Talk:Paradisus Judaeorum

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Paradisus Judaeorum was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
December 6, 2018	Articles for deletion	Renamed
March 19, 2020	Good article nominee	Not listed

Current status: Former good article nominee

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Discussions:

Heaven for the nobles, Hell for the peasants, and Paradise for the Jews → Heaven for the nobles, Purgatory for the townspeople, Hell for the peasants, and Paradise for the Jews, moved (1 October 2018, no discussion)
Heaven for the nobles, Purgatory for the townspeople, Hell for the peasants, and Paradise for the Jews → Paradisus Judeorum, no consensus (RM, 7 November 2018)
Heaven for the nobles, Purgatory for the townspeople, Hell for the peasants, and Paradise for the Jews → Paradisus Judeorum, moved (6 December 2018, following consensus at AfD)
- Move review, close endorsed, 22 December 2018 (discussion)

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Pars pro toto

This article started out on 25 September 2018, titled "Heaven for [...] nobles, hell for [...] peasants, paradise for [...] Jews". The title was a complete recapitulation of a certain 19th-century Polish saying, but for the absence of the saying's second member: "purgatory for townfolk".

The latter modern saying evolved, largely by condensation, from 5 Latin-language texts, of 1606, 1664, 1672, 1685, and 1708-09, which reflected a jaundiced view of, variously, "the Kingdom of Poland" (the first version), "Poland" (the second version), and "the illustrious Kingdom of Poland" (the last three versions).

The first, third, and fifth versions all feature the quartet of nobles, townfolk, peasants, and Jews. The second and fourth versions are missing the townfolk.

The only consistently present member of the four classes -- in all the 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century versions -- that has found some fully laudatory interpretations appears to involve "the Jews".

While the 17th- and 18th-century versions and the 19th-century one have sought to characterize, literally or figuratively, the entire Polish polity, this article has ended up with a title, "Paradisus Judaeorum", which suggests that its sole subject is Poland's Jewish population, which until World War II did not exceed 10% of Poland's overall population.

This is surely an instance of pars pro toto -- of using part of a thing to represent the entire thing.

Would it not be better to retitle the core of this article to something like "Regnum Polonorum est..." and to devote a separate article, titled "Paradisus Judaeorum", specifically to the historic vicissitudes of that ethnicity in Poland?

Nihil novi (talk) 21:46, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The first reference cited in the article (added by a banned user) refers to the text as the "Jewish paradise" proverb. Is it an unreliable source? -- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 22:50, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, SashiRolls, for bringing my attention to the misleading caption on the lead illustration.

I have corrected the typographical error "mie", in the citation's Polish text, to "nie" ("no").

The caption read: "1606 Latin pasquinade containing the phrase Paradisus Judaeorum. The text's occasion was a celebration of the December 1605 wedding of Sigismund III Vasa and Constance of Austria."

That caption's clause, "containing the phrase Paradisus Judaeorum", was a red herring, apparently meant to somehow justify the narrow titling of this article – which discusses texts that deal with all the classes and groups of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – as "Paradisus Judaeorum" ("paradise for Jews").

I have replaced that caption with a new one: "1606 Latin text that has been described as a pasquinade "planted" at celebration of the 11 December 1605 wedding of Poland's King Sigismund III Vasa to Constance of Austria."

It would appear that the original, "1606" version of the "pasquinade" – mentioned in the caption citation as having "[i]n the Czartoryskis' manuscript [been included under] a joint title [as] 'Pasquinades Planted at Royal Wedding Celebration'" – had actually been written, and delivered at the 1605 wedding reception, in 1605.

Best,

Nihil novi (talk) 02:54, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Nn. While I'm glad I helped you find a typo, what I'm referring to is the source in the first line of the lede, added by GizzyCatBella and titled "From Xenophobia to Golden Age: "Jewish Paradise” Proverb as a Linguistic Reclamation". The author speaks of the poem as being "forgotten" and suggests its lasting influence was the term mentioned in the title of the article (and of this entry).

Kijek (2017) noted that the original poem was “anti-Jewish… [and] claims that the good living conditions Jews enjoyed in Poland were something that should change.”

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, however, went further, summarizing the original text as “a pasquinade critical of everything in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—foreigners, immigrants, ‘heretics,’ peasants, burghers, and servants, and also Jews,” pointing out that the Jews were hardly the only group targeted by the rather xenophobic author of this satire (Grabowski (sic) 2016).

This is the source I'm asking you if you consider reliable. -- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 03:15, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You wrote above of "[t]he first reference cited in the article". The first reference, designated "1", appears in – and is identical in – the lead-illustration caption and at the end of the "History of versions" first paragraph, and does not include the texts you cite immediately above; nor do I see those texts elsewhere. Could you help me locate them?

Thanks.

Nihil novi (talk) 06:46, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a diff to help you find the title in red in the references cited section (the first source cited in the body of the text). -- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 08:37, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]