Talk:The dragon (Beowulf)/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

What an interesting article. Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 11:36, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Minor comments

• Please add date (1911) to the Rackham image caption. It might be advisable to add the book's author and title also, Richard Wagner's Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods.

• Does "motifs and themes" mean anything particular by the two words or would one of them be sufficient?

• Please also add date (1937) for The Hobbit.

• In Background, I'd suggest wikilinking English literature, Norse saga, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic literature/legend.

• Please briefly state the relationship (inclusion, I take it) between "Germanic legend" and "Norse saga".

• (worm, or serpent): perhaps "reptile, or serpent" would be closer to the truth. Worm is apparently only related by etymology, always a treacherous guide. Clark Hall has "reptile, serpent, snake, dragon".

• I note also that wyrm is introduced twice, differently, in Story and in Characterization.

• Might be wise to explain in a brief gloss how Scyld Shefing's funeral presages the dragon fight.

• Wikilink first use of Geats in Story.

• "as Tolkien writes" - suggest name, date (1936), and wikilink Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.

Importance

• I wonder whether the comparison between the Beowulf-dragon fight and the Sigemund story would not be better made using a table? This isn't I think a GA requirement, but it would be well worth spelling out each point of similarity, and indeed each point of difference, one row of the table per item. Table or no, I think the comparison should be spelt out more fully. Quotations (and translations) might be appropriate, too.

• It seems to me (see below) that this section needs to cover two main points, probably in separate subsections: the Structure of the Beowulf-dragon fight part of the poem, and its Significance. At the very least (if they are to be dealt with together), the significance of each paragraph's worth of description of the poem needs to be demonstrated.

History and criticism

• What seems to be missing entirely at the moment is a discussion of how critics over the past 2 centuries have responded to the dragon. I suggest you might like to divide this into 3 subsections:

Early (before Tolkien: almost entirely negatively); Tolkien's Monsters and the Critics, 1936; and Post-Tolkien (or some suitable name for that). This will (see below) require substantial use of the critical literature.

• The pre-Tolkien section needs to discuss (among others) the critics W. P. Ker, Raymond Wilson Chambers and Ritchie Girvan, all of whom Tolkien cites and criticises.

• For the Tolkien section, having mentioned Ker, Chambers, Girvan above (thank you), Tolkien's rebuttal of those earlier critics' views of the dragon needs to be summarized.

• For the Tolkien section, some material is available in the main article, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, but more is needed here, including on what a range of other scholars took Tolkien to be saying about the dragon. In other words, it will not be enough just to report what Tolkien said, though that is needed; the section needs additional secondary sources, with quotations and summaries.

• It may well be that Tolkien's own translation of Beowulf (Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary), and his notes in that book, throw some light on the dragon. e.g. p80 "Now the invader did begin to spew forth glowing fires and set ablaze the shining halls"; p81 "Wide might it be seen how the serpent went to war, the malice of that fell oppressor,"; "Back to his Hoard he sped to his dark hall ere the time of day." Better still is the Commentary pp350-352, with "here the poet leaps straight into the dragon-story and the thrilling adventure of the fugitive hiding in a cave by chance, discovering it to be a treasure-hoard, and nearly stepping on the dragon's head in the dark as he rummaged about... this is a very moving treatment of this 'fairy-tale' situation - remarkable for the 'sympathy' shown by the author for both the wretched fugitive and the dragon." There's more there, certainly worth using: do read it.

• The post-Tolkien section will need to be quite detailed as many scholars have ventured opinions. Ideally the section will use review papers which summarize what scholars have said about the dragon as we don't want to end up taking sides with one scholar or another's opinion.

• MagicatthemovieS: In the Pre- and Post- sections, it is important to distinguish between scholarly and popular (e.g. journalistic) opinion as these are as unlike as 'chalk and cheese'. The scholars are picking over fine details of the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) text and analysing the meaning, intention, and context; the journos are sounding off about the look and feel of the thing. We need at least to put these in separate paragraphs, more likely in separate sections. The journo section may be nearly complete, and it's inevitably a bit of a jumble; the scholarly section will need to focus on the controversies. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:13, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Legacy

• Why only mention Smaug and Sutcliff? The legacy is far wider, including indeed the whole field of dragon-fantasy from Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books to Cornelia Funke's Dragon Rider and Anne McCaffrey's sixteen (or so) dragon books, Dragonflight, and so on. Some critical discussion of how the genre derives from the Beowulf dragon is clearly required here.

Comments by Victoriaearle

Butting in: I wrote this article a number of years ago and it's completely unfinished. The nominator might be able to finish it, but it would be best to use as many scholarly sources as possible. I had to quit the work here because I didn't have the sources available I needed to finish. I would be opposed to adding a table to this article. It's best to write sections out like that in prose - particularly in literary articles. I'm not currently active so won't be able to work on the requests for this review. Victoriaearle (tk) 12:33, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

@Victoriaearle: many thanks for these relevant and timely comments. Do you have an outline in mind for the article, i.e. are there sections or subsections that you would expect to see here? It seems to me that the current "Importance" section contains at least two things not fully developed, namely the Structure of the dragon section of the poem, and the Significance of that section, and I was about to suggest such. What would you suggest? Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:06, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

In all honesty I don't think it's ready for review. It was tagged for deletion (if I remember correctly, but it's been many years) and I worked it up to its current state to save it, but not to the state of something I'd expect to go to review. Without sources, and reading Beowulf critical literature is a commitment, it's hard to know how it should be spun out. There are a lot of sources, they all have to be read, and then best practice would be to follow the sources to shape the article. I believe the sources I used were minimally available via google books, and I might have downloaded a pdf or two from Jstor, but essentially I only scratched the surface. There's also the issue of whether it should be a separate article (I think there's enough here for it to be) or merged back into the main Beowulf article. Frankly, it's an anomaly. If I had thought it GA worthy, I would have submitted it to review years ago. It does look nice though! Victoriaearle (tk) 13:18, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

OK, that's very helpful. Let's see what nom says before making a decision. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:30, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

I would be willing to edit the page until we are satisfied with it - MagicatthemovieS

OK, let's give it a go. It will involve a substantial amount of effort looking up the academic sources from the different periods, and I will expect clear evidence of careful work starting soon and proceeding at a satisfactory rate. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:46, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

My question for you is this - how many authors' opinions should I cite in the Pre- and Post -Tolkien sections of the article? - MagicatthemovieS

I doubt if anyone can give you an answer as a number. For the Pre-, I think it need not be very many apart from the 3 famous names I mentioned above. For the Post-, the GA requirement is to cover "the main points", for which at least each of the major types of opinion must be described. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:46, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Do you think the "Journalistic opinion" section is worthy of inclusion in this article? - MagicatthemovieS

Yes, though we can rename it; The New Yorker and The Atlantic are reliable sources and represent general cultivated opinion, which is notable but clearly different from scholarly minutiae. On Seamus Heaney, I notice you call him a scholar, but while he was indeed a scholarly poet and translator, he wasn't a scholar of Old English exactly, which is what the section title implies. His comments come across as those of a poet and translator, not of (say) a philologist. Maybe we should rename the Journalistic opinion as General opinion.