Talk:Tolkien's Art: 'A Mythology for England'

Tolkien's Art: 'A Mythology for England' has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: September 11, 2022. (Reviewed version).

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Punctuation in article title

I was wondering about the single quotes in "A 'Mythology for England'" being placed around only part of the subtitle rather than the whole of it.

Unfortunately, I can't find anywhere that has the internal pages of the original edition of Chance's work (when she used the Nitzsche surname), so I can't check it myself. The second edition clearly uses no quotes of any kind around the subtitle, but the article should follow the first edition. It isn't consistent with the entry under Sources at the bottom of the page, and WorldCat matches Sources with quotes around the whole subtitle: "A Mythology for England".

Looking at the Manual of Style on titles, I found this: Quotation marks simply used as a form of title stylization on a cover are removed. They are retained within a title when reliable sourcing demonstrates they indicate an actual quotation, or sarcasm. It's not exactly this situation, since the cover title is only Tolkien's Art, but unless the book itself combines title and subtitle with the quotes around only part of the subtitle, then it should be changed here. In addition, since Wikipedia standard is to use double quotes rather than single when there are quotes in the title and/or subtitle, there should probably be some kind of change anyway. Thoughts? BlueMoonset (talk) 17:47, 14 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Yes, the marks are printed in the first edition, I have it here. The phrase is a quotation not just a subtitle. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:28, 14 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

But where are they in the subtitle, Chiswick Chap? The article currently has the two different placements of the opening quote mark. BlueMoonset (talk) 20:33, 14 June 2022

'A Mythology for England'

is how it's printed. I've adjusted the article to match. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:45, 14 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Chapters

I believe it's usual to put book titles in italics, and chapter titles in double quotes, so I've put those back. Chiswick Chap (talk) 21:06, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'll stick with that formatting for chapters. However, there are several other titles in double quotes within the text, making the paragraph as a whole hard to understand as a summary of five chapters. I noticed that the five chapters are separated by newlines in the wiki source, but the HTML rendering ignores them. I have therefore doubled the newlines, so each chapter heading starts a new paragraph.

This also makes it plain that there are in fact six chapters. -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 16:12, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I find this wholly unjustified. There are five named chapters; the final short fragment is just called 'Conclusion' actually, which astounded other scholars as it covered "The Silmarillion", i.e. the whole of Tolkien's legendarium, as a sort of coda (Chance's own word for it, as it happens) or appendix. I was, therefore, not failing to count to six, but describing accurately the (extraordinary) structure of the book: this I will restore now with a word of explanation in the text. The newlines in the source are purely an editorial choice for convenience while constructing the synopsis, to ensure each chapter is covered: they do not imply a desire for formatting - if you'd asked, I've have told you at once that there was no intention to insert <P>....</P> or <BR/> or any equivalent markup. The great majority of GA reviewers will at once (rightly) demand that the synopsis be defragmented from your very short and choppy paragraphs – two of them are single sentences!, and since you had already made changes which I had reverted, and I had already started this discussion here, your edits constitute frank edit-warring, which is of course unacceptable. I'll leave it for now, but given that the article was in fact already properly formatted and is in the Good Article Nomination queue, most editors would have left it up to the reviewer to comment on if they saw fit to do so. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:20, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the newlines. I hope the GA assessment goes well. -- Verbarson ^talk_edits 09:00, 20 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Tolkien's Art: 'A Mythology for England'/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 16:30, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:30, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks!

The image is appropriately tagged. Earwig finds no issues; sources are reliable.

Noted.

"Tolkien scholars including Tom Shippey and Verlyn Flieger, while noting some good points in the book, roundly criticised Chance's approach, seeking to fit his writings into an allegorical pattern which in their view did not exist, and disagreeing with points of detail." I think this should be "roundly criticised Chance's approach as seeking to fit his writings" (or some other rewording); as written it is the scholars who are the subject of "seeking".

Done.

"They note ... Others commented": inconsistent tense for the critical comments.

Fixed.

"noted the appropriateness": "note" is best reserved for statements of fact; I think this is enough of a matter of opinion that we should find a different verb.

Reworded.

"From the 1970s, Tolkien scholars including Paul H. Kocher, Jane Chance, and Tom Shippey began to mount a detailed defence of Tolkien." Not necessarily a problem for this article, but Literary hostility to J. R. R. Tolkien says the defence did not begin until the turn of the century.

Not quite so, that article indeed mentions Shippey's pioneering 20th century work; and "began" is right in the passage you quote. But things definitely gathered pace in the new millennium.

Multiple uses of "note" in the "Reception" section; I think at least a couple of these would be better as verbs of opinion.

Fixed.

'In his view, Chance rightly set out to find the "seeds" of Tolkien's "mythology for England" in the medieval: and it was "regrettable that it fails".' Suggest "regrettable that [her attempt] fails"; "it" has no referent.

Done.

'states that Chance's reading of Tolkien's activities "as roles", a sort of "complex psychological warfare in Tolkien's conscious and subconscious mind".' Something wrong with the syntax here.

Fixed, and glossed what the activities were.

A lot of quoting is justified in a reception section, but I think there's too much here. I copied the text to a Word document and did some highlighting, and I would guess around 40% of the text in the "First edition" section is quotations. I think that needs to be reduced.

Well, yes; when we're reporting how scholars and critics received a book, it's pretty reasonable to let them speak in their own words: and none of the quotations are long. But I've added some glosses and done some paraphrasing.

Spotchecks:

FN 3 cites "Jane Chance (formerly writing as Jane Chance Nitzsche) is an American scholar, from 1973 at Rice University, specializing in medieval English literature, gender studies, and Tolkien." Verified.

Noted.

FN 8 cites 'Leslie Stratyner, writing in Mythlore, notes that Chance "asserts that the enemy 'functions primarily as a symbolic perversion of Christian rather than Germanic values'". Stratyner objects that the One Ring, embodying the nature of Sauron, can be read in terms of the Anglo-Saxon practice of giving rings to loyal followers, "twisted to his dark purpose"; his loyal thanes are the Nazgûl, and they serve him not "because they love him, but because they are the slaves of the rings which Sauron has given them".' Verified.

Noted.

FN 2 cites "His fantasy writings were severely criticised by the literary establishment. From the 1970s, Tolkien scholars including Paul H. Kocher, Jane Chance, and Tom Shippey began to mount a detailed defence of Tolkien." The source doesn't mention Kocher or Chance as far as I can see.

Fixed.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:16, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, reviews do need a lot of quotes, but I think we were a bit over the line here. Looks good now. The other fixes are all fine; the rewrite of the "complex psychological warfare" sentence really clarified it. Passing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:57, 11 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]