese". So I'd think it's safe to assume that this refers to the original manuscript but I'll remove it if you think that's better. Kingoflettuce (talk) 10:47, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

I think your solution here of quoting Stone directly is fine; I've changed the infobox number to 45 to align with the Stone quote. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:17, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

• The article twice refers to Ruyijun zhuan as a novel, and three times as a novella. The boundary between the two is fairly fuzzy, but I would consider novels and novellas to be distinct. Can we be consistent here?

I thought they were interchangeable -- like one being a subset of the other -- but since the source specifies that it's a novella I'll go ahead and just do that. Kingoflettuce (talk) 19:15, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

It's picky, but a novella is generally used for shorter works, and novels for longer ones. In modern pro publishing, the division is around the 50,000 word mark, although in historical use like this it's more variable. I think we should try to be consistent however. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:17, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

This is a super interesting article. That's all I picked up on my first pass-through, but I'm going to want to dig into this one properly – more soon! Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:07, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in getting into this - I was ill the week after I wrote my initial comments!

I have some problems with the "publication history" section:

• The preface and postscript of the novella are dated 1514 and 1520 respectively, suggesting that the story itself was written sometime in between But the source cited doesn't quite say this; it says that Liu Hui believes this, and that Charles Stone believes that the preface and postscript are dated to 1634 and 1760 respectively! This is a very substantial disagreement. Both H. Laura Wu (in Huang 2004, p.203) and Martin Huang (Huang 2020 p.115) report this disagreement without taking a side on it, which suggests to me that the matter isn't conclusively settled, and Wikipedia should not be reporting one possible date as fact.

Ok, I have tweaked it to possibly reflect the disagreement a bit better, but it feels like a mouthful to me now. Further suggestions are most welcome. Kingoflettuce (talk) 19:15, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Did a little bit of rejigging the sentence breaks. Hopefully flows a little better now? Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:17, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

• Huang is also made what is believed to be the earliest known reference to Ruyijun zhuan in a three-page-long essay published between 1525 and 1540. Of the three sources cited for this claim, one of them explicitly contradicts it – Hanan dates the first reference to RZ to 1561!

Wasn't sure how to work that disagreement in without seeming too convoluted -- so I've just removed the third citation for now? Kingoflettuce (talk) 19:15, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm also having problems with the "literary significance" section:

• given that it predominantly uses Charles Stone as a reference, I'm very confused by the fact that the only analysis of the work in our article is of a piece of pornography, when Stone's central thesis is that it isn't primarily pornography.

It does seem to be the consensus of most critics though but I found Stone to be a convenient source in general, so I leaned on it more. My intention wasn't to include really in-depth scholarly analysis, but just an overview of its role and place in literary history. In any case, I'm not quoting the Stone quote ("most Chinese erotic fiction written during the next hundred years was ultimately inspired by the Ruyijun zhuan or borrowed from its vocabulary") out of context, am I? Kingoflettuce (talk) 19:15, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

• arguably the "first pornographic work in the Chinese language". this is a super misleading quote. It's cited to Stone, and while he did write it, he isn't (as our use of the quote suggests) arguing that RZ is the first pornographic work in Chinese; he is summarising the view of other commentators! His own view (p.17) is that RZ "has little in common with these definitions [of pornography]". Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:00, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

I didn't intend to suggest that Stone said it--but as you mention he is indeed summarising the view of other commentators, and I thought it would be appropriate to use this citation to support the fact that, well, it's "Arguably the first pornographic work in the Chinese language", insofar as I couldn't find a more handy source summarising the view of other commentators. A little roundabout way of explaining the citation, but was I supposed to cite multiple commentators (such as those whose views are summarised by Stone) instead to prove that point? Kingoflettuce (talk) 19:15, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I can see what you are trying to do, and we should definitely say that commentators have seen it as the first pornographic work in Chinese! I think rewriting it so as not to quote Stone directly helps in not making it seem that he necessarily agrees with that view, here – how does my attempt look? Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:17, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, and no worries about the delay -- hope you've recovered fully! :) Kingoflettuce (talk) 19:15, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I've made a few tweaks to the text. Let me know how you like them. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 16:17, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Love the changes you made and the general insight that you've offered. Thank you so much Caeciliusinhorto Kingoflettuce (talk) 16:59, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I've just had a final read-through and I'm happy with the article as it stands. This is the part where I do the formal box-ticking and ribbon-cutting bit, I think. Congratulations on your new Good Article! Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 17:13, 9 October 2021 (UTC)