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Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Reception history of Jane Austen

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Latest comment: 15 years ago by Awadewit in topic Comments by David Fuchs

Comments by David Fuchs

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Latest comment: 15 years ago75 comments5 people in discussion

First set

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1) Given that this is an unwieldy topic, it's not surprising it has a less than optimal name, but I'm not really sure about the opening: "The reception history of Jane Austen follows a path from modest fame to wild popularity; her novels are both the subject of intense scholarly study and the centre of a diverse fan culture. Jane Austen, the author of such works as Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1815), has become one of the best-known and widely read novelists in the English language.[1]" While you rectify the main issues of who/what/when in the first sentence and following lines, just starting off anyone unfamiliar with who the dickens this "Austen" lady is would be confused. "The reception history" is unclear as it comes before novels; perhaps rephrasing to be direct: "The works of novelist Jane Austen have" or something similar. I'm sorry if I'm not lucidly explaining myself, but I just feel that it's an issue. editor deference

  • 1) There is no convention for naming these sorts of articles on Wikipedia (see Category:Reception of writers). You are correct that the lead assumes the reader knows who Austen is, but as this is a subarticle or daughter article of Jane Austen, I do not anticipate many readers coming directly here who do not, in fact, know who Austen is. We wrestled with how often to say "the works of Jane Austen", as "Austen" is actually now a synonym for "the works of Jane Austen" (this phrasing is about 300 years old - Alexander Pope actually commented on it). Moreover, I worry about repeating "the works of Austen" too frequently as this article not only discusses the reception of Austen's works, but also the cultural phenomenon that is Austen. In literary studies, this is referred to as "reception studies". This article therefore charts a "reception history". Does this make sense? Awadewit (talk) 19:48, 26 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • To add two thoughts: while "reception," "reception studies" and "reception history" are all technical terms in the study of literature, a couple of the common meanings of the word "reception" are close enough to the technical usage that readers will have a general idea of the point of the article from its title. Of course, the first sentence in the lead begins with the title in accordance with WP:MOS: "If possible, the page title should be the subject of the first sentence." Simmaren (talk) 01:16, 27 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

2) In some areas clauses and words could be reordered to make the prose more clear, for ex. "At the time they were published, her works received only a few positive reviews, although they were considered fashionable by members of high society." Rephrasing to "At the time they were published, Austen's works were considered fashionable by members of high society but recieved few positive reviews (from who?)" It removes any second-guessing if "they" means her works or the reviews.

  • 2) Adopted your suggestion: At the time they were published, Austen's works were considered fashionable by members of high society but received few positive reviews. - I thought "reviews" clearly meant "published reviews". I hate to repeat the word "published" here - do you have a suggestion for a clearer phrasing that conveys this idea? Awadewit (talk) 19:52, 26 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

3) "The publication in 1870 of her nephew's Memoir of Jane Austen introduced her to a wider public as an appealing personality—"dear, quiet aunt Jane"—" it would be nice if it were explicitly stated these were her nephew's words; I understand you're trying to spice up the writing, but it may be unnecessary.

  • 3) "dear, quiet aunt Jane" is not a quote from the Memoir - it is a description of the personality he described that has become rather common. You can Google around and find people referring to her as "Aunt Jane" and "dear Aunt Jane" all over the place (it is kind of weird). Awadewit (talk) 21:44, 26 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • I don't think that this is necessary in this instance. This is not a quotation in the technical sense. Adding this information will only create a poorly-worded sentence that doesn't really help the reader - the key point is that "dear, quiet aunt Jane" is a good description of the personality described in the Memoir. The history of its evolution as a phrase and who came up with individual versions of it is not important to include in the lead. We don't, for example, begin the William Shakespeare article by explaining where the phrase the "the Bard" came from. Awadewit (talk) 15:12, 29 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • But in the Shakespeare article the nomenclature is obvious and seperated; "He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "The Bard")." Here it is shoved in with another sentence which suggests that it's the memoir which led to those specific words; perhaps the "dear aunt jane" part would be better placed in the lead around commentary of the Janeites or just as how Austen was considered/evaluated differently now as opposed to then. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 15:39, 29 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • It is the Memoir which led to that specific idea - that is why the "dear, quiet aunt Jane" phrase is placed there. Would removing the quotation marks solve all of this? They don't technically have to be there. Awadewit (talk) 15:43, 29 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

6) Gah, I wish I had a better grasp of sentence construction so I could explain myself better, but you use words like "However" and "Yet" at the beginning of sentences quite often. It gives a sense of jumpy interruption, making the following sentence seem "more important". This has a use, but I feel you're drawing too much attention to the prose itself by repetitious use.

7) "They critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the eighteenth century" Considering that her books were published in the 19th century, it would seem logical that this sensibility lingered in the nineteenth century as well, but the construction makes it seem like more abrupt a change than I'm sure it was.

  • 7) When did sensibility as a literary movement die? There are of course lots of opinions on this matter (see Awadewit's dissertation!). However, I don't think you want the graduate-school version. The simplified version is: sensibility died in the 1790s and out of its ashes rose Romanticism. So, yes, Austen was responding against the eighteenth-century novels of sensibility. Awadewit (talk) 20:24, 26 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

10) Maybe it's my background writing reception sections, but I'm uncomfortable with what appear to be opinions phrased as fact, ex. "Overall, these early reviewers did not know what to make of Austen's novels—for example, they misunderstood her use of irony. Reviewers reduced Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice to didactic tales of virtue prevailing over vice.[34]" Who said that these early reviewers didn't know what to make of her novels? Who said they misunderstood?

  • 10) Austen scholars say this - it is a general opinion among these scholars. I hesitate to attribute this opinion to one scholar since it is such a general opinion. Would it be better if we said "Austen scholars generally agree" or some such phrase? Awadewit (talk) 20:32, 26 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • Our citation is to a secondary work in which a prominent Austen scholar (Mary Waldron) summarizes the reaction of early reviewers to Austen's works in this way. Other scholars we have read (e.g., Southam) appear to generally agree. Simmaren (talk) 01:40, 27 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • Once again I'm just afraid you guys/gals are looking at it too closely. As a reader not versed in Austen scholarship, I won't know anything about whether a source footnoted is the grand poohbah of Austen scholars or not. The issue is not whether it's cited but how it's phrased. For example, say "Austen scholars say the early reviewers" or just word to be more neutral; you don't have to attribute it to one person specifically, just let us know who thinks it. --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 20:24, 28 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

11) Just a comment, is there anything more on how Austen's novel was received differently in continental Europe, because right now you have the French changes (and god, are those changes horrible) serving as the evidence for the entire continent, which I feel is a big disingenuous. A citation directly after the statement would ease my mind.

  • 11) We used the French example as representative of what happened more generally in Europe, but we also included a small detail on the German response. Footnote 48 at the end of the first paragraph should assuage your concerns, as that paragraph deals with the general European reaction, not just France. Awadewit (talk) 20:35, 26 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • I've removed this footnote (which was incorrect, anyway). The specific claims made in the first paragraph of that section are all cited. This is simply a topic sentence that connects the two paragraphs. It does not need a citation. If it had one, it would be a repetition of footnote 48, as I said above. However, I don't think repeating the footnote is necessary. Awadewit (talk) 15:23, 29 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • But if we were to follow that material is sourced at the end of the copy, it would seem that Cossy and Saglia, 171 is the source for the statement that she was received differently, rather than pg. 170. I mean, really, it's just an extra citation. Better to be anal about explicitly sourcing than to do it too little. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 15:42, 29 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

12) "Readers of the Memoir were presented with the myth of the amateur novelist who wrote masterpieces:" as opposed to the true Austen, who was what? to contributor deference

  • It would be nice to have a short clear statement of the "true" Austen right there, such as "as opposed to the (professional writer/something like that)", just so the contrast is made apparent in the line itself even without the background knowledge. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 20:26, 28 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • I'm not sure repeating the contrast at this point is a good idea. The information is already presented in the "Background" section and usually we try not to repeat information in an article. Furthermore, these two visions of Austen did not really exist around 1870. There was no published description of her as a professional author at that time, so I feel that by presenting the contrast, we might be misleading readers of the article. This article charts the opinions that people have had of Austen - in a sense, all of the opinions presented here are different versions of Austen. If you want to compare them to the "real" Austen (whatever that is), one would have to read the biography article. I don't see a reason to compare this one myth to the reality but none of the other representations. Awadewit (talk) 15:23, 29 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

14) Reading the bit about Twain's response, I wish there was a bit more substance to why he in particular argued against it: was it the lack of frontier themes as mentioned before or something different? (Love the quote, though.)

  • 14) In the article, we say this: Twain used Austen to argue against the Anglophile tradition in America. Twain was rejecting the idea that what was British, particularly British literature, was somehow superior to what was American. Would it help to expand on this? Awadewit (talk) 21:52, 26 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • This doesn't reduce redundancy (the number of words is the same), it just destroys the lovely parallelism that I constructed between American and English literature! The form of the sentence actually reflected what Twain himself was trying to do. Do you mind if I restore the parallelism? Awadewit (talk) 16:04, 29 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

17) "there can be no easy going back to any earlier view of an apolitical, or even unqualifiedly 'conservative', Austen" another quote which I'd like a stated source to.

  • 17) Again, I hesitate to say "according to X", as this is such a general opinion. There is nothing controversial about this statement and I can't imagine any Austen scholar disagreeing with it. It is a statement that "there is no going back" to the days before feminist literary criticism and political criticism - that those issues have to be dealt with. There is nothing controversial in that. It would be more controversial to come down on one side or another - to say Austen is conservative or feminist, etc. (although even those debates are a bit tired now). Those are the statements that need attribution in the text. Awadewit (talk) 20:55, 26 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • This statement is now footnoted (FN # 102).

18) "Sequels, prequels, and adaptations based on Jane Austen's work range from attempts to enlarge on the stories in Austen's own style to the soft-core pornographic novel Virtues and Vices (1981) by Grania Beckford and S. N. Dyer's fantasy novel Resolve and Resistance (1996)." That's a bit of a breathless sentence, could we break it down a bit?

  • The point of this sentence is to list the various types of sequels and to suggest and there are many kinds. I think that if we broke it up we would lose that sense of variety. If you can think of an elegant way to break it up that retains that idea, I would gladly change it, but I can't think of any version of the moment that doesn't contain some ugly "there are also" kind of phrase. Awadewit (talk) 15:36, 29 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • Yeah, but it cleans it up a lot. I mean, if you were really worried about it you could just add a note explaining who made them, but as I stated in the edit summary as you're just trying to show the breath of the adaptations and since they aren't notable enough (yet?) to have a wikilink, it's just information cluttering the sentence. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 16:09, 29 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

19) You repeat "direct opposition" twice in a few sentences, sounds clunky

~migrated 03:48, 27 November 2008 (UTC), responses copied from FAC page and formatted 15:15, November 28, 2008, [2] --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 20:16, 28 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

Second set

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A smaller set, and then my intractability will have reached its limits :)

20) some to worship her and some to defend her from the teeming masses - teeming? can we get a word that's less hyperbolic (although is that a word?) like "wider public" or summat?

  • The phrases "worship her" and "teeming masses" are useful here because they convey an attitude evident on the part of many "Janeites" toward JA and toward people who do not appear to Janites to show sufficient respect or enthusiasm toward her works. You see this again and again on the web and elsewhere. FAC criterion 1(a) requires that an article should be "well written", that is, "its prose is engaging, even brilliant". We could use a different term like "wider public" instead of "teeming masses" but that phrase and others like it are flat and academic rather than engaging and would lose parallelism with "worship" and the sense of "attitude" we meant to convey. Simmaren (talk) 13:34, 1 December 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • I have to reluctantly disagree with the use of scare quotes here. Scare quotes indicate that the words inside the quotation marks do not mean what one would think they mean on the surface - scare quotes suggest a hidden or double meaning of sorts. For example, I could say that patients give "informed" consent to medical procedures, but by adding the scare quotes what I really mean is that patients are anything but informed. In the Austen article, we are not suggesting that sort of hidden meaning in these phrases and adding the quotation marks only confuses the reader. Awadewit (talk) 15:05, 1 December 2008 (UTC)Reply
Well they're unprofessional, then; I mean, I wouldn't refer to people as "Limies" in prose just because I'm talking about people who refer to British guys as Limies. (Horrible example, I know but I'm trying to make a point.) There's a line between 'engaging' prose and imprecise prose. You have to distinguish what you're saying if you use it, "whom they saw as the teeming masses" or something similar. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 15:53, 1 December 2008 (UTC)Reply
Personally, I think the phrases are fine. They convey how polarized the two camps were without a tedious explanation. The issue of hyperbole and sarcasm, however, is tricky. I think the "worship" phrase is quite obviously hyperbole (and would be understood as such by an average reader) and thus there is no need for scare quotes. The "teeming masses" phrase might be a bit more subtle, however, so I wouldn't mind seeing the scare quotes on it. Kaldari (talk) 20:27, 1 December 2008 (UTC)Reply
If either of these phrases were sarcastic, I would definitely agree that scare quotes were necessary. However, these phrases are a restatement of particular groups' opinions - they are not sarcastic commentary on those opinions. Moreover, after reading the primary sources, I don't believe "teeming masses" is hyperbole. These critics had real disdain for the masses and their opinions of Austen. We may not like that fact, but I feel this is an accurate description of the view of a certain group of literary elites at the end of the nineteenth century. Awadewit (talk) 00:13, 2 December 2008 (UTC)Reply
←but from the lead, no one is going to know that. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 04:19, 2 December 2008 (UTC)Reply
This is an accurate description of the views of the two groups and reflects the sources we have consulted. It is clearly stated and well-written. Readers do not assume hyperbole or misrepresentation, so I see no need to change this wording. The suggestions offered so far would only introduce errors or confusion into the text.Awadewit (talk) 14:51, 2 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

21) "As of the early twenty-first century, Austen fandom supports an industry of printed sequels and prequels" - but surely it's not just the fans supporting the movies; with what's described before it sounds like all this media is consumed by fanboys on the order of Star Wars geeks waiting in line for days.

  • Of course it's not just the fans who buy printed sequels and prequels, but they as a group are the most fervently interested in such things. This statement is meant to speak of the attitudes of fans and not necessarily the demographics of purchasers of printed sequels and prequels. As such it is appropriate here. Simmaren (talk) 13:34, 1 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

22) "Austen's artistic apprenticeship lasted from her teenage years until she was about thirty-five." - with what follows, I'm assuming "apprenticeship" means until she was 35, she wasn't a successful published writer, but it's not entirely clear.

  • It does mean that she was not yet a published author but it also refers to the enormous amount of work (discussed in detail in the JA article) she put into experiments in writing (e.g., the Juvenilia, Lady Susan, The Watsons) and writing and revising the novels to get them ready for hoped-for publication. Simmaren (talk) 13:34, 1 December 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • Because this article should be able to stand alone without a reader having gone through the parent article, could you make that more clear? --Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 13:45, 1 December 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • How about something like the following: "During this period, she experimented with various literary forms, including the epistolary novel which she tried and then abandoned, and wrote and extensively revised three major novels and began a fourth?" It shouldn't be necessary to go into more detail than this since this is background and not the main subject matter of the article. Simmaren (talk) 19:14, 1 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

23) "began a third novel" - she's written more than three books by this point; just make "new" or something?

24) I was just wondering about the use of blockquotes for quotations that are not particularly long-only 2-3 lines on my display.

  • (1) to a certain extent, this is a monitor-specific issue, of course, (2) there are three block quotes, which on my monitor have five, three and two lines, respectively, (3) WP:MOS prescribes that block quotes should be used for quotations longer than four lines or consisting of more than one paragraph no matter how long but does not suggest a minimum number of lines, (4) the use of block quotes in this case ensures that the quotations are not lost in a mass of text, and (5) if their use is really bothersome, we can eliminate them for the shorter quote(s). Simmaren (talk) 13:34, 1 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

25) The last paragraph of the adaptations starts veering towards a list of adaptations, primarily due to "The Bollywoodesque production Bride and Prejudice, which sets Austen's story in present-day India while including original musical numbers, premiered in 2004." Is this really that important to be mentioned here?

  • To a certain extent the look of a list is a by-product of the condensation required to fit within the scope of this article. "Bride and Prejudice" is a well-known movie musical adaptation (it's now toward the top of my Netflix queue) and helps convey the breadth (geographical and genre) of JA's impact on recent popular culture. In that sense it is no more or less significant than Clueless or Bridget Jone's Diary. Simmaren (talk) 13:34, 1 December 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • There's nothing more to say about this particular production, really; I agree with Simmaren that its mention shows the breadth of Austen adaptations, and as much space is given to it as Clueless and Bridget Jones. Other than noting that the film exists and what makes it unique (takes place in modern-day India, Bollywood-esque songs and dancing, etc), there's nada. Perhaps the missing "punch" is that it did not win any awards nor spawn a sequel or television series -- although I would have loved to see both! ;) *hums "No Life Without Wife"* María (habla conmigo) 16:07, 1 December 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • I'm anxious to be responsive, but it would help to know what you mean by "punch" in this context. I would think that Jane Austen's famous story redone as a movie musical (the point of referring to Bollywood and mentioning "musical numbers") produced and set in India compares favorably to the descriptions of the other adaptations mentioned. Simmaren (talk) 18:31, 1 December 2008 (UTC)Reply
  • It's just that the other sentences generally talk about the 'big' adaptations, how the 1995 version was such a hit, how it inspired similar in plot films, and then how the last version was the first since 1940 to aspire to be faithful to the novel. In comparison I feel the indian one just lacks a little more relation, but it's a minor nitpick; if you can't find something to add to it, that's fine; it's not horrible either way. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 20:19, 1 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

--Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 02:45, 1 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

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