This is an archive of past discussions about Charles Dickens. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Paragraph almost as indigestible as the work of the man himself
Anyone fancy breaking up World's Longest Paragraph™ ?
A well-known personality, his novels proved immensely popular during his lifetime. His first full novel, The Pickwick Papers (1837), brought him immediate fame, and this success continued throughout his career. Although rarely departing greatly from his typical "Dickensian" method of always attempting to write a great "story" in a somewhat conventional manner (the dual narrators of Bleak House constitute a notable exception), he experimented with varied themes, characterisations, and genres. Some of these experiments achieved more popularity than others, and the public's taste and appreciation of his many works have varied over time. Usually keen to give his readers what they wanted, the monthly or weekly publication of his works in episodes meant that the books could change as the story proceeded at the whim of the public. Good examples of this are the American episodes in Martin Chuzzlewit which Dickens included in response to lower-than-normal sales of the earlier chapters.
Dickens continues to be one of the best known and most read of English authors, and his works have never gone out of print.[3] At least 180 motion pictures and TV adaptations based on Dickens's works help confirm his success.[56] Many of his works were adapted for the stage during his own lifetime and as early as 1913 a silent film of The Pickwick Papers was made. His characters were often so memorable that they took on a life of their own outside his books. Gamp became a slang expression for an umbrella from the character Mrs. Gamp and Pickwickian, Pecksniffian, and Gradgrind all entered dictionaries due to Dickens's original portraits of such characters who were quixotic, hypocritical, or emotionlessly logical. Sam Weller, the carefree and irreverent valet of The Pickwick Papers, was an early superstar, perhaps better known than his author at first.
It is likely that A Christmas Carol stands as his best-known story, with new adaptations almost every year. It is also the most-filmed of Dickens's stories, with many versions dating from the early years of cinema. This simple morality tale with both pathos and its theme of redemption, sums up (for many) the true meaning of Christmas. Indeed, it eclipses all other Yuletide stories in not only popularity, but in adding archetypal figures (Scrooge, Tiny Tim, the Christmas ghosts) to the Western cultural consciousness. A prominent phrase from the tale, 'Merry Christmas', was popularised following the appearance of the story.[57] The term Scrooge became a synonym for miser, with 'Bah! Humbug!' dismissive of the festive spirit.[58] Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray called the book "a national benefit, and to every man and woman who reads it a personal kindness".[59] Some historians claim the book significantly redefined the "spirit" and importance of Christmas,[60][61] and initiated a rebirth of seasonal merriment after Puritan authorities in 17th century England and America suppressed pagan rituals associated with the holiday.[62] According to the historian Ronald Hutton, the current state of the observance of Christmas is largely the result of a mid-Victorian revival of the holiday spearheaded by A Christmas Carol. Dickens sought to construct Christmas as a family-centred festival of generosity, in contrast to the community-based and church-centred observations, the observance of which had dwindled during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.[63] Superimposing his secular vision of the holiday, Dickens influenced many aspects of Christmas that are celebrated today among Western nations, such as family gatherings, seasonal food and drink, dancing, games, and a festive generosity of spirit.[64] A Christmas Carol rejuvenated his career as a renowned author. A Tale of Two Cities is Dickens best selling novel. Since its inaugural publication in 1859, the novel has sold over 200 million copies, and is among the most famous works of fiction.[65] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.160.222.188 (talk) 21:21, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
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In the 'Early Life' section it states that Charles Dickens was born in Landport, Portsea. This is not true. Landport & Portsea are both districts of Portsmouth. So it should be Landport, Portsmouth.
NathalieWhite (talk) 10:45, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
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According to Wikipedia:IPA for English, the correct dialect-neutral version of the pronunciation of the name should be rendered /ˈtʃɑːrlzˈdɪkɪnz/ and not /ˈtʃɑːlzˈdɪkɪnz/, as the latter leads to an incorrect pronunciation for many accents (such as mine; I'm from Dorset and the 'a' in 'father' that /ɑː/ represents is the same as the 'o' in 'dog', and very different from the 'ar' in 'Charles'). The IPA English template should always default to rhotic vowels per the consensus-agreed policy at WP:IPA for English. 86.21.250.191 (talk) 12:19, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Done It might also be ɑːr, but changed as requested. Thanks, Celestra (talk) 15:57, 7 February 2012
(UTC)
More on celebration of his bicentenary needed
I think that this article could do with more the many celebrations of his bicentenary and emphases on this on [BBC]] radio and television. By an amazing coincidence, it is bicentenary (February 7 2012) as I type these words! ACEOREVIVED (talk) 16:42, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, but if you actually cared about this article you would have requested this far before today and not just because of his birthday. This will not be done.
Edit request on 8 February 2012
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second para, first sentence... check spelling
Many of his writings were originally published serially, in monthly instalments,
I suggest adding the bolded to the train incident--
Last years
On 9 June 1865,[37] while returning from Paris with Ternan, Dickens was involved in the Staplehurst rail crash. The first seven carriages of the train plunged off a cast iron bridge under repair. The only first-class carriage to remain on the track was the one in which Dickens was travelling. Dickens tried to help the wounded and the dying before rescuers arrived; in doing so, by one account, he poured brandy down the throats of the injured, unintentionally killing a few in the process.
ADD CITATION: Anthony Burgess, 1985, pp 56, published by Little, Brown and Co., 1979.
When did Dickens morph into Adolf Hitler?? Looking through edit history, I've seen this user's edit of Dickens described as a Hatchet job: "malicious misrepresentation of someone". The allegation was Dickens produced non-White/ Christian characters which have been described as "the most grotesque Fagin, grotesque black coachman, or demonicized Indian characters.
So what of "white/ Christian" characters?
Bill Sikes "Rarely has a villain come along who is more dark and frightening than Bill Sikes. He’s drunk, brutal, selfishly bullish and possesses a consuming desire for revenge and control that is further blinkered by his inability to be reasoned with – all made all the more fearsome by his realism. Men much like him existed then. He is the one man on the streets of London who never showed a scrap of kindness – apparent or otherwise – to young orphan Oliver and remains probably Charles Dickens’s darkest character. He manages his career as a criminal and those who work with him with a harsh iron fist. He beats those closest to him – his girlfriend Nancy and his dog Bulls Eye – without remorse and when he discovers that Nancy plans to return Oliver to his wealthy guardians he murders her in a fit of anger".
Uriah Heep "is repeatedly mentioned as ugly and repulsive, even in his youth - tall, lank and pale with red hair and lashless eyes. This obsequious, cadaverous clerk and money-lender, who fawns his way through David Copperfield and blackmails his way to success".
and then theres Scrooge, described as a "grotesque monster". So given his very worst characters are white, Dickens must be racist of whites then?
One of the most renowned social reformers of the 19thC, no literary figure was more outspoken for the cause of treatment of blacks. If we started cherry picking a sentence and insert racist allegations, wikipedia would be covered in them, appearing on an endless number of articles, Thomas Jefferson et al. As regards the "Anti-semitish" (what?) Fagin, at the time of publication the characterization aroused no indignation, or even comment (Tillotson, Kathleen (ed); Gill, Stephen (1999). Oxford World's Classics: Oliver Twist. Oxford University Press. xxii), and when a Miss Eliza Davis wrote to Dickens personally, he took her complaint seriously. He pointed out that "all the rest of the wicked dramatis personae are Christians", and that he had "no feeling towards the jews but a friendly one". And she sent him a hebrew bible in gratitude Literary strategies: Jewish texts and contexts. As a jew (albeit non practicing) i hold Dickens in the highest regard for doing something that was rare in the 19thC in giving a positive view of jews, "take the worst of us as example of the best".
Theres a lack of understanding of Dickens and his use of language, a writer renowned for melodrama; sensationalized dramatic work with exaggerated characters/language. The non white/christian allegation was riddled with absurdity, bias, undue weight, and breached every aspect of NPOV. Cherry picking quotes, such as a private correspondence in reference to a massacre in which women and children were murdered, and even then part it was omitted... "upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested".
The non white/christian allegation belongs in a personal blog, not an encylopedia. As one of the greatest literary figures of the Victorian era, Dickens page should be of a higher standard than class C, and material, especially highly contentious material, given the same level of discussion and scrutiny as Shakespeare's, and consensus reached prior to submission. I would like to see the article brought up to standard and vetted by impartial editors who have done so with other major literary figures..Harrison 1979 (talk) 22:28, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Please edit the article. I have not got involved but have noticed a trend in a few articles whereby people confuse what the author wrote with what the author believed, and compound the problem by applying 21st century attitudes to a different era. As you say, cherry picking could find all sorts of (apparent) horrors, and that is why secondary sources are required before an editor inserts suggestions. Johnuniq (talk) 22:43, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
I've been asked to comment here. Of course Dickens is a man of his age, and many of his views and characters are not, as it were, politcally correct. Regarding Fagin, as Harrison says, after Davis's letter Dickens responded, in part by justifying himself on the grounds that fences at the time were generally Jews, and in part by altering the text. Fagin is essentially based on the real fence Ikey Solomon, who was Jewish. In the original edition of the novel Dickens often refers to him as "the Jew". In later editions he changed the phrase to the name "Fagin" to avoid emphasising his Jewishness. He also created a very positive Jewish character in Our Mutual Friend. On race the issue is more complex. Dickens writes about race in his book on America, and he was very strongly influenced by his mentor Thomas Carlyle, who was certainly racist by modern standards. That influence is visible in his later works especially. Of course Dickens is full of stereotypes about ethnic groups: gypsies and foreigners of various stripes, but that's just the norm for the time. If we are to discuss this, we need to place his works in context, not just give him marks out of ten for matching or failing to match modern attitudes. Paul B (talk) 12:51, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Placing his work in context is exactly what is required Paul. Its why i stated theres a lack of understanding of Dickens and his use of language, as well as the non NPOV angle. This article, and this subject in particular, has been in dire need of a collaboration and discussion among editors, and not one editors POV, to improve what is a low standard.Harrison 1979 (talk) 15:57, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Reply
The entire section is based on secondary sources, it isn't me who is reading from Dickens' books and "Cherry picking". The above three and the edit-warrior don't seem to understand this. Dickens wasn't just confirming to the modes of his times, he led the pack, he influenced public opinion, eg. India, eg. Inuits and John Rae the "Scot" for whom truth was no match for Dickens' fiction, and remains to date an "unsung hero". These aspects of Dickens have been mentioned by numerous reliablesecondary sources, they aren't wp:FRINGE or wp:UNDUE. What remains to be seen is whether Wikipedia is up to date or its standards are Victorian? I beg permission to repeat my earlier contribution: Metapedia the "alternative encyclopaedia", describes the edits thus "One of the most famous literary figures in the history of English language literature. Yet the legacy section mostly consists of Jewish screeches of “anti-semitism” in relation to the character Fagin in Oliver Twist and Dravidian whining about his comments on dark-skinned killers in British India as the ahistoric canard “racism”." http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Examples_of_propaganda_in_Wikipedia#Literature . Yogesh Khandke (talk) 17:25, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Also the white/Christian part of the introduction to the lead was removed as it could look like WP:SYNTHESIS, and was also incomplete. Dickens' had issues with John Rae who was white/Christian but a Scot, apparently Dickens' "other" was defined by a dynamic boundary of collapsing concentric circles. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 17:32, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Yes. Consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources. Read e.g. Claire Tomalin's recent biography on Dickens and you'll find next to nothing on these topics.Nigej 18:04, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
You miss the point. The point being discussed is NOT whether Dickens was a racist. The point is the emphasis that should be put on this issue in a general article about his life and works.Nigej 19:10, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I understand you, you would like to have a look at a biography of Dickens, and how it deals with his racism. I disagree with you. We are writing his biography and would include material which includes facts and opinion, opinion should comply with wp:FRINGE and wp:UNDUE guidelines. Do you consider his anti-Semitism etc. UNDUE or the sources FRINGE? Yogesh Khandke (talk) 19:33, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Aren't Dickens in context and Unequal partners... biographical? You talk about emphasis; Franklin, Fagin, Perils and the like there is a clear pattern: Is writing about them undue emphasis? Yogesh Khandke (talk) 19:38, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
LOL Don't baffle me with wiki-nonsense but (without having read the pages) I would suspect I mean UNDUE. We have a situation now where there is paragraph called Franklin Incident followed by a paragraph of the same length called Last Years. Does this imply that the Franklin Incident is of the same weight as his Last Years. My written sources do not consider these issues of equal weight (judging by the pages allocated to each). If you do consider the two issues of equal weight (or such similar comparisons as you choose) you need to provide such evidence. The sources you quote are not general biographies about Dickens. Quoting specific sources does nothing to further your argument about the EMPHASIS of these issues in a general article about Dickens.Nigej 20:14, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
The sub-section for Franklin Incident indicates that it is separate. I am not sure about weightage. If you consider Wikipedia guidelines nonsense, I think that is a pity. The Franklin Incident is making news today thanks to Dickens' attacks on John Rae.[1][2][3][4][5]
I wrote: Quoting specific sources does nothing to further your argument about the EMPHASIS of these issues in a general article about Dickens. Yet you quote more sources. This is not an discussion about how many sources we can find.Nigej 12:57, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
You would have to provide evidence that anti-Semitism and racism was a non-representative unimportant facet of Dickens, I have provided evidence to the contrary. Wikipedia gives a world view of the subject. Wikipedia doesn't check other biographies to test UNDUE. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 20:38, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand the sentence but I'm just saying that in most general articles about Dickens his anti-Semitism and racism only take up a small chunk. You've still not provided any evidence to the contrary.Nigej 12:57, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Don't forget this is a talk page on how to improve writing the article and not arbcon or the like to look under skirts, desist from making personal attacks.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 20:48, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Yogesh, you have put excessive emphasis on this which Nigej has pointed out. It was you who came up with the Dickens Non/White Christian allegation... ignoring his own correspondence that "all the rest of the wicked dramatis personae are Christians", and he had "no feeling towards the jews but a friendly one". He was far more scathing of whites than that of any other. His worst characters were white and he used his typical exaggerated language.."grotesque monster" in describing one. To put emphasis on the non white characters is out of proportion/Undue weight. I have looked at other wikipedia articles and nowhere near this form of excessive emphasis appears. You start flooding the Thomas Jefferson page in a similar manner and it will be removed. What Paul B also states is important in that we need to put his works in context. Harrison 1979 (talk) 21:20, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I removed the non-White/Christian appellation, yet you deleted. You cannot keep arguing against a point that has been conceded. The rest of your edit is your opinion, which I'm afraid doesn't get into articles. We have reliable sources which have been quoted, I am not picking quotations from his articles and writing "Dickens is a racist - see how he treats Sambo or Fagin", multiple, reliable non-fringe sources have done that and there has to be a good reason why they do not form a part of the article as they define his personality decisively. Milowitz (Philip Roth considered: the concentrationary universe of the American writer) writes "Do you believe... Fagin has been no use to anti-Semites" Yogesh Khandke (talk) 22:06, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I was concurring with a previous user about the excessive non white emphasis, therefore it isn't just my opinion. We know the angle that you are coming from, hence the requirement of others to gain broad consensus, and achieve accurate, balanced, impartial scholarly wording/material.Harrison 1979 (talk) 22:26, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
(1)Is it rocket science? The non-white/Christian was a subsection summary which was deleted unilaterally. (2) I strongly suggest that you stay away from making personal attacks, unless you wish to disrupt a discussion to make the Charles Dickens article better. (3) There are about a score reliable sources, that call Dickens racist and anti-semitist, do you suggest that those sources are FRINGE (4) Considering that there are so many references to Dickens' racism and anti-semitism, you have to come with a good reason to substantiate the charge that it is UNDUE. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 16:28, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Newcomer chimes in
Having just been invited to chime in here, I would say that the following is self-evident
1) Dickens sometimes had racist sensibilities (especially towards Native Americans and in his younger years towards Jews.)
2) Dickens was an important and significant cultural leader
3) Dickens was NOT a leader in attempts to promote and instigate racist attitudes.
It's a bit like the reverse of Voltaire's quip that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. Dickens was indeed was both racist and a cultural leader, but NOT a "racist cultural leader". Nowhere in Dickens do we get the kind of overt racist propaganda to found in Thomas Dixon's novel "The Klansmen" (basis for the film Birth of a Nation) or (even worse) "The Turner Diaries". He is indeed a "problem" author, in the sense that Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice is called a "problem play". However, just a Jewish stage directors and actors have found ways to reclaim Merchant, so to there have interesting attempts by Jewish writers and directors to reinterpret and thus reclaim Fagin, notably Will Eisner's graphic novel Fagin the Jew, and (Jewish director) Roman Polanski's film of Oliver Twist. This would be unthinkable and inconceivable with the two racist novels I listed above.--WickerGuy (talk) 01:27, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
In essence, Dickens' racism is a secondary characteristic that he happens to have, but hardly the main driving force of his literary output.--WickerGuy (talk) 02:27, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Exactly, it is not overt racism, his views were just the norm for the time (to quote Paul B), nor was it the driving force of his output, and the wording (and amount) should be reflected as such, rather than an excessive emphasis flooded throughout the article which is completely out of proportion/undue weight. The section on the Franklin incident (which reads like a history of the event, followed by a sentence on Dickens) is longer than Dicken's Later Years section. Looking at Thomas Jefferson article, Slavery has a section with 12 lines, so a section in Dickens; Allegations of prejudice, with 12 lines, three on each of the four topics, Franklin comment, Fagin (allegation and Dickens response), Black (Outspoken for black rights, and black comment), Indian response.Harrison 1979 (talk) 08:05, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
(1) WickerGuy, there is evidence that proves your analysis wrong, Dickens was a leading contributor to the campaign in maligning Rae, similarly he set the tone in the British response to the events of 1857. Please see the sources quoted in the article sub-section and above. (2) I have to repeat what I have written many times above, our job as editors isn't analysis of primary sources, as if you may allow me to say so: you have done, our job is to quote secondary sources, which I have. Have you read the section which 1979 deleted and is defending his deletion. I think I have to get it back, so that editors will get an opportunity to check the sources out and judge its overall impact. (3) I agree that Franklin incident could be considered too long, but I presented it the way it is so that Dickens' quote gets a background, the protagonists are Franklin - Christian, genteel, an English gentleman, the savage Inuits, the fur trader "Rae the Scot", the English hagiography of its Arctic explorers, the failure of the English, the success of the Rae who succeeded because he used the technique of the Inuits, his report to the Admirality based on Inuit eye-witness reports, Dickens' remarks and campaign to discredit Rae, which he successfully did. Reliable sources indicate that Dickens played a major role in the English reaction to Rae's report and his treatment by the English. Dickens wrote a allegorical attack on Rae. Do you still think the background is irrelevant? (4) The sources indicate a clear, unrelenting pattern Franklin, Fagin, negro Coachman, exterminate the Indians. (5) I will be happy to withdraw any edit I have made, such as I have withdrawn "non-white/ Christian as that was synthesis and thus violation of Wikipedia rules. Base your objections on Wikipedia rules and not on personal whim.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 16:28, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
The question here is one of weight. Yes, it should be mentioned; Slater mentions it, but he doesn't give it the spin you appear to want in this article. And you don't need to "get it back", whatever that means. Just provide the link to the diff and keep the article clear of edit warring. Wikipedia is not a place to right great wrongs. Tom Reedy (talk) 21:43, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Rules aside... would you consider shifting this battlefield to one or more suitably framed subarticles focusing, for example, on Dickens' attitudes? Note that by following the principles of "Summary style", the sort of issues you are raising could still be referred to on this biography page, and readers would then be able to explore them more appropriately, in greater detail and within their wider cultural context. Assuming good faith, I don't think you would in any way wish your strongly held position to be an obstacle to cleaning up and redrawing this important and topical page (a potential core biography?), which currently suffers from multiple issues. — MistyMorn (talk) 20:41, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Following in line with the Jefferson page,
Dickens social opinions
and his section on slavery (which similarly was in proportion), i put forward this on Dickens;
==Allegations of prejudice== (prejudice covers all)
I would say that Dickens racism is somewhat important for purposes of biography, but of minimal or marginal importance for understanding his literary output. Some mention should be made of his notorious essay The Noble Savage in which he ridicules the Rousseau-ian ideal of the noble savage and flat-out defends the superiority of European culture. If that's not covered by the list above, I think you actually DO need to add an additional three sentences.--WickerGuy (talk) 23:01, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
@Amyzents: Thanks. It looks like a bad edit occurred three days ago. I have undone it to restore what appears to be the correct DOB (7 Feb 1812). Johnuniq (talk) 09:47, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
This page . . .
. . . is a disgrace to Wikipedia: a hodge-podge of ill-digested, repetitious, antique scholarship hardly suitable for the 200th anniversary of Dickens' birth. Forster (for God's sake!) is cited several times, Slater only twice, neither from his 2009 biography, and Tomalin not at all. I'll try to smooth out the style a bit but I'm too busy with other projects (mostly off-Wiki) to research and fight over revisions. Tom Reedy (talk) 00:41, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
I did suggest above trying to get it to FA for the anniversary but no-one was interested. I then did a bit of copy editing and removed some unreferenced stuff only to have it put back. I then realised that there was so much written about him that it would be impossible to do without a lot of collaboration so I gave up the idea an moved on to other things. As it is I've still not finished the Tomalin book, although I did hear all the extracts from it on Radio 4's Book of the Week, which was a pretty good synopsis. Richerman(talk)00:40, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Subarticle?
Another 'outside' view, as requested: I agree that this page is problematic and has multiple issues. I suspect that it is representative of the sort of 'stalemate' situations which bedevil a variety of pages across Wikipedia that spark heated controversy among individual contributors. I agree with Harrison 1979 that broader discussion is needed, with the involvement of wikipedians not caught up in the ongoing dispute. Regarding the racism/antisemitism issue, I generally concur with the points made above by Paul B and WickerGuy. In brief, the issue is per se notable, but it needs to be addressed in its social and historical context without anachronism. Such a complex task appears to me to be outside the scope of an author's biography page and would be best addressed in detail in a sub-article on, say, D's social opinions and influence. The underlying issue seems to me to be the need to find a common purpose to turn this patchwork page into a genuinely encyclopaedic biography of a major writer. Looking at a few available examples of Featured Articles of writers touched by some vaguely analogous issues, there seems to be a variety of feasible solutions, ranging from a structured approach (eg Tolkien) to a more discursive one, whether embedded in the biography (Yeats) or addressed separately (Waugh). Imo, agreement on the structure of the article could prompt interesting thematic subarticles (at present, there only appears to be this) on a series of valid topics, such as his relationship with his illustrators. That approach should also clear the decks for a genuinely encyclopaedic biography article. Tuppence ha'penny, — MistyMorn (talk) 14:32, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Interesting point MistyMorn... and one that does seem to make a lot of sense. So basically, keep the biography clear (encyclopedic), and have a subarticle, Dickens social opinions and influence to explore this highly contentious material in depth. This is the way to go.—Harrison 1979 (talk) 22:02, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
A subpage would be a perpetual OR zone with editors adding cherry picked items for padding. Before embarking on that, why not get at least a page of suitable material in this article, with consensus that the sources are suitable for the stated conclusions. Once that is done, there could be a brief discussion of whether there is likely to be more material in scholarly sources that warrant a subpage. Johnuniq (talk) 01:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Johnuniq. Trying to create another article solely about Dickens' opinions would turn into a edit war battlefield. However, it would serve the purpose of moving the disruption out of this article so it could be taken to at least good status. I suggest that somebody set up a sandbox article to keep the battlefield smoke out of the mainspace. All editors should work to provide a full and detailed accounting of the topic keeping in mind WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:WEIGHT and WP:RS. Get the weighting right, make sure it is dispassionate, neutral, and not tied to primary sources or original research. Try to keep things simple and short rather than long and drawn out, keeping Wikipedia:Summary style always in mind. See what you come up with after a few months and then solicit opinions from disinterested editors at WP:REVIEW before taking it live.
But whatever the decision, drop this futile bickering and edit warring and turn your energy to more productive avenues. Continuing along the same path will not end well for anyone. Tom Reedy (talk) 03:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
(od)Reply:@All: (1)The version was stable before 1979's edit. (2)Though there is a condition that looks like an edit war, I am sure we can all be restrained and remain objective and to the point: Improving the article, and desist from making personal attacks. (3)I'm glad that Tom has reminded us about WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:WEIGHT and WP:RS, I could add fringe and undue, synthesis and original research. (4) Original research on this page: A few involved in this discussion are indulging in original research, they see the sub-section inform about Dickens' anti-Semitism and racism, they don't like for personal reasons, and they say "but Dickens produced bad us characters just as he did bad other characters" etc, they have other similar OR methods, like saying that "Dickens" was a representative of his times, but they forget that the sources quoted which are reliable and notable, have taken every thing into account, Dickens' vintage and the fashions of the day, the sections - Franklin and allegations are not based on "original research of primary sources" but is based on secondary sources. (5) Remember that consensus is not a number's game. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 04:01, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)
(1)1979 calls the material highly contentious, by which he means that he objects to it, I must remind him that unless we have secondary sources contesting Dickens' racism and anti-semitism, it would be considered his personal whim, which cannot be a great influence on a Wikipedia article. I request 1979 to read the secondary sources quoted and check whether they are honestly quoted etc... (2) The sub-section has an internal balance - Fagin has Riah, black coachman has Dickens' opposition to slavery and "Dickens' call for genocide" is tried to be balanced with the Kanpur massacre. (3) The sub-section I must repeat has an equilibrium arrived at as a result of multiple contributors on either side. Though to me it looks like denialismYogesh Khandke (talk) 04:20, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm just ever so slightly more open-minded about the general section on Dicken's racism (probably needs to be shortened), but the Franklin section as restored is just obviously inappropriate since slightly less than half is about Dickens. (We have 163 words about the incident generally prior to only 143 words about Dickens involvement.) Do we really need such a detailed blow-by-blow explanation of the incident to provide "context" for Dickens' viewpoint on it? I think the answer is clearly no. In in its current form, it reads like a diatribe.
I request WG: To compare the Franklin section with what it was before my edits. It, to me, ran foul on lack of background. I have compressed it from my original version, please go ahead and compress it further without loosing the background (2) I will place Franklin in the allegations section. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 04:28, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I have reverted the addition of the contested material. It is immaterial how many years it has been here. Until the rest of the editors agree,please stop adding it back at the risk of being blocked for 3R and edit warring. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:33, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
If I may, I may try in the next few days to reinsert a radically condensed version.
On other matters- Reply to Yogesh
I think Yogesh has a very good point that he has based a lot of his work on secondary sources. Kudos for doing so while calling attention to this! However, I do not think it is OR to note that an enormous majority of Dickens' villains, Uriah Heep, Madame DeFarge, Ralph Nickleby, Steerforth, and Scrooge are white Anglo-Saxon Europeans.
As Adam Sandler observes in his Hannakah Song about famous Jews,
"Some people think that Ebeneezer Scrooge is, Well, he's not, but guess who is: all three Stooges"
Dickens clearly regards European culture as superior to others thus playing into colonialist sympathies, but does NOT seem to regard Europeans as racially superior, in the sense that German Nazism regarded the Aryans as the master race. I don't think common-sense observations should be classified as "original research".--WickerGuy (talk) 04:40, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I have restored the section as it was before Yogesh began editing and retitled it "Allegations". The page needs a major rewrite, and the material that has been added is so garbled it is hard to make sense of what exactly is being said, and the dispute is distracting other editors from improving the page. As I suggested before, I think any further additions along this line should be worked out off the main page in a sandbox article. The article is in bad shape and this dispute is not improving it any, nor is it likely to be improved if all the parties continue to go back and forth on this particular topic.
I've made my opinion known; I'll bow out of this arena and await whatever agreement is forthcoming before working any more on the page. Tom Reedy (talk) 04:58, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
In rewriting the allegations section, i would use MistyMorn's heading Dickens social opinions, and use the Thomas Jefferson section on slavery as a template. Note the balance, weight, NPOV, achieved on his section. It is this point i was making at the start (WickerGuy has alluded to), Dickens worst characters were white, plus he stated "all the rest of the wicked dramatis personae are Christians". To have extra emphasis on the non white angle is disproportional. There also shouldn't be any images (Bill Sikes, Scrooge, Uriah Heep, were far worse than Fagin). In rewriting the section it needs to be trimmed, three/four sentences on each of the four issues, and weighted proportionally (again note Jefferson.. no elongated emphasis). Then if needs be, a sub article, Dickens social opinions and influence, as put forward by MistyMorn. Harrison 1979 (talk) 08:26, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
To clarify — my very preliminary suggestion was prompted by several factors, including the dearth of pertinent Dickens themed articles (apart from individual works, there only seems to be a very brief Dickens' London). Dickens' social opinions/attitudes and social involvement/influence would clearly be among the many legitimate topic/s, though I hadn't got as far as thinking in any detail about scope or titling. Another consideration is this: If Wikipedia can get it together for Wagner, why the Dickens not for Dickens? Would having a section entitled "Controversies", perhaps with a related article something vaguely along the lines of "Dickens controversies", for example, help get us out of the current bottleneck? — MistyMorn (talk) 10:37, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
(od)(1) MM (14:32, 23 February 2012 (UTC)) is indulging in original research when she writes "...it (Dickens' racism/antisemitism) needs to be addressed in its social and historical context...", we are not here to worry about context that is for the secondary sources to be careful about, we need to judge whether the secondary source is reliable etc., I wonder why this simple point is lost on everyone here. We are not here to judge Dickens, we only quote sources. I am puzzled by this repeated foray into OR by the editors here. I am amazed that this blatant violation is considered wise by Span (14:58, 23 February 2012 (UTC)) (2) 1979along with his oozing OR, repeatedly calls the section contentious, - controversial, I would like him to support this attack on the section with evidence, unless he considers his views are substitute for verifiable, reliable, sources. (3)I am afraid WickerGuy, one man's commonsense is another man's prejudice, that is why Wikipedia has the five pillars. I am stumped by this repeated overstepping despite it being brought to attention. (3a) Denialism is a serious non-neutral view point. (4) Tom you were edit-warring, removing stable material, I am glad you have been careful in reverting your deletion. I am also happy with the version which you have chosen as it is the older stable version. (2 years and five months) (I have repaired the links and kept one Bartlinger quote, as it replaced a mangled text.) (5)WickerGuy: back to you, if your compliment was in sarcasm I missed it. I would like to correct it in that every word and not "a lot" I have written is quoted or paraphrased from good sources. If anything is not so, it can be executed without mercy. Also your statement "Dickens clearly regards European culture as superior..." is a clear case of OR, we are not interested in your interpretation of Dickens, unless you are notable and have it is published, sorry for being so blunt, you see the point has been so difficult to get across, we use good sources (6)MM: I disagree with you, there is no dearth of works discussing racism or anti-semitism with relation to Dickens, perhaps there is a famine of articles indulging in Denialism , do you want Wikipedia's Dickens to be one of them? (7) I would support sub-section title Dickens' social opinions and advocacy, since he didn't just opine he advocated eg. Rae/ Franklin, eg. India - exterminate the Indian race. (8) Why has Franklin been taken off? The older version had Franklin too, though it gave no background information and was designed to obfuscate. (9)Looks like a denialism epidemic.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 19:23, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
YK, no sarcasm was intended. I did mean to say that as far as I could see your work was appropriately attributed to secondary sources, though perhaps others might raise questions of your interpretation of said sources.
However, on the Talk page, I am entitled to express any opinion on Dickens that I want, OR or not OR. It's in article space that material has to be more strictly backed up and cited, not here. I am basing my contentions on the contents of his essay The Noble Savage (oddly uncited by you), his enormous abundance of European villains, and the total absence in Dickens of any Nazi-like ideology of racial purity or Nazi-like advocacy of selective breeding, etc. I think we need to clarify first what MM means before jumping to conclusions that she is engaging in OR. MM is I think pointing out that Dickens was socialized into racism like many other European authors. MM is I believe pointing out that 150 years ago attitudes were different and people were relatively uneducated about other races. Would we call Dickens mother a child-abuser because she sent him to work, as a child, in a factory job that was tough and dangerous? Today that would be considered abuse, but in her time it was commonplace. That is what "historical context" means.--WickerGuy (talk) 19:57, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Replying to 2 points addressed to MM (male, btw):
(1) RE No original research: Sorry I don't understand what you're saying - "social and historical context" is part of anyone's reality: mentioning it has nothing to do with research (and "addressing" doesn't mean "judging").
(6) Again, I think you must have misread my point, which was about the dearth of Dickens-related subarticleson Wikipedia (not in the literature in general): apart from articles about individual works, the only such page I could find was the brief Dickens' London.
RE (3a) etc and "Denialism":
I think you need to be rather careful in the claims you make to your editorial colleagues on Wikipedia. Accusations of "denialism" could easily be interpreted, in good faith, as personal attacks. Thank you in advance.
I've been watching this - can't help it actually because it's so active on my watchlist. I'd very much advise against pulling any of these views into a separate article. What's needed here is better sourcing, pure and simple. I'm off to read - will report back when I've found the best scholarly sources I can on the subject, read them, understood them, and taken notes. That might take a little while. Truthkeeper (talk) 22:29, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
VERSION 1 This is the actual stable version as it appeared before Yogesh Khandke's began editing the article with the edit summary of "India directed racism is obscured, in all that text, it is riddled with denials and apologist remarks":
A recurring theme in Dickens's writing reflected the public's interest in Arctic exploration: the heroic friendship between explorers John Franklin and John Richardson gave the idea for A Tale of Two Cities, The Wreck of the Golden Mary and the play The Frozen Deep.[1]
After Franklin died in unexplained circumstances on an expedition to find the North West Passage, Dickens wrote a piece in Household Words defending his hero against the discovery in 1854, some four years after the search began, of evidence that Franklin's men had, in their desperation, resorted to cannibalism.[2] Without adducing any supporting evidence he speculates that, far from resorting to cannibalism amongst themselves, the members of the expedition may have been "set upon and slain by the Esquimaux ... We believe every savage to be in his heart covetous, treacherous, and cruel."[2] Although publishing in a subsequent issue of Household Words a defence of the Esquimaux, written by John Rae, one of Franklin's rescue parties, who had actually visited the scene of the supposed cannibalism, Dickens refused to alter his view.[3]
VERSION 2 This is the version that is the object of the current edit war:
In May 1845, the Franklin expedition left England in search of the Northwest Passage. it was last seen in July 1845, after which they were lost without trace. In October 1854, John Rae based on reports from "Eskimo" eyewitnesses, who informed that they had seen 40 "white men" and later 35 corpses, reported in a confidential report to the Admirality, the fate of the Franklin expedition: "From the mutiliated state of many of the corpses and the contents of the kettles it is evident that our wretched countrymen had been driven to the last resource - cannibalism - as a means of prolonging survival". This blunt report was presented under the assumption that truth would be prefered to uncertainty. The Admirality made this report public.[4] The Arctic explorer was considered "clean, Christian and genteel"[5] His report caused much distress and anger.[4] The English man was considered able to "survive anywhere" and "to triumph over any adversity through faith, scientific objectivity, and superior spirit."[5] Dickens not only wrote to discredit the Inuit evidence, he accused the Inuit of actively participating in Franklin's end, he wrote "We believe every savage in his heart covetous, treacherous, and cruel: and we have yet to learn what knowledge the white man - lost, houseless, shipless, apparently forgotten by his race, plainly famine-striken, weak, frozen and dying - has of the gentleness of of Exquimaux nature". Hill writes that Dickens' "invocation of racialized serotypes of cannibalistic behavior foregrounded Rae's own foreignness" Rae was a Scot not English, he wasn't "pledged to the patriotic, empire-building aims of the military."[6] Dickens in collabration with Wilkie Collins, wrote The Frozen Deep, an allegorical play about the missing Arctic expedition. The Dickens-Rae conflict[7] resulted in creation of the Rae character which was "turned into a suspicious, power-hungry nursemaid who predicted the expedition's doom in her effort to ruin the happiness of the delicate heroine".[5]
Notes
References
^Glancy, Ruth F (2006). "The Frozen Deep and other Biographical Influences". Charles Dickens's A Tale Of Two Cities: A Sourcebook. Abingdon, England: Routledge. p. 14. ISBN0415287596.
^ abDickens, Charles (2 December 1854). "The Lost Arctic Voyagers". Household Words: A Weekly Journal. 10 (245). London: Charles Dickens: 361 et sec. Retrieved 5 July 2008.
^Rae, John (30 December 1854). "Dr Rae's report". Household Words: A Weekly Journal. 10 (249). London: Charles Dickens: 457–458. Retrieved 16 August 2008.
^ abReed Business Information (7 February 1985). New Scientist. Reed Business Information. pp. 36–. ISSN0262-4079. Retrieved 22 February 2012. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
I looked in Slater 2009, and he frames it quite differently than in the above text, discussing it more in the context of Dickens defending the English character. Slater also gives it very little weight. I suggest that this article, being a general encyclopedia article, try to stick to sources that mainly cover Dickens' biography instead of looking into esoteric critical works, such as Hill. In that way the weight can be kept proportional to the prominence of each viewpoint in reliable sources about Dickens. I am not arguing for deletion on any viewpoint, just for its representational treatment as per policy.
I believe web-only sources are allowed if written by people who have already published in peer-reviewed print venues and/or the web source is peer-reviewed in some way (such as Salon.com)--WickerGuy (talk) 05:19, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
Sure, they are allowed, but I think Tom's point is that for this topic there are lots of scholarly biographies available, so the direction for this article should be towards material based on the best sources, which will not necessarily be those that are most easily accessible. An important benefit from basing material on top-quality sources is that we avoid the cherry-picking problem where editors add tidbits from web searches for issues that the editor finds significant. Johnuniq (talk) 06:11, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
And as I have said before, less than half the paragraph is about CD's response to the incident. Even if retained (a big if), detail about the incident needs to be pared.--WickerGuy (talk) 21:58, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
I think scholarly sources are the best, but surely the website of the Dickens Museum, articles in The Guardian etc. are fine if used appropriately.--WickerGuy (talk) 22:50, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
Reply and comment on Franklin
To Tom's messages on my page[6][7] and his comments here: (1)Tom thank you for the syntax on outdent. (2) I am not gaming the system purposely if you mean that my editing breaks to this article are to circumvent the 3R rule, you can check my contributions, I have been on and off Wikipedia. You see I don't have net access at work, Wikipedia is a leisure activity, year end is a busy time for me. (Financial year 1 April - 31 March). Also there is a reverter and there is the restorer, I think I am the restorer, there have been accusations of personal attacks made by me against editors here (denialism), isn't threat of a block a personal attack? (4)I haven't put the sub-section under legacy, on the other hand I pointed the mistake in placing it there and so created a separate section for it. (5) Slater 2009, does cover his reactions to the incidents of 1857 "Slater's biography paints an unapologetic picture of a complex man: an author ... who advocated genocide as a response to rebellion in India".[8] Though would like to remind editors here that just as Slater and others are his biographers, we too are writing his biography, we wouldn't like to restrict ourselves to what is covered in other biographies, we write our biography based on the numerous RELIABLE SOURCES available, taking care about FRINGE and UNDUE. Khandke (talk) 23:07, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
(1) I could consider the other to be a edit warrior, as he is deleting stable content.(2)Regarding good reads review quoted: I don't have the text with me (Slater 2009, perhaps the one who has mentined it has it), also I am quoting a quotation from the book as quoted by a reviewer. It is not opinion, it is a verifiable fact, anyone who has access to the text can confirm or otherwise. (3)I have repeatedly used FRINGE and UNDUE of the checks we apply for insertion to the article, one would have to provide evidence that the present analysis of Dickens is a fringe view, or is of undue weight.Yogesh Khandke (talk) 23:58, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
Reply to WickerGuy:(1)I didn't cite Noble Savage because it is against policy to cite or interpret a primary source, we don't opine, we report facts, and in case of opinion, we report it as a fact like xxx 2007 writes yyyyy, please get this right, we cannot write Dickens' mom was a child abuser even though we know she sent him to work as a child, however if numerous reliable sources do so then we could write abc writes that Dickens as a child was abused by his mother, she sent him to work[citation], please get this right. (2)Quoting from Dickens' work is thus a waste of energy and time, please see talk page guidelines, talk pages aren't a Smoking area.
Reply to MM: (I have read all the internal links that have been inserted by you, including AVOIDYOU, sorry about wrong gender, was misled by Mom) (1)I stand corrected on dearth, now that I understand you, please keep in mind subarticles are not parking places for ideas that not fashionable in the main articlethis text was wrongly linked later corrected after help from WG, the sub-articles could be more wordy but they cannot contradict the main article.(2)also @all: Do you consider the statements made by sources regarding Dickens racism, anti-semitism, blacks, Rae' controversial? Are there reliable sources that contradict the interpretations cited above, silence would not be a contradiction as "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence". (does that address all the concerns raised by you?), we are not allowed to research Dickens, the circumstances under which he wrote whatever he did, etc, we let others do it, we simply reproduce what they have written. Does that answer all your questions? (3)Denialism: Haven't I been attacked, my edits called ‘‘contentious’’, my talkpage (circa 2009) quoted here? Terms like battlefield used? On the other hand there are numerous sources that describe Dickens' such facets, please quote sources that contradict, instead of making one's own research of his work, that then wouldn't be denialism.
Franklin (Also see reply above)It was there for years before it was removed, it has to be back and discussed and not the other way round, also see above replies, does anyone have another view (reliable source) on Dickens' attacks on Rae?Yogesh Khandke (talk) 23:07, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
I was in no sense suggesting only relying on CD's essay The Noble Savage- There are plenty secondary sources that discuss it. I'm well aware that "All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors." There is "Reappraising Dickens's 'Noble Savage'", The Dickensian 98:458 (2002): 236-243. There is this article And on the Right, Charles Dickens. It's discussed in the book Africans on stage: studies in ethnological show business , the book Charles Dickens in Context by Sally Ledger and in the book Dickens and empire: discourses of class, race and colonialism by Grace Moore. etc.
Notably Bernard Porter writing in Critics of Empire: British Radicals and the Imperial Challenge cites Dickens as a peculiar example of someone who uses racism to rationalize opposition(!!) to imperialism rather than to advocate it. He reads TNS as an essay pleading that Europeans avoid contact with other races, but not at all advocating conquest or any kind of cruelty towards them. After all Dickens' essay concludes
To conclude as I began. My position is, that if we have anything to learn from the Noble Savage, it is what to avoid. His virtues are a fable; his happiness is a delusion; his nobility, nonsense. We have no greater justification for being cruel to the miserable object, than for being cruel to a WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE or an ISAAC NEWTON; but he passes away before an immeasurably better and higher power
(1)WG please understand our rights as editors, we cannot judge Dickens, we let reliable sources do it, even about FRINGE or UNDUE, we do not judge it based on the primary source, we judge it based on other's interpretation of Dickens. The job of an editor is quite objective. (2)Also thanks for correcting the bad internal link. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 00:06, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't think that is right, even on a talk page, see I am not competent to judge Dickens based on his work. I however can write his bio based on good secondary sources, checking for FRINGE, UNDUE and other policies. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 00:13, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Porter writes: "Those that had been subjected to colonialism already had probably had their indigenous social and political structures so badly damaged as to make them even more vulnerable and unhappy. What was to be done with there? The traditional anti-imperialist reply had always been 'nothing': either on the grounds that there was nothing you could do for 'lower races', they were just too irredeemably backward or inferior - racism was a common a reason for anti-imperialism during the nineteenth century as it was for imperialism (Charles Dickens is an example)..." [For example, his treatment of the character of Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House; and , for a more overt example, see 'The noble savage', Household Words, no. 168 (11 June 1853) pp. 337 - 9] [Bernard Porter (December 2007). Critics of Empire: British Radicals and the Imperial Challenge. I.B.Tauris. ISBN978-1-84511-506-7. Retrieved 28 February 2012.] Do you have others calling Dickens an advocate of anti-imperialism? Drew for example cites Jellyby as an example of Dickens telescopic misanthropy "...Dickens's social inclusiveness does not possess ininite gradations; does not indeed, stretch far beyond the confines of a civilized Europe..." [John M. L. Drew (2003). Dickens the journalist. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 100–. ISBN978-0-333-98773-5. Retrieved 28 February 2012.]Yogesh Khandke (talk) 01:19, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Porter may or may not be in a minority view (I have no idea), but there is a difference between minority views that get discussed in mainstream circles and fringe views which more often then not are politely ignored. Porter is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Newcastle and as such unlikely to be fringe, and I'm sorry but beyond violating rules of civility I can argue about Dickens any way I please on the Talk page.--WickerGuy (talk) 01:44, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Yogesh Khandke, I for one am having a hard time understanding your point, not only because your diction is often obscure, but because with you interrupting other editors' comments without signaling it is hard to tell who is saying what. Please review the WP:Talk page guidelines, especially the section Others' comments, specifically Interruptions. Tom Reedy (talk) 03:19, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
I have rearranged the two versions of the disputed content at the top of this section in chronological order. There seems to be precious little discussion over the actual edits (but of course that is the way these disputes usually go). I can say from my own experience that as long as the dispute continues very few editors will pitch in the bring the article up to FA status, if that is indeed the ultimate goal.
For myself, I will say that although neither of them are well-written, the original version has the advantage of being coherent. There is much about the second version that is obscure and difficult to follow, and it contains much unneeded detail. I will try to find time today to post a suggested re-write. Tom Reedy (talk) 13:08, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Yes, it's hard to know where and how to reply. @Yogesh Khandke: First, thank you for your civil response. I had understood that there were misreadings, and maybe I should avoid easily misunderstood words like "dearth". I also think there is a more general communication problem. Let me clarify my own current position (even though some parts of it may not have much consensus here). First, I am not in any way against balanced discussion in Wikipedia of the sort of cultural issues that interest you: I too find them both interesting and notable. The question is where and how to do it. Inserting the Franklin section in the middle of Dickens' life story seems to me wrong: it sends readers the message that the Franklin case was a key moment in Dickens' life. Which it clearly wasn't, however notable and interesting it may be. Dickens is notable primarily as a novelist. Without this reputation as a writer, we wouldn't be here today discussing his reactions to the Franklin affair. Dickens would certainly not be notable as, say, a leading racist. So the Dickens' reactions to the Franklin affair (notable certainly), and similar racial concerns, are better discussed in a separate context, imo. I suggested the solution used on Wikipedia for Wagner as a possible model (ie a separate section in the main article plus a dedicated subarticle; btw, I can reassure you that I certainly wouldn't support any content fork). That solution currently seems to have only rather limited consensus on this page. However, if that sort of solution works for Wagner (generally a much more controversial subject than Dickens), I don't see why something similar shouldn't be valid here.
I saw that in your last message to me you quoted the great Doug Altman. A significant aspect of Altman's fight to avoid bias in health research regards proper synthesis and reporting of best available evidence. Our task here is much, much simpler. But we do need to identify appropriate quality sources representing different POVs (ones which aren't "fringe") and summarize those POVs appropriately (ie NPOV) in an appropriate space (preferably not in the middle of a summary of Dickens' life story). I think that would make a good starting point. —MistyMorn (talk) 15:29, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Sure, another possibility. A valid and feasible structural outline that everyone can agree on would be very good, imo. My reasoning is simply that there are issues on different levels, including: article structure −> appropriate sourcing −> correct reading of sources −> balanced presentation. Also appropriate citation and MoS... —MistyMorn (talk) 20:07, 29 February 2012 (UTC) —MistyMorn (talk) 19:48, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
OK, after perusing a few of the sources cited (and very ill-cited, I must say; some of them have no connection whatsoever to the statements they’re appended to, and the page numbers appear to be drawn out of a hat), I think the section as written is misleading. Dickens certainly supported British colonialism and the idea of an empire ruled by a superior race of white Englishmen in his journalism and his fiction, in much the same way Shakespeare supported the ascension of British nationalism through his works in his time.
Dickens' "genocide" remark was written in a private letter in reaction to the public hysteria whipped up by newspaper stories claiming that British children were being forced to eat their murdered parents and parents were being forced to eat their children before being burned to death by the Indian mutineers (sounds like a precursor to the WWI anti-German propaganda). It certainly should be included in the article, but IMO not under the biographical section—he wasn’t a George Lincoln Rockwell—and not in isolation from the context of Dickens’ support of the British empire, but in the mis-named literary style section under a subsection such as “Themes”. Tom Reedy (talk) 22:16, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
Support. Context is essential both for comprehension and avoiding bias. (And, just to be absolutely clear here, I'm sure you were not suggesting including any "original research" in the article, such as mentioning, say, Shakespeare or WWI without suitable citations—that would obviously be a different matter.) —MistyMorn (talk) 20:04, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
Query to TomR. "Superior race" is an overloaded term. To what extent do you think CD held Euros to be racially better or culturally better? It's true he actually uses race-language, but there isn't any of the crude tribalism of Nazism.--WickerGuy (talk) 21:06, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
I have no idea, WG. My point is that his attitudes were typical of his time. We're all descended from racists to some extent or another. Even Winston Churchill (one of the most overrated political leaders in history who is primarily remembered for getting only one thing right because it was a big thing) held racial views that would be anathema for any politician to air today (and righly so). Tom Reedy (talk) 21:53, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
Butting in: sorry but everything above is too long to read. My feeling is that all that needs to be done is to follow the best sources. Find out who the best Dickens' scholars are and use them as sources and if we use online sources use the ODNB. I have the 22 page ODNB entry but haven't had time to read it. I have an Oxford Companion at hand - usually a compilation of work by the best scholars, but also no time yet, but will get to it all. In the meantime, in my view spending talk page time trying to parse sources before they've been read and understood is counterproductive. From a cursory run through of the page, I think the referencing and the sourcing is problematic. But I took Hemingway from a state not much better to what it's at now, and did the same with Ezra Pound (with lots of help from SlimVirgin). What I can't emphasize enough is that until good sources are read, all of this is moot. Truthkeeper (talk) 22:04, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
Reply @'Tom: (1)I have looked at Others' comments, it deals with editing others' coments, which I haven't done, see the talk page history, the edits are closely spaced in time, I was editing my own comment which had unnecessary paragraphs, there were edit conflicts, which I have mentioned in the edit summary. I have a right to edit my own comments including editing how paragraphs and the like are displayed. (2) If something that I have written that isn't clear, I will explain it, you see my diction is obscure because though mutually intelligible we are using different dialects of English, I am communicating in Indian English, so there are bound to be a few difficulties.(3)My edit summary reads Long standing section title brought back, has been shortened, I clearly stated that the section title was long standing, and not the version which I was restoring albeit shortened, Tom has taken the entire section off and not reverted to the older version (version 1), the Franklin Incident is a long standing section, and should be there in one form or the other. (4)Please indicate where cited sources disagree with quotations in the article. The article mentions that Dickens' comments are in a private letter, that we have access to it means that it was made public.
Reply @MM: (1)I didn't misunderstand dearth, I thought that you meant that there is a dearth of sources dealing with Dickens' anti-semitism and racism which is not so, later you have explained that there is a dearth of sub-articles, which may be true if you do not consider the articles written about his work as sub-articles. (2)I am not raking muck if that is what you have euphamistically written, Fagin, India and Franklin are all over the place (3) I didn't know evidence... was originally from Altman, I am unaware of the context in which Altman wrote it, all I meant is that if a certain biographer doesn't mention Fagin the way others do, it cannot be considered, that in his opinion Fagin isn't the way others see it. (3)I agree with the rest of what you have written.
Reply@WG:(1)All I request (and not threaten like I have been with a gentle reminder of the 3R rule), is that this discussion should be limited to evaluating what reliable sources write about Dickens as compared with other reliable sources. (2)We are not supposed to analyse Dickens' I'll give you an example, I am presently reading Balut, Daya Pawar's autobiography, the Wikipedia article quotes Pu La Deshpande, who writes that the book brings to us a "horrifying reality". When I am reading it today, 36 years after it was published, I see nothing horrifying in the book, and can support my statement with quotations from the primary source. However doing so would be violation of Wikipedia rules, I could however cite another source which calls the book tame. The same goes with Dickens. As editors our rights are limited to collate material from RS etc.
@All: (1) Franklin incident is a long standing section, I am bringing the shortened version 2 back. It is better imo than version 1, as (a)it explains the link between Rae, Franklin and The Frozen Deep, which version 1 misses, Dickens retaliated in response to Rae's explanation of Franklin expedition's fate, (b) it misses informing that in 1854 the year of the Rae report, the expedition had been lost for 9 years, (c) version 1 misses the noble English versus savage Inuit and mercenary Scot issue, which was according to the source cited, the defining ideology of Dickens' attack on Rae in defense of Franklin and his widow. (2)I have given objective reasons for preferring version 2, if someone reverts they should provide similar justification. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 19:24, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
YK, you persist in missing my point that restrictions about what we write in the Article space are applied somewhat more loosely an the Talk page!! WP policy overtly states "There is reasonable allowance for speculation, suggestion, and personal knowledge on talk pages, with a view to prompting further investigation (see Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines), but it is usually a misuse of a talk page to continue to argue any point that has not met policy requirements." (plus the caveat to be much stricter on bios of living persons.) I believe I have kept well within those guidelines. I would be violating WP guidelines if I persistently used the Talk page as a soapbox to advance/promote my views on Dickens, but simply baldly stating just once (in the context of discussing how to improve the article) my own interpretation of a primary source (not to be placed in article space without supporting secondary sources) hardly constitutes promotional soapboxing. It is disingenuous of you to appeal to WP policy regarding my in-passing statements about my personal interpretation of Dickens that are supplementary to a discussion about how to improve the article. My main goal is to discuss the shape and structure of the article. Secondarily, I mention my personal views on Dickens. That is entirely permissible on a Talk page!!
The real question here is just what exactly is Dickens most famous for. It is not his racial views. We only discuss his racist views because he was famous for other things. That is what we want the article to reflect.--WickerGuy (talk) 20:25, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
(1)I understand what you have written, I persist because I disagree with the details, my actions remind me of a broken record, moving in the same rut, that happens because of perceived lack of understanding of my concerns. We simply do not have the expertise to deal with primary text. That is not our job. I have given an example above. I haven't flagged you as a soapboxer etc., though I used the term denialism, which is not a reference to Wikipedia policy.(2)Yogesh Khandke (talk) 22:39, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
You are perfectly free to disagree with my opinion on Dickens which is based on only intermediate but not at all PhD-level expertise. (I have read half his novels and read two biographies). However, when I express my views on Dickens tangentially and on the Talk page, you are not free to say I am violating Wikipedia guidelines!!! I am not!!--WickerGuy (talk) 22:51, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
PS the same page on Talk page guidelines states "It is best to avoid changing your own comments. Other users may have already quoted you with a diff (see above) or have otherwise responded to your statement." and suggests "Use deletion and insertion markup or a place-holder to show the comment has been altered."--WickerGuy (talk) 20:30, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
Did I slyly change my comments? I deleted a few paragraphs (I mean I merged text that was paragraphed), also as I wrote above, I faced an edit conflict, so I ignored the next comment and went ahead with my edit regardless. I wrote in the summary that I had done so. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 22:39, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
As folks other than I have expressed more concern about your re-editing than I have, I will bow out here. The point is there are tools for showing your restucturing of your comments as in I no longer mean this or new comment here "[dumb comment removed]". Also, I am not sure, but I think the term you want is not "edit conflict", but something else.
Finally, the "context" provided in the longer version of the Franklin paragraph is obviously too much as it simply dwarves Dickens opinion. Context should never be actually longer than what is being contextualized.--WickerGuy (talk) 20:42, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
Personally I think that kind of detail shouldn't be in an overview biography. I want to see what weight it's been given in other sources - haven't had a chance to do that yet. But I'm not interested in a protracted talk page discussion because I have limited time to devote to this. Truthkeeper (talk) 23:01, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
On other matters here
No one is denying that Dickens expressed racist views in both his journalism and private letters. What is being denied is that it had a defining(!!) influence on his literary output. As such, the other folks here are not really engaging in "denialism" which generally entails disputing notions that have overwhelming consensus within the research community, and generally involves artificially created sense of controversy when no actual controversy exists. While you could argue that Dickens' racism is being swept under the rug, the discussion here is how notable(!!) his racism is, not whether it existed. As such accusations of "denialism" are rather unfair. (I myself also think there are different flavors of racism. There is little in Dickens of the tribalistic/race-purity thinking behind "ethnic cleansing" that I can see, albeit his advocacy of genocide is disturbing- I could be wrong.)
Finally, the appeal to context is not at all a pretext for denying or avoiding a discussion of Dickens' racism. It is raising the issue of the appropriate place to discuss it and how.--WickerGuy (talk) 00:10, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
In sum
Not all forms of sweeping under the rug are denialism. Denialism almost always involves manufacturing a pseudo-controversy when none exists. There simply isn't any denialism going on here.--WickerGuy (talk) 01:34, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Reply: (1)Denialism: I let go this ball. (2)I have presented my picture of Dickens' "these particular aspects", though, I believe the entire disputed text isn't my baby, it involves multiple editors and was arrived at after many edits, editors could edit it they way they wish to be presented, with care taken in following policies. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 15:11, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
British or English
What was Dickens' nationality? British or English? G[9] fight gives over three times returns for English, terms used were "Dickens English" and "Dickens British", wasn't he English? Just as Swift was Irish, so was Shaw. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 22:51, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps you could say more about the reason(s) why you want a definitive answer (if there is one) to your question. --GuillaumeTell00:35, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
This article informs that he was British and a citizen of UK, wasn't he English? I edited British to English, it was reverted back. I gave a citation, the reverter hasn't supported his undoing with any evidence. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 14:44, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Bowing out
I personally am not interested in contributing to this article as long as the edit warring is going on; I have my own topics of interest if I'm gonna get that invested. Yogesh Khandke's latest reversion makes it clear to me that he will continue to push his POV at every opportunity, and to be frank I don't see much on-point discussion participation from the other editors who profess to be interested in raising the quality of this article, so I'll surrender the field. Tom Reedy (talk) 01:03, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
I would have been ready to work my way top to bottom to rewrite the page, but I have to agree with Tom here. This situation doesn't look like it's ready to be resolved any time soon. Truthkeeper (talk) 01:56, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Tom and Truth: I don't understand, I have provided evidence, so far editors here are just working on their feelings, an emitic view of Dickens, yet they allege that there is no on-point discussion. I have restored a long standing version, if it is not to anyone's liking, they are free to change it the way they wish it to look like, taking care of complying to Wikipedia policies as they do. Just removing well sourced material which complies to policies isn't fair imo. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 14:57, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
The 22 page ODNB does not mention the Franklin expedition, which gives me a clue that the section here is over-weighted. In my view, it's not worth arguing about. This page has a lot of potential but it also requires top-to-bottom scrubbing - reformatting of references, new and better sourcing, MoS fixes, copyediting, etc. It's not worth taking on a project like this with edit warring and talk page controversy. Truthkeeper (talk) 15:17, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
(ec)
What the dickens! I have reverted you because you are not listening. It's not a matter of evidence. Get a bee into your bonnet, and any aspect of an historical figure's life can become a consuming obsession. People with obesity might object to the negative portrayal of Joe, Mr. Wardle's servant, as 'the fat boy', in the Pickwick Papers. James Joyce said he could pick the scent of Nora's rectal crepitations out of any others in a room crammed with farting women, and in Ulysses and elsewhere has a whole episode spun round the theme of what my mother called 'winky puffs' and the other 8 varieties in traditional lore. Not for that do we muster articles that deal with Dickens on obesity, or Joyce on farts, for their biographies. The Franklin episode is well known, but not that significant in terms of Dickens' huge life, with its voluminous opinions and massive comic and dramatic output. If the politics of prejudice at the time are your beef, then edit the Thomas Babington Macaulay article, which lacks any mention, on last checking, of his 1838 essay endorsing genocide as a necessary instrument of progress. That comes from a man whose influence on British policy was by no means small. It's relevant to Macaulay, as the Franklin episode, however well documented, is not with regard to the general life of Dickens. Editors, finally, should understand that academic careers are difficult for scholars who must compete for tenure by research in a field that is massively documented, analysed and based on voluminous archives that have been pillaged for a century or two. So you will get numerous articles eviscerating the guts of marginal episodes. But, unless something new turns up there sufficiently well documented to make the critical consensus use it to reinterpret the whole life, or some work of the period, this research remains just that, minutiae. Nishidani (talk) 15:28, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Dickens' prejudicices as Relatively insignificant mostly minutiae is right, IMO, with the possible exception of Dickens portrait of Fagin which looms larger in Dickens studies. Dickens is famous for his coming-of-age novels about adolescents, not for his journalism about the Franklin biz and other such. IMO, a brief mention of the Franklin biz is a good idea, but I see no reason why it needs a labeled section unto itself.--WickerGuy (talk) 17:45, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
The issue has been well explained (in brief, all aspects of Dickens' life and work have received extensive academic scrutiny, and there is no need for editors to find things of interest as that would be WP:SYNTH and WP:UNDUE). As Truthkeeper said, it might be ok if people want to drop the matter until someone manages to properly frame the article, but there is no requirement that everyone be convinced that the Franklin episode should be removed—it appears there is a strong consensus that it is undue, so there is no problem in removing it prior to major work on the article if wanted. Nishidani: Somehow I missed the significance of your "What the dickens!" until reading it a second time...I might need a sleep. Johnuniq (talk) 02:29, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
(1)Rae and Dickens have contemporary significance, like in Canada or in Scotland, we have one of the Dickens' apologising for Dickens Sr to the Inuit. (2)Nishi is again indulging in OR, we are not to analyse primary sources, I wonder why it is so difficult to understand. (3)Could some one back up the "weightage" statement with citations, such as "the Franklin episode" was a minor, forgettable, Dickens misadventure. (4)WG: "Fagin" is so famous because of what such prejudices then morphed into. (5)I am not writing about India, Franklin or Fagin based on primary sources, it is RS who are "reading" Dickens thus. It is amazing that editors with about 20000 edits to Wikipedia are not raising the red flag at such violations, (6)Nishi if you do not like "Franklin" or anything else come up with multiple sources. I as evidence in support of its inclusion present Nayder-2002[1], Marlow-1994 [2], Poon - 2008,[3] Yarrington, et al - 1993,[4] Cavell - 2008[5] (7)I have only skimmed the surface, (which proves that "Franklin" is not a result of eviscerating the guts of marginal episodes. If more is wanted it would be easily provided. (8)The Franklin episode is not here because of the whim of one editor, it is there because it is supported by a strong foundation of reliable sources. Do not revert it unless there is good reason to do so. Nishi have a good look at various Wikipedia policies, and quote them to support your argument, that it is not a matter of evidence. (9)I have submitted the "Dickens' descendant apology" link before on this talkpage. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 05:49, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Does Nishi want to suggest that the subjects of Dickens' attacks Jews, Indians, Inuits, Blacks are "farts"? To Nishi's comments read thus: Dickens wrote about Jews, Indians, Inuits and Blacks; Dickens also wrote about flatulence, are we going to write about flatulence in his bio? Amazing! Yogesh Khandke (talk) 06:14, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Naturally an editor can use this talk page to state their opinion (such as "Rae and Dickens have contemporary significance, like in Canada or in Scotland, we have one of the Dickens' apologising for Dickens Sr to the Inuit"), however, that opinion carries no weight for text proposed for the article. Point (2) above demonstrates a massive misunderstanding of Wikipedia as it is not possible to indulge in OR on a talk page (if it were, point (1) would be ruled out). It is not up to other editors to prove that the Franklin episode was a minor matter in the life of Dickens; by contrast, anyone wanting to insert material on that episode needs to prove that it is significant, as judged by suitable sources. In an article on a minor figure, it may be necessary for editors to indulge themselves by using primary sources in a manner that the editor feels is appropriate. However, such procedures have no place at this article where the topic is an extremely prominent and well-researched author. Instead, editors need to rely on scholarly secondary sources, and allow those sources to indicate the weight of events that should be recorded in the biography. The Franklin incident is significant (so it has its own article), but it is not significant to this page until a secondary source says otherwise. Also, the attitude from Dickens that we recognize as offensive is extremely typical of his time, and a secondary source would be needed to suggest that what Dickens wrote is unusual—otherwise, this article would give the misleading impression that Dickens warrants opprobrium. There is probably an article dealing with the offensive attitudes of previous generations, and that article might be a suitable place (if a secondary source is available) to provide examples, including some from Dickens. Johnuniq (talk) 07:16, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
I wonder if we are in part tackling the issues of the edits of Yogesh Khandke somewhat the wrong way. It is true he is relying on secondary sources. However, there are other secondary sources that interpret Dickens' racism in a different way, for example the book "Charles Dickens in Context" by Sally Ledger, Holly Furneaux published by Cambridge University Press. These authors note Dickens' highly vitriolic sources, yet also argue (as does another author I cited above) that Dickens does NOT believe in "biological fixity" but in the altering power of (European) civilization. He is a nativist, but not a "biological determinist", but as a nativist, very much pro-colonialist (and arguably anti-immigrant).
OK, that's the second secondary source I've cited here from a reputable academic publisher. What I think we need is these other readings in the discussion, but I agree with all that this discussion should be less prominent in the article, and at least temporarily shelved simply in the interests of getting the article manageably restructured and remodeled.
YK, please keep in mind that your reading of your own sources has been challenged (a point you are evading), and that within limits a certain amount of OR is entirely permissible on the Talk page (in the context of discussing improvements to the article). Your appeal to that is beating a dead horse. We're arguing the notability of Dickens' racism (and I'm arguing about just what kind of racism it is- and for the second time now appealing to a secondary source) and where to (ultimately) present it. We aren't debating whether he was a racist or not! We all understand that on some level he was. The issue we're discussing here is to what degree Dickens' racism simply mirrored his times.
Nonetheless, I have to ask. Are you really blaming Dickens portrait of Fagin for the Holocaust?? And if so, aren't YOU engaging in just as much OR as anyone else here with that assertion? The anti-Semitism of Richard Wagner was a major inspiration to the Nazi regime. I doubt that the Nazis had much interest in Charles Dickens (particularly not his highly sympathetic Jewish character in Our Mutual Friend). Yes, Hitler liked one of Dickens' friends Edward Bulwyr-Litton, but that's about as far as it goes, I would say.
YK, there are now THREE (3) high-quality editors who have abandoned work on this page, one of whom is a published Shakespeare scholar, because they find your WP:contentious editing simply too exhausting to work with. I've tried very hard here to be the "good cop" here to other folk's "bad cop", but as of yesterday you have driven 3 of WP's finest away from this page, which seems at least partial grounds for filing complaint on the Admin Notice Board. You seem to appeal to a lot of WP's rules, but you seem to fail to understand WP:Consensus, and as I have noted you persist in obvious misreadings of WP:OR. There is a delicate interplay between WP:Bold and WP:Consensus and there is a good page discussing the interplay of the two Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. Note that they say that the "bold, revert, discuss" cycle is NOT a "bold, revert, discuss, revert" cycle, which seems to be the way you have been playing it.--WickerGuy (talk) 07:52, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
(1)Isn't someone jumping the gun? I wrote "such prejudices", which means anti-Semitism was responsible for the mass murder of Jews by Germans and their other collaborators. Is that original research? Do you want me to provide a reference for "Paris is the capital of France"? (2)On published scholars, who is a published scholar? How do you know? Aren't we all supposed to be anonymous? I am not aware of an hierarchy of users on Wikipedia. Shouldn't we concentrate on doing this mechanically? On Wikipedia every one has equal rights, from rocket scientists to those who move their lips while reading. (3)"Flogging a dead horse"? Which subject is foreclosed? (4)My other alleged OR quoted by John - Rae and Dickens have contemporary significance, like in Canada or in Scotland, we have one of the Dickens' apologising for Dickens Sr to the Inuit - why is quoting a newspaper article OR? I have included the citation in my previous edits, please check to confirm.(5)@John on primary and secondary: I've quoted secondary sources, others are quoting primary sources which I am unhappy about, I wonder whether comments are read or just assumed? (6)Isn't there a policy against wild accusations? And threats? (7)Where has reading of my sources been challenged? I'm sorry I missed it. Would someone do it one more time please. (8) Oh and if anyone is unhappy with the title "anti-Semitism and racism", they can change it to say "Dickens: ideology and advocacy" or the like. (9) (also read (2) above)Isn't it funny that editors here are sounding like they they are tellng me that they have ganged up against me and are using psychological tactics that are used by police in interrogation? (10)We are not to worry about who warrants opprobrium or not, all we need to do is to be matter of fact, and let the readers tilt at windmills if they wish to. John isn't that advocacy? Anti-opprobrium league? (11)BOLD and CONSENSUS: I am restoring and not reverting what has been stable for long, isn't there a difference in that? (12)Wasn't I right about the FRINGE view of considering Dickens anti-imperialist as it has been contradicted by WG quoting Context which calls him "pro-Colonialist"Yogesh Khandke (talk) 10:16, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Yogesh, the problem from my perspective is that you're going about this in the wrong way, in that source after source is being provided to prove a point. The better way for an author such as Dickens is a full literature review - and believe me, for those of us who don't specialize in Victorian lit, this is a massive task. Typically I look at (read) as many biographies as possible to find the main points which are then written about. In other words we let the sources lead us; we don't lead the sources by looking for evidence to support a specific point. For authors such as Dickens so much has been written that it's always possible to find small niche theories, as that's what academia is all about (but this has already been mentioned above). This has now become a circular argument which won't go anywhere. I'm unwatching again. I would be interested in pitching in with a full rewrite, so if that ever gets underway, someone ping me on my page please. Truthkeeper (talk) 13:31, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Some scattered notes.
I erred in using the "good cop/bad cop" metaphor. I was thinking of it more as a dramatic device in police procedural TV series and shows rather than as an interrogation technique as it is used in real life. I withdraw the metaphor.
First and foremost I'm not aware that anyone here has denied Dickens' support of imperialism. It's a question of how notable it is, and thus what degree of prominence it should have in a bio that is focused on a man basically known for writing coming-of-age novels about children and teenagers. It seems to me that Fringe is not the issue, so much as notability, and as such the proportion of space to devote in the article to the subject.
It was your choice and selection of secondary sources that was challenged, not so much your interpretation of the ones you cite. IE, it is held that CD's racism should be discussed in proportion as it appears in general biographies covering his life as a whole rather than in sources focused on this issue. Thus we should be establishing the notability of his racism. BTW, I think the Franklin incident should be discussed (briefly) since it influenced a stage-play Dickens collaborated on as well as his journalism.
The quote from Robert Schram is unclear as to whether he considered a "leading contributor" to anti-Semitism Dickens' Oliver Twist, or the source character for Fagin- the real-life Ikey Solomon. Since Shram is overall talking about an exhibit at the Jewish Museum which includes a section of famous Jewish criminals including Ikey Solomon, I think it possible he is saying the real character IS is a "leading contributor" to anti-Semitism. But I could be wrong. However, Dickens is so often regarded as a "casual" anti-Semite, and writings about IkSlm often raise worries about their contribution to anti-Semitism [10] so I think it likely what Schram is talking about IkSlm not Dickens' character, bu IkSlm. Either way anti-Semitism in Europe goes back so many centuries- Dickens is a cog in a much larger wheel. However, I missed your reference to "such prejudices". Thanks for the correction.
Consider, the love-hate relationship that contemporary and Victorian Jews have towards Dickens as opposed to their utter loathing of Adolf Hitler. Jewish writer Will Eisner wrote an entire graphic novel which retells Oliver Twist from Fagin's point of view (it's called Fagin the Jew) in attempt to correct Dickens. But he, in part, did it out of respect for Dickens. The same goes for the revisionist reading of Dickens in Jewish (and Holocaust-surviving) film director Roman Polanski's 2004 film adaptation of Oliver Twist. Consider the Jewish woman who wrote to Dickens to explain Judaism better to Dickens and how seriously he took her, and Dickens' decision to revise the novel, and later put in a delightful Jewish character into his novel Our Mutual Friend. Surely, this all has some import in evaluating the overall significance of Dickens' race views.
The basic issue at hand is that beyond the issue of what you have written, many editors agree the article as a whole has been poorly managed and that the article needs a broad restructuring and remodeling, a tearing down and building up, and your persistence in maintaining this material (which could get restored in a different way later after getting recontextualized) is impeding that task. There are now four editors who have left the field here, because of your stubborn persistence in violating WP:Consensus!! By any standard, you are being an obstructionist. No one here has argued for a full deletion of material on Dicken's racism. But we also don't want that material to be a coat-rack for speechifying, and giving it more prominence than necessary.
Finally, the appeal to WP policies about "undue" on both sides is slightly misleading. WP's policies on undue has to to with conflict of opinion over what is actually true. (Was JFK killed by Oswald, the Mafia, or by the Secret Service?) What's being debated here is how much space to devote to the acknowledged fact that Dickens has racist views. As such the appeals to undue by both YK and his opponents to WP undue policies strike me as mistaken.--WickerGuy (talk) 16:22, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Historical mention of Franklin
I am pasting here a historical mention of Franklin, (I have taken the opportunity to create another section as the one above has become too long).
Racial defamation (section title) Dickens wrote very attacking articles about other cultures, e.g. Inuit, falsely calling them murderers of the Franklin expedition. Dickens writings on Inuit people have had long-lasting effects of defamation on an entire race and culture. In the documentary Passage (2008 film), a member of Dickens' family finally apologizes on behalf of his ancestor to an Inuk statesman, who accepts the apology on behalf of Inuit people.[11]Yogesh Khandke (talk) 16:46, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Actually, I appreciate the good-faith fix, but frankly I would both...make it slightly longer(!!) and...remove the sweeping generalization "Dickens writings on Inuit people have had long-lasting effects of defamation on an entire race and culture" unless citable to a secondary source and then say that this is the opinion of that source.
(edit conflict)I've gone through the history - in 2009 the page was not in terrible shape. The page was started in 2003 - Yogesh can you please supply a diff for when the contentious material was added? That would be helpful. Thanks. Truthkeeper (talk) 17:05, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I don't want to have to search the entire history. I don't see any of this stuff before September 2009 for a page created in 2003. Presumably you're more familiar with the material than I am - so can you find a diff and paste it here of the creation of the Franklin section. I'd like to have a look at that history. Thanks. Truthkeeper (talk) 17:41, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
So added in April 2008 [[12] , by September 2008 the section is retitled [13] and already has a POV tag. My sense is that not a lot of substantive work has gone on here since that time. That's the reason editors aren't excited to jump in, which is a shame. Truthkeeper (talk) 18:01, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Edit request on 10 March 2012
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
The quotation given from 'Grace Moore (28 November 2004). Dickens and empire: discourses of class, race and colonialism in the works of Charles Dickens' (footnote 75) in the section 'Allegations of anti-Semitism and racism' should read "melancholy absurdity", and not "mechanical absurdity" as it currently does.
(1)The title Allegations and critical response, to me means that there are two parties, one that makes allegations and another that responds, but the section doesn't look like that, except the contemporary (to Dickens) critic who praised Dickens, wonder why anti-Semitism was taken off? (2)The deleted text was under the excuse of minutiae (small and trivial detail), Dickens spawned a genre of literature that demonised the other? How is that minutiae? In my opinion it is lead material. "Dickens spawned a genre of hate literature". (3) We need to get the old Franklin episode back. (4)The deleted text was as old as 2009, please don't remove stable content. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 16:41, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
I agree that there is a place for the Franklin material, and re point two, this probably should all go in a separate article. Anti-Semitism is a form of racism, and I think the title of the section needs to be shortened. "Racism" includes "anti-semitism".
Are you seriously saying that Dickens created/invented a genre of hate/demonizing literature that did not previously exist?? That's a serious charge that I find very hard to justify. (Got a secondary source for that that isn't in the minority of Dickens studies?) The origins of racism go back to classical antiquity. How is Dickens' Oliver Twist any more an originating force of anti-Semitic stereotypes than Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice or the much more darkly influential operatic works of Richard Wagner (a favorite of the Nazis)? Racism was around in both ancient Greece and the Middle Ages, but varied in its form. In the 18th century you get racist theories about inherent biological differences, while the ancient Greeks were more prone to cultural prejudices (which seems to me more Dickens' style). You can find racist overtones in other literature of the era, and more importantly there were other literary figures who made the propagation of racist ideas the center of their career as clearly & blatantly Dickens did not. Racism is the main and primary point of the novels of Thomas Dixon- it is secondary to Dickens who was mainly devoted to writing adolescent coming-of-age stories. Racism is a characteristic of Dickens but not the essential or pivotal aim of his work. Any assertion to the contrary is almost certainly a minority opinion and should be treated in WP as a minority opinion.--WickerGuy (talk) 18:31, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Note on revert
We really don't need the material on Perils to be twice as long as the other discussed instances of Dickens' racism. There may be a way to create a new version which condenses both paragraphs into a single shorter one. Fagin can get a longer discussion because it is more widely discussed. (The average reader is far more aware of the Fagin issue than the other material.) Currently, I have just excised the 2nd paragraph, but I'm open to a shorter version combining material from both paragraphs.--WickerGuy (talk) 18:39, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Also the excised paragraph is just badly written in terms of basic English syntax and sentence structure. It is convoluted and its point is unclear.--WickerGuy (talk) 18:53, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Comment: I find the proposed "Critical response to..." subtitle obscure innuendo, the content very poorly contextualized—therefore, per se, biased and unencyclopaedic. "Allegations..." is preferable, imo. A Wikipedia article on one of the greatest stylists of the English language must be well written, imo.
Oppose reinserting the Franklin subsection in the main biographical (Life) section. Reflections which interrupt the chronological account of the writer's life are, imo, inappropriate in that section (for the same reason, I do not much like the thematic sound of the Philanthropy subheading).
I agree with WickerGuy that separate article/s (subarticle/s) are needed for any lengthy considerations of POVs expressed in the critical literature and media. —MistyMorn (talk) 19:23, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
I think I might agree with you, but am not quite sure what you are saying. "Critical response to" is meant to separate discussion of what Dickens said with how modern scholars have responded to it. I honestly don't know what you mean by "obscure innuendo", though I readily concede the content is not well contextualized. However, I am trying to present a wide range of responses to Dickens (perhaps woefully inadequately) so I don't think this is "biased". Should "allegations" come back? I was really just trying to make the title brief. However, I don't think anyone disputes Dickens is racist- but there is MUCH dispute over its notability or significance. The Franklin business should be here if we're discussing this AT ALL, but in this part of the article not in the bio. You are TOTALLY RIGHT that this should not interupt the account of the writer's life. However, if we're discussion Fagin, and Dickens on slavery, and Dickens on the Indian massacre then we really need to have the Franklin incident as well. It's complete omission while including all the other stuff seems to me not a good idea.
I'm basically wondering if the new material could be left here for a couple of days to generate more response and then moved to a separate article.--WickerGuy (talk) 19:57, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)RE how would suggest better contextualizing the critical material?? A reasonable question - sorry if my comment was a hurried one (I'm not in a position to do much this week). I feel too much is taken for granted at the start of the subsection, which starts virtually in medias res with a POV drawn from a newspaper article and an isolated vignette of one Dickens villain (a pertinent quotation, but perhaps better relocated as a footnote?). Imo, it's important first to state clearly the bone of contention: for example, that since Dickens' lifetime the villainous Fagin's initial presentation to readers of Oliver Twist as "the Jew" has given rise to allegations of anti-semitism. Then the Ikey Solomon sentence, followed by "Nadia Valdman, who writes about the portrayal of Jews in literature, argues that..." Apologies again for the hasty response, —MistyMorn (talk) 20:15, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
You are quite right about the problem with in media res. This section needs restructuring. Fagin however remains Dickens best-known and most-discussed (at least in America) instance of racial prejudice.--WickerGuy (talk) 20:18, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Fine - agree about the pertinence of Fagin. I just think the topic needs appropriate introduction—at present the opening reads like an opinion piece, imo.
I think your idea of leaving the current material (or something similar) for response for a few days before moving to a separate article is a good one. Not everyone seemed to be wholly in favour of a subarticle, but I can't see any reason why there shouldn't be one on what is, by common consent, a notable subject. —MistyMorn (talk) 20:31, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Comment - please don't coatrack this material. Please go to the secondary sources and write a page that reflects current mainstream Dickens' scholarship. That will take time, effort, and most importantly, motivation. Truthkeeper (talk) 21:23, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Well, I certainly think I am making the maximum use of secondary sources, notably the book Dickens in context and the widely discussed book by Grace Moore, one of the most notable studies of CD's attitudes on race. There is more use of secondary sources in the "critical responses" section which is intended to be a survey of a broad range of opinions of various 2ndary sources. Indeed, I created this second sub-section in order to give a maximum space to the secondary sources. However, I also think while the accounts of the individual incidents might use some condensation, we need at least some mention of each of the major incidents. I rely on primary sources in discussing the Franklin incident, but remain there simply matter-of-fact, without expressing any opinions. Again, I think all this should really go into a separate article, and have just left it here for a few days to get more response.
It seems almost inevitable that the subject is going to stay on WP, partly due to the persistent efforts of User YK. We might as well get it done correctly then.
I quite agree with you that this IS a coat-rack in the sense that too much space is spent on the subject with insufficient attention to the main things for which Dickens is notable (it really needs to be separate article), and is disproportionately spent on attacking Dickens. On the other hand, I don't think this section is engaging in deceptive fact picking. So let's just move this to a separate article fairly soon. Can we leave it here a couple days to get some more opinion? Or else perhaps I could just move it tonight and leave a notice on the Talk page?--WickerGuy (talk) 22:03, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm opposed to coat racking it. I think the issue should be hashed out here. There should be alternatives beyond an all or nothing scenario. I haven't had time to look at the literature, so can't speak to the sourcing, but the section is very long, and I don't think primary sources should be used in an overview biography page that should be written in summary style. Do we have a multitude of secondary sources that agree that Dickens' novels are in the hate literature genre? Seriously, there's an issue of responsibility here - this is the number one g-hit, and we need to think about what we're publishing. I'm not opposed to adding the material in context but as it is now, it's cleary POV, and coat racking POV is still published POV. Truthkeeper (talk) 22:12, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
I don't mean to be difficult, but I'm uncertain as to what you mean by an "all-or-nothing" scenario. I think we can remove the primary sourcing of the Fagin passage although it is preceded by a note from a secondary source. I don't think anyone is arguing that "Dickens' novels are in the hate literature genre"!! Is that ever being asserted here?? Is that ever being asserted here?? I think what is being asserted is that there is a problem of racism haunting some of Dickens' work, much of it in his journalism. No, Dickens is NOT "hate literature" in the sense that Thomas Dixon's "The Clansman" is hate-literature, and I don't think that is being asserted. Indeed the recently added intro paragraph makes it clear that is NOT being asserted. And by coat-racking are you referring to the creation of a separate article?--WickerGuy (talk) 22:19, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm suggesting that the entire page be rewritten from top to bottom. Part of the rewrite should include a themes section. Part of the themes section should include the material being discussed. All of it should be written in summary style. If the material is taken from here and put into another page, then yes, that's coat racking in my view. YG first post above clearly says that Dickens spawned the genre of hate literature which should be showcased in the lead. Truthkeeper (talk) 22:24, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Both you and I would agree that YG's contention that Dickens spawned a genre of hate literature is more or less silly!!!! That would be a fringe view that should be kept out of the article. I am trying to amend this situation by giving YG his due (however much or slim that may be). My point is that since YG has been remarkably persistent in seeing that this material is discussed at all, we might as well get it done in a fairly proper manner.
I am not the person to engage in a thorough restructuring of the article. I leave that to other hands.
Placing the material in a separate article whose title is specifically "Dickens' racism" is NOT coatracking per the definition given "A coatrack article is a Wikipedia article that ostensibly discusses the nominal subject, but in reality is a cover for a tangentially related biased subject." On the other hand, it seems to me that giving an excessively amount of space to it in a "legacy" section to the neglect of other issues like Dickens' impact on orphanage reform IS coat-racking. However, the splinter article would indeed need to be monitored with the eyes of a hawk!!! I will be offline for the next 5 or 6 hours. Cheers,--WickerGuy (talk) 22:35, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)Pragmatic support for a move and tag step: NEUTRALITY DISPUTED (clear enough in Wikipedia terms). Something like Dickens and racism... At least it shouldn't overshadow the rest of the primary Dickens page, including the essential biography: no editor—YK or anyone else—should command collegial consensus (and "Dickens spawned a genre of hate literature" is clearly WP:FRINGE). —MistyMorn (talk) 22:48, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
Just a couple of notes.
TruthKeeper, on the Shakespeare articles the "no coatrack" principle was interpreted in the exact opposite way you have interpreted it. All disputes about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays were placed in a separate article but removed from the articles about individual Shakespeare plays on the grounds that the latter would evolve into a coat-rack. I think their interpretation of the no coatrack principle is closer to the mark than your own.
In sum The real dispute here is how notable and how influential and what form did Dickens racism take. I think no one disputes that Dickens was racist. I personally think that Dickens' racism is moderately notable, but much less notable than his contributions to reform of schools and orphanages and overall impact on children's literature, and the latter should take precedence in a discussion of his legacy. Contrary to our combative editor YK, I don't think Dickens' racism was very influential on the English people at all(!!) (which also makes it less notable), and more than one scholar (secondary source) classes Dickens as a cultural chauvinist, but NOT a biological determinist (which the Nazis were). And finally, since the Fagin issue is better known to the general public than the other issues (Oliver Twist is far more widely read today than The Noble Savage), the Fagin issue deserves a slightly longer coverage.
In (partial) defense of YK, I actually am quite glad that he has forced the issue (even if has some rather POV fringe views on it), and I think it is true that if Dickens' racism is being discussed at all that one cannot really do without some discussion of the Franklin incident, although it ought not to be in the bio section, and I think that material was a bit unfairly stigmatized due to its association with YK.
(1)Reply to WG: (a)The "Dickens spawned a genre of hate literature" is a reading of Bartlinger's " Perils greatly influenced the British cultural reaction to the "Mutiny", this reaction engendered by Perils, "portrayed 'the imperialist dominators;... [as] victims and the dominated, villians. Imagining the Mutiny in this way displaced guilt and projected repressed, sadistic impulses onto demonicized Indian characters.'", I am afraid, one more time, less is read and more is assumed, I wrote Dickens spawned "a genre", which genre one might ask- fiction - a characteristic response to the events of 1857 (as Bartlinger reports), this is an important Dickens "achievement", now to justify "hate literature" - what is I ask "demonizing", "attributing repressed sadistic impulses", or "inversion of guilt from the perpetrator to the victim", Dickens designed his fiction to create characters that could be hated, and the hate could be extrapolated to be representative, by laying emphasis on the character as a representative of the "other", that is what I read from Bartlinger as quoted. So I argue that the statement is "lead" material, of-course the same statement could be obfuscated in terminological-verbose overflow, as the whole sub-section is, my summary is: reliable secondary sources present a consensus that Dickens was racist, and an eminent racist writer, eminent to describe his status as a writer and also to describe the strength of his opinions. Remember that the paragraph is being flushed out of the article, while it is important enough to form the lead as one of Dickens' notable contributions - "he spawned a genre of hate literature". Did I write that Dickens invented racism -noso please don't create a strawman. If anyone has to argue on this, their man is Bartlinger, which is a consensus source used both by me and others. Also see b. (b) Note on revert- the deleted text follows Wikipedia syntax rules - if our source x quotes y, we write it as "according to x who quotes y", please don't throw the baby with the bathwater, are you unhappy about form or substance? (c) You have to makeup your mind in whether the notability of Dickens' racism was not notable at all, or moderately notable, or of an unknown notability (2)MM: (a)(see 1(b) For the complaint in Latin) I disagree on creating forks to "clean" the "mess" here, please don't divert attention by extraneous discussions, let someone create sub-articles on Dickens, but they should not be dumping grounds for what is considered trash here. (that is what policy rightly is). "Allegations" means something that is not proven, an alleged thief, whereas "Racism: a critical response" means "Critics respond to what they consider racist (including anti-Semitism which WG rightly notes is a sub-set of racism, but he forgets that 6 million Jews were murdered because it was fashionable in some parts of the world, which is what makes its separate mention a little necessary, see language itself is so inadequate - barbarity - means (A) extreme brutality or cruelty also means (B)absence of culture and civilisation, the perpetrators of the Holocaust were (A), but were they (B) ? Which is what we have to be careful or vigilant, it is assumed that (A) and (B) go hand in hand, in Dickens there is a large evidence for a negative on (B) so as a corollary .... (b)please I didn't understand the significance of "command collegial consensus", and isn't there too much YK and YG going all over the place, are we discussing how to write a better article or are we discussing editors, and how silly they are. (c) Do you consider Bartlinger FRINGE? I am merely summarising Bartlinger. (3)Truth: (a) Do you mean that the true Dickens is reduced to a coat hook? I ask what is a person without the adjectives - clever, just, tall, eminent, kind, magnanimous, (I am leaving the negatives out), if you call them coats, I fail to understand you. (b)Are you sure that primary sources have been quoted directly and not carried from secondary sources which quote them? Yogesh Khandke (talk) 16:36, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
"Racism: Critical response", isn't "critical response" redundant? What is it an alternative of? Popular response? I think "Racism - anti-Semitism" would be an economically worded title. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 16:39, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Justification for changes showed by the following diff: Removed info regarding how Franklin & co died, as it is irrelevant considering economy required and made space for: (1) How one of Dickens' plays was written. (2)How Dickens played the ethnicity card while attacking Rae who was Scott and not English, shows Dickens had issues with Jews, Indians, American natives, Inuits and natives of Africa and also Scots: he had a wide repertoire. (3)The genesis of his play The Frozen Deep. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 19:05, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I am not sure how Wikilegal the following is: I am quoting Metapedia, which is following this article and other articles on Wikipedia in an article titled "Examples of propaganda in Wikipedia" it writes "One of the most famous literary figures in the history of English language literature. Yet the legacy section mostly consists of Jewish screeches of “anti-semitism” in relation to the character Fagin in Oliver Twist and Dravidian whining about his comments on dark-skinned killers in British India as the ahistoric canard “racism”.". It also calls Yogesh Khandke a Dravidian troll. I am not pasting URL here, a search would suffice to verify. What is my purpose in sharing this here? Well I am amazed by the commonality of a part of the logic, "eminent Dickens". Yogesh Khandke (talk) 19:17, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
YF, I may have misinterpreted you, but your meaning is not always clear!
YK, The term "critical" is being used the academia sense of "interpretation" i.e. how Dickens scholars (ie secondary sources) interpret and see Dickens racism. It does not have anything to do with moral evaluation- it is there to place emphasis on what secondary interpreters say!!!! As Wikipedia puts it elsewhere "Another meaning of criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature, artwork, film, and social trends... The goal of this type of criticism is to understand the possible meanings of cultural phenomena, and the context in which they take shape. In so doing, the attempt is often made to evaluate how cultural productions relate to other cultural productions, and what their place is within a particular genre, or a particular cultural tradition." For example, the academic field of "Biblical criticism" need not involve moral or intellectual value-judgments of the Bible. It is an attempt at deeper understanding based on deeper understanding of the era. Used in the academic sense, "critical response" is IMO entirely appropriate here.
YK, The term "coat rack" is being used in the Wikipedia encyclopedic sense of not having an article stray too off-topic away from what is ostensibly its main focus. The idea of a fork-off article is not to dump "trash" but to not let an article about one thing (Dickens literature taken as a whole) get dominated by a topic that should not in fact be the dominant focus of the article. In different ways, both you and "Truthkeeper" seem to misunderstand what the Wikipedian metaphor of a "coat-rack" is, as I suspect you also misunderstand the import of the word "criticism".
YK, I have glanced over some of Bartlinger's writings, and he is indeed highly critical of Dickens' racism and spends much time calling attention to it. Bartlinger is also is highly contemptuous of Dickens' play Perils which he does indeed regard as displacing repressed sadistic impulses onto demonized foreign characters. So far, Bartlinger. But in what sense does Bartlinger say that Dickens "spawned a NEW genre" of hate literature??? What about the anti-Semitism in Elizabethan drama such as Marlowe's The Jew of Malta??
In Victorian times, what about the anti-semitism in Du Maurier's Trilby or the operas of Richard Wagner?? Victorian detective fiction abounds in anti-Semitic stereotypes!! It's hard to maintain that Dickens single-handedly invented racist fiction!!! Furthermore, you then go on (apparently) to make a generalization about ALL of Dickens's fiction saying "Dickens designed [all of??] his fiction to create characters that could be hated, and the hate could be extrapolated to be representative, by laying emphasis on the character as a representative of the "other". But the reason why so many Americans are unaware of Dickens' racism is precisely because all of his best-known novels except for Oliver Twist (Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Christmas Carol, Tale of Two Cities) are stories in which race issues are simply completely absent!! All the characters, good and bad, are Englishmen. The Perils play remains largely unread, gathering dust on university bookshelves, while readers still flock to the above-mentioned stories in which race plays no part! And I would like to see the exact cite from Bartlinger. I seriously doubt Bartlinger would support this conclusion!!!
YK, metapedia is a heavily racist white-supremacist encyclopedia that I would be deeply ashamed to be associated with in any way. If they are correct about anything at all, it would be a case of the clock that is stopped is correct twice a day. (Come to think of it, a clock running backward is actually correct fourtimes a day.) Trolling incidentally has to be motivated by malice rather than by bias. Aggressive biased editing is not per se trolling, so I would say metapedia is wrong (as they are about 99.99% of most things).
I do in fact personally regard Dickens' racism as moderately notable, about a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. That is because racism is less deeply woven into the fabric of his best-known fiction (and his overall body of work!!) than is the case of say opera-composer Richard Wagner (one could also mention Dickens' late-life remorse for his earlier anti-Semitism). You seem to regard Dickens' racism as a fundamental founding principle of Dickens overall body of work. Few others do, and as much as Bartlinger has labored to call attention to the loathsome, noxious and toxic nature and impact of Dickens' Perils (and other relatively little-known writings of Dickens), I suspect you are over-interpreting what Bartlinger says!!! Please supply with the exact citation!!--WickerGuy (talk) 19:58, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict)::::(1) Though I am not a student of literature, we had "critical appreciation" in school and am aware of that use of the word, wonder what I wrote made you consider otherwise. From the way you spell encyclopaedia you don't seem to be British or Commonwealth, (just an observation no value judgement in that). (2)I am aware that "Dickens spawned a genre of hate literature" isn't kosher and would never make it anywhere, however shorn of all the euphemisms and jargon, that is what Bartlinger reads to me, he says that the British cultural reaction post-1857 (which was hateful) was influenced by Dickens, how else would you summarise it? (3)On coat rack: I couldn't connect the article to Truth's use here, what I wrote is in response to what Truth wrote, it is not about wp:COATRACK (4)I agree that this section on Dickens is larger than a million stubs, just as most of the article is. We need to summarise and have sub-articles, but the summaries must be faithfully extrapolated into sub-articles. (5)I am as biased as anyone else is imo. (6)So isn't "critical response" implicit? I mean per wp:V and wp:RS, the article reflects the critical response whereever there is opinion? Unless it is qualified as "popular" or "controversy". (7) Yet if you feel my interpretation of Bartlinger is wrong I request you to demonstrate how?Yogesh Khandke (talk) 20:45, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Note
This article is currently devoting about 1 & 1/3 times as much space to Dickens' racism and the Richard Wagner article does to the same subject re Wagner. The Wagner article also as a somewhat longer split-off article entitled Wagner controversies. I think this is the way to go.--WickerGuy (talk) 20:32, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Some excellent points and sound recent edits. As I understand it to say "Dickens spawned a genre of hate literature" implies both that the genre did not exist before Dickens and that subsequent writers of hate literature/fiction were in some sense indebted to Dickens (consciously or unconsciously). There are Elizabethan racist stage plays such as Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, and there is no evidence that subsequent prominent racist works of literature like Thomas Dixon's The Clansmen (or the more respected novel Trilby by George Du Maurier or the anti-Semitic element of Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray) or other works of racist fiction are in any significant way indebted to or influenced by Dickens. I see no evidence connection between Dixon and Dickens. Just how influential was Dickens play, beyond the borders of the controversy about the Franklin expedition?? "Spawning" implies both a high level of originality and a high level of influence for which I think there is little evidence, and I doubt that Bartlinger asserts.--WickerGuy (talk) 21:13, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I think critical response simply flags that we are also discussing 21st century musings and reflections on the subject.--WickerGuy (talk) 21:13, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Bartlinger refers to cultural response to the events of 1857, for which I use the words "spawned a genre", colonial writing on India post-1857, do you need evidence for that or would you check it up yourselves? Why do you assume that the genre is so general as anti-Semitism? Yogesh Khandke (talk) 21:48, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
WG please, we shouldn't be judging Dickens, we faithfully quote from the available critiques dealing with him. See how easy it is to find critiques dealing with his racism, on the other hand when the subject is not notable, it is next to impossible to find its mention. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 21:08, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure what your second sentence means, but there are some secondary sources about Dickens generally that do mention his racism. Bartlinger is one of them.--WickerGuy (talk) 21:13, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I apologize for getting involved in this. I only meant that as it stood yesterday, haven't had time to look today, the material under dispute shouldn't be moved to a new page, nor should it be here in the form its taken - moving it doesn't solve the problem, and I apologize for using the incorrect semantics. I've said repeatedly the page needs a top to bottom scrub, but this is an impossible situation in my view. Truthkeeper (talk) 21:41, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
I endorse WG's observations and, especially, his attempts to restore some balance to a page which appears to have been hijacked (and unbalanced) by a Fringe POV. I too find this discussion ennervating. After applying both Assume Good Faith (and Do Not Assume), my considered impression is that the approach of one editor here is deeply disruptive and is effectively driving other editors away from the page by means of exhaustion tactics. Imho, this situation should not continue. If it cannot be halted, there must be a problem with the current processes on Wikipedia - something that might need to be addressed elsewhere.2.224.16.14 (talk) 14:02, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
I would personally classify the problem editor as primarily WP:contentious and I suppose WP:disruptive to the degree he ignores WP:consensus. However, I've wanted to cut him a lot of slack because after all Dickens did in an explosive moment or rage advocate genocide towards this editor's people, and this editor has been trying to rely as much as possible on secondary sources, which is a WP:good faith move. Also his English isn't that good. On the other hand, he does wayyy to much Wikipedia:Wikilawyering, which is "bad faith". I also think that in trying to contain this editor, the issues have gotten confused. (One example is that the WP policy of WP:UNDUE has IMO been misapplied by both parties. "Undue" is a policy about conflicting points of view of truth ((such as who killed Kennedy or who wrote Shakespeare)), not about how much space to devote to a topic concerning which the facts are not really in dispute. So the fact that both sides talked a lot about "undue" seems to me reflect that the issues are getting confused.)
This editor has relied heavily as a secondary source a (reputable) Victorian scholar named Patrick Bartlinger. In my own research I have discoved the 2010 book Dickens and Empire by Grace Moore which disputes some of the contentions of Bartlinger. (PB thinks Dickens' racism got worse when he got older- Moore argues the exact opposite.) Both authors are now represented in the split off article.--WickerGuy (talk) 14:28, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
}I just now stopped by to see if any progress was being made, but unfortunately I agree with Truthkeeper's observation above. It doesn't appear as if a top-to-bottom scrub is the primary interest here. WG you might as well open up an WP:RFC on YK to begin the process. It will take a long time to clean up the atmosphere enough to attract the type of editors this article needs, so you might as well tuck your chin in and get started. Tom Reedy (talk) 21:01, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
It seems to me that by actually getting most of the material on Dickens' race attitudes into a separate article, as has been done with the issues of Richard Wagner's race attitudes on Wagner controversies, or Polanski's legal problems in Roman Polanski sexual abuse case or Obama's birth certificate in Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories, we've freed up the main article from contention on these issues, leaving it easier for solid Dickens' experts to work on scrubbing the main article. I've been doing my best to keep the article in line with WP standards. Do you feel this was not the right thing to do??--WickerGuy (talk) 21:36, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
Also, I've tried to round out the subarticle with balancing material (notably the work by Grace Moore) and keep out some of the more flamboyant interpretations of the sources coming from YK.--WickerGuy (talk) 22:09, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
There was consensus that the section was too long, so the summary as prepared by WG was maintained and the rest has been removed to another article. What remains is to add references, it is 3.05 am local time, will do that tomorrow. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 21:35, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
The phrase "see it as having become worse" sounds rather WP:POV. Perhaps "see it as having intensified" would be better, in contradistiction to the earlier "abated". Martin of Sheffield (talk) 15:30, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
Nuance vs. Supposedly
Jimborimbaud,
It is true that racism has so many different levels of meaning that it is a bit over-loaded to just blanketly assert someone is racist. It is an "overloaded" word in the computer science sense. But it is better to improve that by nuancing the opening paragraph to describe just what exactly is meant and not meant. (Nothing in Dickens' supports a Nazi ideology at all for example.) But words like "supposedly" I don't think resolve the issue. Particularly troubling is this edit.
"Dickens [seemingly- added word] advocated genocide against the Indian race".
As Hamlet would say "Seemingly, madam, I know not seemingly". Dickens' words in the letter in question are clear and unambiguous. He fantasized wiping them out.
Thanks for adding the material from Our Mutual Friend and from Chesterton. The stuff from OMF is especially useful and good IMO, though I find Chesterton's argument unconvincing, as Dickens does in fact draw on stereotypes of Jews from medieval morality plays and recurringly refers to Fagin just as "The Jew".--WickerGuy (talk) 16:07, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
And in particular, no scholar disputes the genocidal reading of what Dickens said about the Indians!
The other "alleged" word was "supposed racism". Again here, nuance in the opening lede is I think preferred.--WickerGuy (talk) 16:15, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
Also, thanks for the query in edit-summary as to saying we should avoid thinking Dickens' was racist in the "modern sense". Good call, though I think this is a better solution.--WickerGuy (talk) 06:30, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
Last words
Does anybody believe his last words were as quoted in the Times obit? I know it's verifiable that the Times printed it, but that doesn't mean it has a place in an article written now. Ackroyd p. 1077 has last words which are more believable, but to my mind bathetic, though Ackroyd of course finds something thoughtful to say about them. William Avery (talk) 21:43, 5 April 2012 (UTC)
Now demoted to a footnote, which seems exactly the right place for it. Thanks Nishidani. The Times obit material, incidentally, is now linked from Dickens's wikisource page. William Avery (talk) 10:41, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Sorry about the delay. Easter shopping. I can provide a link in the note to a reprint of the whole Times obituary if you think it needed?
‘When a great writer, on his deathbed, was with this last breath instructing his children in the secret of his success, he said,-“Be natural, my children, for the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of Art”.’ Charles Dickens,The Times, London reprinted in Walter Hilliard Bidwell (ed.) Eclectic magazine: foreign literature, science and art, New Series Volume 12 (July-Dec 1870),August, E.R.Pelton, New York 1870 pp.222-224. p.223.
This can be shown. by textual analysis, not to be his last words. (a) He wasn't on his death-bed. (b) The tense of 'with this last breath instructing his children' is past continuative, suggesting a moment in a sequence of events that didn't finish there. (c) The day of his death only his daughter Georgina was with him, so 'the children' is false - there was no general address to his offspring from a death bed (d) the probably source for this would be Kate, referring to her long talk with her father, from dinner to 3 am., the night before she left for London, etc. It's the sort of apocryphal story that gets into print and is repeated, despite the fact that close biographical research in the interim, having establiushed the facts, ignores it. This is all commonsense, even if WP:ORNishidani (talk) 11:16, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
It's not a phrase I generally use, but an entirely un-ironic "No shit Sherlock!" seems appropriate. I've no strong opinion about a link, but was fossicking around for a more august source than the current one, such as the exact edition of The Times. "Heathrow: 2000 Years of History" is an odd source too, and one wonders about the motive for adding that material to the article. Anyway, don't let yourself be waylaid by dabblers like me. William Avery (talk) 11:39, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
My consideration has been this. If the quotation about his death bed is widely cited (it is, apparently) then we should retain it, and put it in a footnote while providing the real last words. That way the shoddy meme from the Times can be explained (alleged) and dismissed at the same time. ps.we're all dabblers. A few of us think a couple of weeks of quiet collaborative work might shape the page to get beyond its dismal state, and allow us to rope in enough editors to push it through to FA status. Stick around. All hands on deck, etc.Nishidani (talk) 13:58, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Stuff removed, provisorily
(a little known fact is that Dickens reported anonymously in the weekly The Examiner in 1849 to help mishandled children and wrote another article to help publicise the hospital's opening in 1852).[1] On 9 February 1858, Dickens spoke at the hospital's first annual festival dinner at Freemasons' Hall and later gave a public reading of A Christmas Carol at St. Martin-in-the-Fields church hall.
Reason: little known facts should not be registered in a general overview article. Secondly, there's too much focus on one specific incident in an incident-packed life.Nishidani (talk) 08:13, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
Mrs Cooper, the original of Little Dorrit
Mrs Cooper's brother, Thomas Mitton, was a lifelong friend of CD, and his name appears as a correspondent in CD's letters. But neither Thomas Mitton nor Mrs Cooper makes it into Ackroyd's biography, and the appearance of Mrs Cooper in this article at all seems out of place to me, let alone the stuff about the runway at Heathrow. Removed text as follows:
Charles Dickens was a friend of the family of Mary Ann Cooper (née Mitton), and sometimes visited them; they lived in The Cedars, a house on the east side of Hatton Road, Hatton, London; the site of the house is now under the east end of London Heathrow Airport. She was the inspiration for his character Little Dorrit.[2]
I know how some otherwise reliable sources spell it, but a prison for debtors is no more a debtors' prison than a prison for thieves is a thieves' prison. The apostrophe indicates possession; I doubt that the inhabitants of any prison own their habitation, most especially those set aside for debtors.
Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, American Prospect, and Mother Jones all use "deptors' prison". The 1850 book The London prisons by William Hepworth Dixon also does so as does the 1899 book South London by Sir Walter Besant, and finally John Forster's Life of Charles Dickens--WickerGuy (talk) 04:48, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
The genitive doesn't only indicate ownership - my country is Englnd, but I don't own it! From the lead on the Wiki article Genitive: "In grammar, genitive ... is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun. It often marks a noun as being the possessor of another noun but it can also indicate various relationships other than possession ...". In this case debtors' is correct, the general noun prison is modified by being associated with those in debt. Consider "the Jones' street", one assumes an association and not ownership. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:04, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
I've cut back the text here considerably, for the simple reason that the section deals with Dickens' use of real people. Unfortunately, the latter part became a discussion of Dickens and the Jews.
The character of Fagin is believed to be based upon Ikey Solomon, a 19th century Jewish criminal of London and later Australia. It is reported that Dickens, during his time as a journalist, interviewed Solomon after a court appearance and that he was the inspiration for the gang leader in Oliver Twist. When the work was published in 1838 the unpleasant, to modern eyes,[3] stereotype of the Jewish character "Fagin" as fence and corrupter of children perpetuated prejudices of the times, the characterisation meanwhile aroused no indignation, or even comment at the time of publication.[4][failed verification] Eliza Davis, whose husband had purchased Dickens's home in 1860 when he had put it up for sale, wrote to Dickens in 1863 in protest at his portrayal of Fagin, arguing that he had "encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew". While Dickens pointed out that "all the rest of the wicked dramatis personae are Christians", and that he had "no feeling towards the Jews but a friendly one", he took her complaint seriously.[3] He halted the printing of Oliver Twist, and changed the text for the parts of the book that had not been set. In his novel, Our Mutual Friend, he created the character of Riah (meaning "friend" in Hebrew). Riah says in the novel: "Men say, 'This is a bad Greek, but there are good Greeks. This is a bad Turk, but there are good Turks.' Not so with the Jews ... they take the worst of us as samples of the best ..." Davis sent Dickens a copy of the Hebrew bible in gratitude.[3]
(a)Mendelsohn is miscited.
(b)Stephen Gill's source apparently failed verification
(c)most of what editors are trying to add should not be in this section (and some still is) but in the racism section.
I'll try to see how this can be recorrected, if I get there, in that section.Nishidani (talk) 20:09, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
The part that the ostensible anti-Judaic undertone went unnoticed for a generation, if true, is worth restoring.
The opposite is maintained by Brian Murray,The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dickens,Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009 ISB 978-0-826-41882-1 p.57
This sounds to be a bit apologetic. But it passes RS. I'm in two minds whether we should use it, and would prefer his contention to be backed by another independent authority.Nishidani (talk) 20:40, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks William. Let me then copy this out for editors:-
Jew . . toasting-fork in hand: three features place the depiction of Fagin in the iconogrtaphic tradition of representations of the Devil: flaming hair, a bear, and the trident fork. See Luther Link, The Devil: A Mask without a Face (1995). Fagin is commonly associated with the most/ notorious early nineteenth-century Jewish fence, Ikey (Isaac) Solomons, but J. J. Tobias, 'Ikey Solomons - A Real-Life Fagin', Dickensian, 65 (1969), 171-175 has argued strongly that the identification will not bear examination. That the Fagin figure in Thomas Peckett Prest's rip-off Oliver Twiss, however, should be called 'Solomans', and that Thackeray should have adopted the pseudonym 'Ikey Solomans,. Esq., Jr.' for his spoof Newgate novel Catherine (1839-40), indicates that the association of Fagin and Solomons was early and irresistible.' pp.466-467 n.63
merry old gentleman:variations on 'the old gentleman' traditionally refer to the Devil. In 1863 Mrs Eliza Davis protested against the presentation of Fagin. Dickens defended himself on grounds of historical accuracy, arguing that many receivers were Jews, but in Our Mutualk Fried(1864-5), he introduced a good Jew, Riahg, and for the 1867 edition of Oliver Twist he altered the text in a number of places, replacing 'the Jew' with 'Fagin' or 'he' (see note to p.253). For helpful discussion of Dickens and anti-Semitism see Harry Stone, 'Dickens and the Jews,' in Victorian Studies, 2(1959) 223-53 and Murray Baumgarten, 'Seeing Double: Jews in the Fiction of F Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope and George Eliot,' in Brian Cheyette (ed.), Between 'Race' and Culture: Representations of 'the Jew' in English and American Literature (1996) pp.44-61 p.467
Perhaps I have missed something or googled inadequately (I can't google the note to p.253), but, as with Mendelsohn, the original article's remarks are not supported by the source. I'm called occasionally an 'old gentleman' so everyone must see something Satanic in me, just as when I heard myself referred to as a 'bald-headed gent', the allusion must mean I'm a penis, since that's one of the meanings of 'bald-headed gentleman'.:)Nishidani (talk) 10:25, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
I support trimming back as much as possible. This bio page should be a summary and not heavy on analysis of specific books or characters. We have an Oliver Twist page and a Fagin page and the racism page, so if sources support the material there are plenty of places to move it out to. Nice work you're doing here, btw. Truthkeeper (talk) 15:33, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Fanks,guv. I'm just a Sad Sack with mop and broom at the mo'. I hope once my spring cleaning's done, a couple of master technicians of GA or FA process might deign to wander in, and kick the page into real shape, or at least tell (the) hoi polloi what has to be done. Regards Nishidani (talk) 16:07, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Callow
I removed this for discussion as to the appropriateness of its inclusion
Actor Simon Callow has toured performing in a one-man show as Charles Dickens reading from his novels.[5] Callow, who also played Dickens in a number of British TV movies and two episodes of Doctor Who[6] published a biography of Dickens, Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World[7] in 2012 to mark the bicentenary of Dickens' birth.[8]
This seems to suffer from WP:COI perhaps, certainly WP:Undue and WP:Recentism. Four referenceds out of 120 on, not Dickens, but Simon Callow doing Dickens. Way out of line. Given the large numbers of distinguished actors over a century who have worked on Dickensian material it seems inappropriate, and has all the impression of using wiki as a promotional page for someone's favorite contemporary Dickensian actor.Nishidani (talk) 09:40, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
I myself added the first sentence and another editor added the remainder of it. As far as I know, Callow is the only actor to tour doing one-man shows as Dickens, much as Hal Holbrook has done one-man shows as Mark Twain in the USA, so that seems notable. Callow is also an actor who writes books (wrote a bio on Orson Welles for example.) It seems to me the material could be condensed. Surely you don't need two references for his book. One could just say
"Actor Simon Callow has toured performing in a one-man show as Charles Dickens reading from his novels,[9] in addition to appearing as Dickens in various British films and TV shows, conducting Dickens-related tours of London and publishing a biography of Dickens on the centenary of his birth.[10]"
PS I'm also the guy who inadvertently put in this article that he was Simon Cowell who is the judge on American Idol. The mistake was in the article for several days.--WickerGuy (talk) 14:04, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
Well mate, I'm only one voice round here. I'm sure these and other points I'll try to note down for comment will be sorted out by vote or consensus. My general principle is to (a) avoid recentism (b) stick to academic sources, not newspapers or blogs or the worldweirdwebbery's googling freaks. Some mightn't share this. I just think having a high bar, book-orientated, is a good premise for convincing FA or GA folk that the editors are committed to quality. There's still a lot of poor organization here, and loads of stuff needs shifting around. There's a lot of apparent WP:OR, in the sense that several sentences can run out without any sourcing. I think for the mo' the way to go is to focus on style, quality sourcing and coherence of thematic treatment. Cheers.Nishidani (talk) 15:35, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
Personally I'd trim back the entire section - maybe trim it out all the way. This will be a long page when finished, there's plenty to add, and I tend to stay as far away from sections that border on WP:Trivia as possible. In my mind, the Callow information falls pretty close to trivia. The information should link from the Callow page to here; not the reverse. I haven't taken a close look yet, but might dive in more fully a little later. Nishidani is doing a nice job here. Truthkeeper (talk) 17:01, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
Drood and the Indians
I realize this is really about Dickens per se and not the article, so I'm not really supposed to post this, but I think this is too good to not mention in light of recent article history on the race issue.
I've read about half of Dickens but exposed myself to the first time to Edwin Drood last week when it was on Masterpiece Theatre. There's an Indian fellow, Neville Landless, whom the clear culprit (Jasper) is trying to frame for Drood's murder hoping to take advantage of other people's racist feelings to incite suspicion of Landless. Drood is himself a bit racist, but this doesn't seem to be presented as a salutary attitude. Is this more Dickens' atonement a la creating a sympathetic Jewish character in Our Mutual Friend? Have any of the scholars who have written about Dickens' race problem (such as Grace Moore) commented on Drood??--WickerGuy (talk) 17:44, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
The relevant passage in the novel is this conversation between Neville and Edwin
'You added something else to that, if I remember?'
'Yes, I did say something else.'
'Say it again.'
'I said that in the part of the world I come from, you would be called to account for it.'
'Only there?' cries Edwin Drood, with a contemptuous laugh. 'A long way off, I believe? Yes; I see! That part of the world is at a safe distance.'
'Say here, then,' rejoins the other, rising in a fury. 'Say anywhere! Your vanity is intolerable, your conceit is beyond endurance; you talk as if you were some rare and precious prize, instead of a common boaster. You are a common fellow, and a common boaster.'
'Pooh, pooh,' says Edwin Drood, equally furious, but more collected; 'how should you know? You may know a black common fellow, or a black common boaster, when you see him (and no doubt you have a large acquaintance that way); but you are no judge of white men.'
This insulting allusion to his dark skin infuriates Neville to that violent degree, that he flings the dregs of his wine at Edwin Drood, and is in the act of flinging the goblet after it, when his arm is caught in the nick of time by Jasper.
'Ned, my dear fellow!' he cries in a loud voice; 'I entreat you, I command you, to be still!' There has been a rush of all the three, and a clattering of glasses and overturning of chairs. 'Mr. Neville, for shame! Give this glass to me. Open your hand, sir. I will have it!'
But Neville throws him off, and pauses for an instant, in a raging passion, with the goblet yet in his uplifted hand. Then, he dashes it down under the grate, with such force that the broken splinters fly out again in a shower; and he leaves the house.
It's fine mentioning things like this on talk. No wuz. Actually Moore does deal with this 2004:58-61. I had to cook for a community this afternoon so didn't post a redrafted abridgement of the section on 'Controversies'. In Moore's reading Dickens has Neville caught up in the toils of popular prejudice. I think the details should go into the relevant articles (Racism and Dickens, Fagin, Oliver Twist) and we should just give a short and sweet'n sour coverage of the central points. I'll post it tomorrow.Nishidani (talk) 18:39, 23 April 2012 (UTC)
FA drive?
I've received several notes on my talk page about trying to take this article to WP:FA. The subject certainly deserves the highest Wikipedia status; whether we're up to making that reality is another question. I'm leaving town here in just a few hours, but I'll be up for it beginning next week if anybody else is. If someone would archive the now-irrelevant talk page discussions I think that would be a good start! I'd do it, but I am really pressed for time! Cheers! Tom Reedy (talk) 15:15, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
Okay. We'll give Reedy a respite. I hear he's at the Shakespeare detox clinic, sufferen frum cerebull appallsy and ba'ul ('=glottal stop) fatigue. But now, you, Johnno, wot's yor excuse, pal? We'll need them scintalla'en scalpels you pack with flair, the wuns ut flense the fat, and dot the i's, keep the troops in line an' launder the refs within a mumf or so, guv.Nishidani (talk) 14:26, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
(3) consistency of style. I always stuff this up when editing rapidly. So all eyes peeled for things like commas and fullstops before or after quotation marks. I know those sadists at FA will string us up by the knackers on dissonance in minutiae like that.Nishidani (talk) 13:15, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
I was just looking at those - I can go through for a MoS check. I almost removed the full-stops after the page numbers, but realized those were there purposely. Truthkeeper (talk) 21:24, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
I've made some MoS fixes - very little to be done though. But - the structure needs work - anything beyond the "Style" section is fairly rough (most can go in my view - or be combined/shoved around). I want to spend a bit of time thinking about how to restructure the bottom of the page. Will be floating in and out (mostly out) for the next month, fwiw. Truthkeeper (talk) 00:46, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
Fine. I don't think these things should be rushed. Let's give ourselves all summer. I agree about the excess roughness of most sections. Quite a bit of reorganization is required and, as you say, it's best to give it a good deal of thought before thoroughly revising. CheersNishidani (talk) 08:29, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
That sounds like a good plan. I also want to spend some time looking at the sources and getting caught up with the reading. Fulfilling the comprehensive requirement will be hard with Dickens (it was hard when I did Hemingway & Ezra), and I'm not at all up to speed w/ Dickensian scholarship - so that will take a bit of time. Truthkeeper (talk) 15:54, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
How do feel about using ODNB for referencing general facts rather than scavenging out of bios? His ODNB entry is long - and if you wish I'd be happy to send it to you (assuming you don't have access). If you think we should rely entirely on bios, that's fine too. Truthkeeper (talk) 13:57, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
Probably the ODNB is as good a guide to what needs to be registered in terms of the essential facts, so I'd use it as a cicerone through the thickets. What it mentions needs noting, what it ignores is perhaps best left out. It could have a useful heuristic function for us in that sense. But if we do so use it, then we'd probably be in a fix citation-wise, since it would make the wikipedia article a clone of the ODNB, and that's why I think using one or two major recent bios (I have only Ackroyd for the life) gets us off the copycat hook? But I'm not averse to your suggestion. Yes, by all means, chuck a copy my way, and I'll give it a close shufti. But I'm calculating, being a lazy c*nt, oops, chauvinistic foe pas, that the reorganization structure is best left to experienced hands like yourself, while I just push the slops bucket, or, to upgrade my humble ranking, shimmer in silently like Jeeves to help out when the Wooster's in a jam.Nishidani (talk) 14:17, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
Yes, I agree. Generally I don't use online sources for these reasons but sometimes it's difficult to find a general statement in a bio, and then I'll go judiciously to an online source. It looks like the Cambridge Companion has a good overview bio chapter as well that we can pick from - I'll take notes (I do a lot of sandbox work) until g-books gives up on me. Then I have to raid my own stacks and pull what I have of Dickens (I think quite a lot) and see what I have before committing to buying books. ODNB on its way. Truthkeeper (talk) 14:32, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
Dickens and antisemitism
I plan to introduce some scholarly discussion of this topic, based on Dickens and the Jews by Harry Stone, and How Shylock Became Fagin's Cousin: The Jewish Old Clothes Man in Shakespeare, Dickens, and Victorian Burlesque Theatre, by Michael Shapiro. [14] Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork16:05, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
It's probably best to elaborate that at Racism in the work of Charles Dickens, which both Wickerguy and myself hope to build substantially when work is completed here. There is a huge amount of commentary on Dickens and prejudice and, given that this is an overview article, we can't really afford to do more than cover its essential lineaments here.Nishidani (talk) 16:11, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
That is understandable though there should be a brief paragraph documenting this in the main article. This in not merely abstract debate; it is something that Dickens personally discussed. Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork16:19, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
As I've been saying for a while now, until we've done a full survey of sources, we can't know how much weight to give it. This is a summary page and should reflect what all the sources have to say, and then be weighted accordingly. That's a big job but needs to be done first, imo. Truthkeeper (talk) 16:23, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
Generally agree this all belongs in fork article. However, the paragraph on it here is by and large an exact copy/mirror of the lede section of the fork article, and insofar as additions there necessitate a rework of the lede, that in turn should be copied over here.--WickerGuy (talk) 17:34, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
Just as a matter of wiki practice, I checked a dozen or so writers in whose various works I have personally encountered various degrees of 'antisemitic' ( I prefer to restrict that term to post 1870s usage, but that's just a scholarly 'prejudice' preferring that 'antisemitism' be distinguished from either anti-Judaism or general ethnic prejudice) comments-
Ezra Pound (in 'legacy' and 'controversial friendship' sections, rather shorter than what one would expect )
I think there is some good argument for modern writers in the preludial decades to the Holocaust for details. It is certainly not relevant to an overview of older writers in whom this is contingent, just contemporary prejudice, or virtually absent. In 19th century writers, contempt for specified 'primitives' and imperial prejudice is a far more serious issue, and even there, we must, for reasons of economy, trust these things, when significantly RS, to forks, not to main articles. Certain there's no place here for a separate section. Nishidani (talk) 20:35, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for checking those pages - meanwhile I'm checking the novel articles. I think there's an argument to made to shove it into the analysis section of specific novel articles if the scholarship supports it. Certainly there's really nothing about it in Oliver Twist at the moment. When I worked on Hemingway, I think I managed to get in a sentence, if that much, in the themes section of the bio, but more in The Sun Also Rises where it's well-treated in the criticism. I wouldn't mind deleting the section from here altogether for now and see how this page evolves. Truthkeeper (talk) 21:27, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
Well, I meant in my first revision to really cut back, but to do so honestly had to go through all of the refs, and make as brief a synthesis (not WP:SYNTH) of all the relevant points, which meant the result is perhaps longer. I'm not happy with the length. Most of it should go to the fork article, and to Fagin/OLiver Twist. Surprised OT has little there. It certainly deserves an expansion, since there's a lot of RS on this. I'd be okay if the section were cut down to a paragraph, as long as the rest of it were copied and pasted to the relevant pages, if it ain't there already. But since it's fairly well documented, I wouldn't suggest doing that until the other sections pass a far higher sourcing standard, of the kind I tried to do in this section?Perhaps one could just list the four or 5 elements that are under discussion, provide one source for each, and by links refer the reader to the appropriate articles.Nishidani (talk) 21:36, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
That's probably the way to go. The problem is that most of the pages about the novels have little more than plot synopses and trivia sections. I'm back to where I was earlier (yesterday?) in the thread above - the structure really needs some thought. And I have a lot of reading to do! I just wanted to see the lay of the land in regards to the sub-articles, which helps give me a sense of what needs to stay here and what can be shoved out. If that makes sense. Truthkeeper (talk) 21:50, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
I think that the detailing of the Hebrew derivation of "Riah" is probably undue for this main article, and should be removed. Best Wishes Ankh.Morpork22:07, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
Indeed, and though the assertion that the name is, or might be, thus derived is found in various sources, the source cited has a long and satisfying footnote favouring the suggestion that it's just a word made up to sound like existing Hebrew names. William Avery (talk) 22:39, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
I've been reading for decades, whenever The Mutual Friend is mentioned, that Riah means 'friend' in Hebrew, but the point is never sourced. Stone, and now Gold, disagree and entertain a minority view that it doesn't. The basis of their challenge is, in technical terms, highly fragile: Dickens knew no Hebrew. All he had to do was ask a scholar or competent minister, at a club or in church, 'what's the Hebrew for friend?' He would have heard rē'eh as Riah. The alternative, that he made this up implies the extraodinary coincidence that his imaginative invention of a name in a foreign language just happened to miraculously chime with one of the real words for 'friend' in that language. Larger familiarity with Gold's own monograph (he has quite a bit on Dickens' names) would suggest he's reliable for Harry Stone's views, but rather wildly speculative at times in his philological "adversaria".
In any case, I plunked the bit in there, as my edit summary shows, so that some one could pick it up and lug it to the appropriate section of Our Mutual Friend. It is not required on this page, but the obscure point that the traditional view is under minoritarian challenge should not be lost from wiki. Nishidani (talk) 07:28, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
Legacy section
Along with the Prejudices section, I think the obese, unfocused 'Legacy section' could do with a visit by a woodsman with an axe and a cut lunch. We need
(a) his impact on other writers, and even Darwin, contemporary and later. Perhaps shift here some of the lead stuff about negative reception (James and Woolf).
(b) cinematic adaptations, which have hogged the available space. However much of that is wp:recentism. A brief statistical overview with major classic productions, and one or two boobtube things perhaps.
Political and social legacy, as the impact of his vivid (moralizing or subliminally hortatory appeals to civic conscience) accounts of slums, and poverty, and contempt made itself felt within the middle and legislating classes who read him.
Each perhaps with a paragraph. As it stands it looks like what Henry James called CD's novel, a 'loose baggy monster' with quite a bit of shit in its dacks. Fascinating shit, man, but, the FA gauleiter or two looking at it would start kicking arse on overpadding like this.Nishidani (talk) 20:45, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
Good start. Perhaps we can email the Pentagon for a spare nuke! or Caterpiller to divert one of those bulldozers it keeps sending to the Middle East to help knock down the huts of people who squat on their ancestor's land! Keep up the good work. I hope to wake to a trim, fit, athletic page that could do us proud in the London Olympic 100 metre sprint. Ps. never looked at the Murasaki page, till I followed your link. Only read the lead, and dropped a note. I'll check tomorrow if a source is needed for it. Cheers Nishidani (talk) 21:54, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
I'm not too worried about the trimming - that after all is easy. The more difficult part will be the building up of the page. Thanks for the fix to MS. Truthkeeper (talk) 12:40, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
I might shy a blade through some of the thickets. I'm for kicking the overspill from the beergut before reorganizing. Best to build on a lean frame, rather than tinker, as I did out of respect for the work of editors over the years, with the rather flabby shape it's in now. It's fine to do that if we have two or three hands declaring a constructive interest in it.Nishidani (talk) 13:49, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
Well I'be blundered about like a bull in a China shop, wielding a machete as if part of the furniture consisted of alien zombies. We've got this down 5% in just two days. Hope I haven't trodden on any toes in the meantime. I still reckon there's plenty of wooden stuff in there for the axemen among us. Let's be bold. If there are innocent casualties, they can be pulled out from the repatriation wards and reassigned frontline duty. Have shifted some slice over to Oliver Twist for editors consideration.Nishidani (talk) 15:06, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
I'll have a look soonish (need to be out for a little while). If we're trimming I might have a go at some of the bits that are repetitiious. Long comment below that I got an edit conflict on. Truthkeeper (talk) 15:12, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
Re trimming and structure - I'd do the following:
Shove the names of the 10 children into a note
Move the "Death" section into the "Life" section and rename the "Life" section
"Literary style" - needs some thought, but I'm thinking probably better to break up into style and themes
"Legacy" > rename as "Reception and legacy" and trim down or something; also needs some thought
"The Question of Prejudice" > delete entirely and add back a bit when we have a themes section
"Dickens and Boz" > that section doesn't make sense. But- he did work very closely with illustrators (I believe that's in the article already), so something should be said somewhere about the illustrators and add the material re Boz to that
"Siblings" > turn it into a "See also" because there's a page about the family
"Adaptations of readings" > probably get rid of it
"Museums, festivals and memorials" > somehow work into the legacy section as a very small prosified para.
I'm not too worried about images at this point. When we have a better text to image ratio it won't look so cramped, and I'm okay with formatting and know people who are very good w/ formatting.
I think too much emphasis on A Christmas Carol and Christmas > maybe move some to the sub-article, which is already quite well developed
Repetition re the character names & characters in general: characters and character names are discussed in beginning of "Literary styles", in "Characters" and in "Literary techniques"
"Legacy" - much of this is not legacy and more to do with the working class, social issues, which I think could have a subsection in analysis or themes (which doesn't exist but should). If half of the material is chopped/moved out of "Legacy" then the other small sections might be moved in. Still thinking about it but beginning to see a structure.
There is, and apparently has been for some time, an idea abroad that one of Dickens's major legacies is in 'the language of cinema', though this might be better covered in the section on his literary technique. If reliable sources are available this would indicate a cultural legacy at a far more profound level than a statue or a picture on a banknote. See for instance:
Thanks for the links (though haven't had the time to look at them). I think this can go to the legacy section when it's rewritten. I'm currently reading about the degree to which he was influenced by the theatre (we need more about that in the article) and that his characterizations were written, in many cases, as for the stage. Certainly there'd be a crossover and certainly there have been many many cinematic adaptations. So, another thing to keep in mind. Truthkeeper (talk) 21:42, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
Prejudice section. This has to be trimmed, without loss, to a single para and a half
Dickens was a forceful advocate of English middle-class virtues and national values, and stigmatised foreign cultures that he thought lacked these ideals.[11] His journalism and letters contain sporadic outbursts of kneejerk prejudice against non-whites.[12] While considering slavery an ‘hideous blot and foul disgrace’, Dickens thought the idea that emancipated slaves be allowed to vote ‘an absurdity’. In an 1853 essay on The Noble Savage, he wrote that primitive peoples were "cruel, false, thievish" and "murderous" and advocated that they be "civilised off the face of the earth". He defended Governor Eyre after the latter's savage repression of the JamaicanMorant Bay rebellion. In Household words, and also a play he co-authorized with Wilkie Collins The Frozen Deep, a ‘melodrama in defence of national honour’,[13] he attacked John Rae's report on the Franklin expedition, based on Inuit testimonies. The English explorers had not engaged in cannibalism, but were victims of the ‘savage Eskimoes’ who were 'covetous and cruel'. [14] In the immediate aftermath of the Indian Mutiny, and the Cawnpore massacre, his antipathy to a "colonized people" reached "genocidal extremes"[15] when he wrote privately to Baroness Burdett-Coutts: "I wish I were the Commander in Chief in India. ... I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested ...".[16]ref>Nayder 2002, p. 101 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFNayder2002 (help):"I wish I were Commander in Chief in India. The first thing I would do to strike that Oriental race with amazement, . .should be to proclaim to them, in their language, that I considered my holding that appointment by the leave of God, to mean that I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the strain of the late cruelties rested; and that I begged them to do me the favor to observe that I was there for that purpose and no other, and was proceeding, with all convenient dispatch and merciful swiftness of execution, to blot out of mankind and raze it off the face of the Earth."</ref> Such outbursts were common among Dickens’ contemporaries.[17]Moore argues that Dickens modified his views, voiced also in his allegory The Perils of Certain English Prisoners. in the light of later reports of English brutalities, and that his sympathy for the rebellious sepoys emerges in his A Tale of Two Cities. (1859)[18] Others disagree: Nayder thinks his outlook became more ‘virulent’ over time.[19] Joshi allows that Dickens' prejudices were not racially grounded, but expressed his cultural chauvinism: Dickens lacked a notion of a superior "master race", was neither a white supremacist or segregationist. He retained however a powerful antipathy for the natives in British colonies, who functioned as a negative foil for Dickens' positive image of British virtues.[20]
Dickens' portrait of Fagin, described repeatedly as "the Jew" in Oliver Twist has often been seen as anti-Semitic. Eliza Davis, whose husband had purchased Dickens's home in 1860, wrote to Dickens to protest his portrayal of Fagin, arguing that he had "encouraged a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew". While Dickens pointed out that "all the rest of the wicked dramatis personae are Christians", and that he had "no feeling towards the Jews but a friendly one", he took her complaint seriously. In Our Mutual Friend, he subsequently created a profoundly sympathetic Jewish character, "Riah",(said to be derived from Hebrewrē'eh (friend)).[21] whose goodness is almost as complete as Fagin's evil. Davis sent Dickens a copy of the Hebrew bible in gratitude for his 'atoning for an injury as soon as conscious of having inflicted it'.[22][23]
I've trimmed to one para - below. Can be rewritten, trimmed down more, or built back up. It's a beginning; the para needs restructuring though. Truthkeeper (talk) 16:08, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
Dickens was an advocate of Victorian English middle-class virtues and values,[24] showing some sporadic outbursts against non-whites in his journalism and letters.[25] While considering slavery an ‘hideous blot and foul disgrace’, Dickens thought the idea that emancipated slaves be allowed to vote ‘an absurdity’. In an 1853 essay on The Noble Savage, he wrote that primitive peoples were "cruel, false, thievish" and "murderous".[26] In the immediate aftermath of the Indian Mutiny, and the Cawnpore massacre, he wrote privately to Baroness Burdett-Coutts: "I wish I were the Commander in Chief in India. ... I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested ...".[27][28] Joshi allows that Dickens' prejudices were not racially grounded, but expressed his cultural chauvinism.[29] Dickens' portrait of Fagin in Oliver Twist has often been seen as anti-Semitic. When a Jewish acquaintance, Mrs Davis, protested at his portrayal of Fagin, for "encourag(ing) a vile prejudice against the despised Hebrew", Dickens pointed out that "all the rest of the wicked dramatis personae are Christians", and that he had "no feeling towards the Jews but a friendly one". He took the complaint seriously. Subsequently, in Our Mutual Friend, he created a deeply sympathetic Jewish character, "Riah", (said to be derived from Hebrewrē'eh (friend)).[30] whose goodness is almost as complete as Fagin's evil. Davis sent Dickens a copy of the Hebrew bible in gratitude for his 'atoning for an injury as soon as conscious of having inflicted it'.[31][32]
Yes indeed, Wicker. I wonder if you could be so kind as to handle the lead of the fork article to include this? Well, I'm a lazy bugger and confess I haven't checked it. Busy with a dozen chores. Thanks Nishidani (talk) 10:37, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Until your changes, I had been scrupulously keeping the lede of the fork article an exact mirror of this section. All changes in either reflected in the other (Except the lede to the fork article wikilinks the first occurrence of "Charles Dickens"). A condensation is however quite suitable for this article if one thinks it is running on too long.--WickerGuy (talk) 13:39, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Fair enough. We had a thick passage here, fairly well sourced. Wed've radically trimmed it, and this could go over holus bolus to the lead, while the actual body of the racism page could incorporate, directly, for further expansion, the thickened text we have excised here. Dunno if that makes sense. But leads should be short and sweet, like shortbread or the parting words of wives fed up with their husbands, which reminds me, I must get back to fixing some things round the house.Nishidani (talk) 14:23, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Pal, be bolder, and follow your instincts. Fuck the consensus, which it's too early to imagine what it might turn out to be, and do the lead as you see fit. We can always adjust if problems arise, and a vote's called to establish some hypothetical consensus.Nishidani (talk) 17:36, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Ideally the fork page can have a longer lede and we can cut even more from here. I've been reading a lot, and there's much still to be added to this page and eventually we'll run into length issues, so the more we can shove out, the better. Re the text above, both the long and trimmed version, my opinion is that they're much too specific, not really written in summary style and filled with quotes. I think tweaks are still necessary but the trimming is a beginning. Truthkeeper (talk) 21:30, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
References
I see that the 'Notes' section contains mostly references and a few long explanatory notes that no-one is likely to notice. I would like to suggest a different stucture for these sections which I think will work better. I propose creating a new 'References' section that is split into 'Footnotes', 'Notes', and 'Bibliography' as has been done in the Wife selling (English custom) article. That way anyone reading the article will see the difference between explanatory notes (Nb1, Nb2 etc.) and citations. Also, some of the overlong text in the image boxes (such as the 'empty chair' image) could be moved to the 'Footnotes' section Does anyone have any objections to that? Richerman(talk)12:03, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't have any objection to this but don't know the mark-up with the templates so didn't try it myself. I see you've done it, which is fine.The only thing I'd say, is that with lit articles I call what you have as the bibliography section, the "sources" section - see Ernest Hemingway - to avoid confusion with the bibliography of works written by the author. Truthkeeper (talk) 19:20, 4 May 2012 (UTC)
@Richerman. Nice restructuring of the 'References' section. I wish that were done more often. Can we have "Bibliography" back please if it is just a bibliography and not a collection of sources used for the article, which I think must be so though I don't doubt there might be editors who would wish to imply that. I think that's quite important. HiNatasha (talk) 06:41, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Of course it's an editorialism even if it is supported by a source. If it happens that Dickens social reforming zeal at times made him a "soft touch" and that is noteworthy enough to include in the article, then it should be properly noticed and not in this breezy, throwaway manner. HiNatasha (talk) 07:22, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Proper possessive?
Should we say "Dickens'" or "Dickens's"? I don't feel strongly either way, but the article should be consistent. At present it is not. --John (talk) 18:31, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
It would be a tricky one to make stick but, citing The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, page 43, "Dickens's" is correct: the recommendation is: "treat…names ending in -s to the full apostrophe -s, just like any other noun. This is recommended by the Chicago Style Manual (2003) and the Australian government Style Manual (2002)…Canadian English Usage (1997) [notes] that it is 'always acceptable to add -s to a name that ends in s.'. " However, the work acknowledges that the "apostrophe alone" usage "lingers". Wikipedia's own style manual is less prescriptive on the issue: in a very rough paraphrase it's "agree what to do in any one article, then stick with it". --Old Moonraker (talk) 21:26, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
I'd go with the Cambridge style here; I just think it would be better to be consistent within the article. --John (talk) 22:57, 14 June 2012 (UTC)
"Sketches of Young Gentlemen" and "Sketches of Young Couples"
I was just passing by this page and noticed that there is no mention of either Sketches of Young Gentlemen or Sketches of Young Couples either on the main Dickens page or on the Charles Dickens bibliography page. These works were not acknowledged to be by him during his lifetime, but so far as I know there is no dispute about his authorship now. Unless there is a controversy I don't know about, they should be added.
Critic Philip Hobsbaum, for example, regards these two pieces as being tedious and slipshod potboilers of little consequence (1972: A Reader's Guide to Charles Dickens, p285) but that would not be a reason for leaving them out of the bibliography.--Old Moonraker (talk) 17:11, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
From the footnote: "Glancy (1999) writes that Dickens adopted it from the nickname Moses which he had given to his youngest brother Augustus Dickens, after a character in Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. When playfully pronounced through the nose 'Moses' became 'Boses', and was later shortened to Boz." What on Earth is "pronounced through the nose" supposed to mean? In phonetics there are nasal consonants, nasal vowels, and nasalization, in which a sound is altered by air being allowed to escape through the nose. But I don't think such a phenomenon is at work here, and I suspect whoever wrote that is confused. What does the Glancy book actually say? Is the confusion from her or from a Wikipedia editor? Credulity (talk) 13:31, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
Unfortunately one is bound by the source one uses (I think I included this). The author meant with the kind of nasal accent induced by a snuffling cold. It was an English comic tradition, at least to judge by the way my father used to employ the device when sending up some people with nasal accents.Nishidani (talk) 14:37, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
Right, I think I've got it. "Moses" sounds like "Boses" if your nose is blocked or you feign a blocked nose, probably by closing your velum. I ought to have got this immediately but was thrown by the phonetically nonsensical description: pronouncing a nasal consonant like [m] with your nose blocked so the airstream is entirely oral and it comes out as more like [b] seems to me the exact opposite of pronouncing something through your nose! I think your edit is a very sensible one, thanks. Credulity (talk) 15:34, 30 July 2012 (UTC)
The source currently here should most likely read Smiley 2002. Google Books displays the publishing date as 2002. I would edit it myself, but I haven't had much practice on Wikipedia, so I don't know if this would be correct or not.--Ggppjj (talk) 17:53, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
You're right, there was a mismatch between the date on the book in the Bibliography and the date in the reference. I've corrected it and now when you click on Smiley 2002 it goes to the book as it should. Thanks for pointing it out. Richerman(talk)21:01, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't think the templates for the individual works should be on the author's page; Dickens's own template covers his works. IMO, the templates for each individual work should be on the work's page and also the various works mentioned in each template. -- Ssilvers (talk) 14:24, 10 May 2013 (UTC)
Remove. This article is about the author, not his works, and allowing templates on individual works can lead to an accretion of information best left to the articles on those notable works. The Marshalsea template should also be removed. It is too far afield, and no one will come to this article to look for links to information on that prison. Kablammo (talk) 12:59, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
I have removed Marshalsea. If we are to add templates for every setting or subject of Dicken's works we might as well add templates for London, Paris, the French Revolution, Christmas, and so on. Kablammo (talk) 14:16, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
Sentimental novel tradition?
Shouldn't there be some discussion of Dickens and the 18th century Sentimental novel genre. While I have not studied this topic, is it not relevant to novels like Dombey and Son and The Old Curiosity Shop, to name just two? or is Dickens' sentimentality just a Victorian quirk? I note that Britannica online does not believe that there is a connection, but my instinct is that they are wrong, especially as there has been a recent book on this topic: Dickens and the Sentimental Tradition: Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Lamb, by Valerie Purton. Rwood128 (talk) 16:13, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
The Britannica online article on the sentimental novel, however, does imply a connection, even though it states: "Despite such patches of emotional excess, Dickens cannot really be termed a sentimental novelist". Maybe, but the influence is there. Rwood128 (talk) 22:28, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Edit request on 19 March 2013
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Under the "Death" section, it says: 'His last words were: "On the ground", in response to his daughter Georgina's request that he lie down'. Georgina was not his daughter; she was his sister-in-law. This needs to be corrected. He had no daughter Georgina, and Georgina is correctly identified earlier in the article as his wife's sister.
DreamersRose (talk) 01:32, 19 March 2013 (UTC)DreamersRose
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In the Autobiographical Elements section it reads in part: Even figures based on real people can, at the same time, represent at the same time elements of the writer's own personality.
Done - Thank you. I couldn't see much point to the sentence at all, sounded a bit like poor editorialising to me, so I removed it. Begoontalk12:18, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
Edit request on 12 August 2013
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Charles Dickens wrote "A Christmas Tree" in 1850. I believe it was published in the "Household Words" magazine. My source is "Christmas Stories from 'Household Words' and 'All the Year Round', published by Hazell, Watson & Viney, LTD London and Aylesbury. I think it should be included on the list of Dickens' works. Thanks.
98.118.109.7 (talk) 03:03, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
^"Charles Dickens' Work to Help Establish Great Ormond Street Hospital, London." by Sir Howard Markel, The Lancet, 21 Aug, p 673.
^page 52, Sherwood, Philip. (2009) Heathrow: 2000 Years of History. Stroud: The History Press ISBN978-0-7509-5086-2
^ abcMendelsohn, Ezra (1996). Literary strategies: Jewish texts and contexts. Studies in Contemporary Jewry. Vol. XII. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 221. ISBN0-19-511203-2.
^Tillotson, Kathleen (ed) (1999). Oxford World's Classics: Oliver Twist. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. xxii. ISBN0-19-283339-1. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |nopp= ignored (|no-pp= suggested) (help)
Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made.--Ankit Maity Talk
Contribs 11:22, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Done It might also be ɑːr, but changed as requested. Thanks, Celestra (talk) 15:57, 7 February 2012
(UTC)
Not done, instalment is the UK spelling, and since the subject is British, that's the spelling that is used. Dru of Id (talk) 01:32, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
Done - thanks for the heads up. Richerman (talk) 17:49, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
