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Rambles in Germany and Italy

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I'm planning on nominating this article for FAC, so please evaluate accordingly. Also, please weigh in on Auntieruth55's suggestions regarding the "Risorgimento" section here. I would like several opinions on this matter. Thanks! Awadewit (talk) 02:24, 7 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]


Finetooth comments: This beautifully written article was a great pleasure to read and will sail through FAC, I am certain. My comments below, except the ones about shrinking or expanding the "Risorgimento" section, all deal with trivial matters that should cause you no sleepless nights.

Lead

  • "Rambles was not reprinted until after the rise of feminist literary criticism in the 1970s provoked a wider interest in Shelley's entire corpus." - Delete "after"? The meaning seems clear without it.

Risorgimento

  • " ...rather than as 'Italians' (it was not until the late nineteenth century that Tuscan Italian became the national language). " - Terminal period after "Italians" and capital "I" on "it"? (This reflects my preference that complete sentences, even those appearing in parentheses, be fitted out with terminal periods.)

Part II

  • "We read, to gather thought and knowledge; travelling is a book of the Creator’s own writing, and imparts sublime wisdom than the printed words of man." - Is the word more missing from this part of the quote; that is, "... imparts more sublime wisdom than... "?
  • "After leaving Kissingen, they group travels through the area around Weimar... " - Either "they travel" or "the group travels".
  • "They continue on to Berlin and Dresden... " - Delete "on"?

History of the travel narrative

  • "The Grand Tour was celebrated as educational travel when it involved exchanging scientific information with the intellectual elite, learning about other cultures, and preparing oneself to lead." - Perhaps, to avoid using "oneself", "preparing for leadership"?
  • "That is, they claimed to have experienced the true culture of an area and their reactions to it were specifically personal, as opposed to the generic guidebooks, in which the response is specifically impersonal." - Comma after "area"?

Rambles as a travel narrative

  • "she specifically attempted to differentiate her work from these by expressing a particular political point of view" - Perhaps end the sentence after "these" to avoid repetition of "a political point of view", which appears in the quote in the next sentence.

Travel narratives by women writers

  • "Rather than scandal-ridden young woman of her youth, which she wrote about in the Tour, she is now a demure, respectable, middle-aged woman." - Missing word? "Rather than the scandal-ridden young woman... "?

Italian politics

  • "arguing that they in particular "ought to sympathise in [the Italian’s] struggles... " - Plural possessive, "Italians' "?
  • "Her audience both wanted to support the revolutionaries, especially exiles living amongst them, such as Mazzini, but they were also fearful of the violence of the Carbonari and its nationalist ideology." - "Among" rather than "amongst"? Also, delete "both"?

Memory and healing

  • "Shelley writes about this process in Rambles, using the trope of a pilgrimage; she believes and traveling to Italy and revisiting the scenes of her youth will cure her of her depression... " - Should this be "she believes that traveling to Italy... "?

References

  • A few page ranges in the citations need en dashes rather than hyphens.
  • The dabfinder tool sees three links that go to disambiguation pages rather than their intended targets.

Simplifying or expanding the Risorgimento section

  • I found this section to be quite helpful to an understanding of subsequent sections, and I would have no comments to make about its size and scope except for your specific question and the link to Auntieruth55's suggestions. Later sentences like "He was young—not yet 30—and had participated in a failed Carbonari rebellion against Austria in 1830–31; as a result, he was in exile" become much more meaningful and interesting in light of the background material provided in "Risorgimento" than they would if merely linked to other articles. The background material also helps readers to understand the material in "Italian politics'" and Shelley's focus on a kind of reform, "political gradualism" or "peaceful mediation", that would appeal to her British readers. My feeling is that the article would be weakened by shortening the Risorgimento section. On the other hand, making it much longer might be a mistake of a different sort—wandering off on a tangent. If I were the author, I think I would ask Auntieruth55 for specific suggestions about possible expansion. What exactly should be added? Are we talking about a few words, a new sentence or two, or something more substantial? Finetooth (talk) 18:54, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I hope these comments prove helpful. Finetooth (talk) 18:06, 15 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your kind words above and your eagle eye. Awadewit (talk) 02:21, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: I recall helping a little bit with the map for this earlier. This seems more than ready for FAC to me, but here are some nitpicky suggestions for improvement.

  • Per WP:LEAD and WP:MOSQUOTE, the one word direct quotation of "poor" in the lead should havea reference (although this seems a bit silly)
  • In the 1840 section would it make sense to add how many total children they had to Although Percy Shelley and two of their [four] children died there, ...? I know this is also in the lead, but I think less detail in the lead is OK
  • Same section, it is a fair distance from Baden-Baden to Lake Como - should the article somehow indicate this, perhaps something like "After crossing Switzerland, the group spent two months at Lake Como in northern Italy, where Mary relaxed ...?
  • 1842–44 section: This is a bit awkward Drawn largely from her correspondence with her step-sister Claire Clairmont,[37] Mary Shelley’s last published work, which was dedicated to travel writer Samuel Rogers, was released on 1 August 1844.[38] I also wondered if "during her travels" should be added to it, so Drawn largely from her correspondence with her step-sister Claire Clairmont [during her travels],[37] ... but that makes it even more awkward - could the bit be added and the sentence split perhaps?
  • Should the very long quotation at the end of the first paragraph of the Description of text section be identified by author? Something like "According to Orr..." as a preface?
  • In the Travel narratives by women writers section: Would moving increasingly later in the sentence read better? After the mid-1790s (partly as a result of the French Revolution), Britain experienced an "antifeminist reaction" and increasingly women were [increasingly?] discouraged from writing on so-called "masculine" topics.[75]
  • Since people often read the captions before the rest of the article, would it help to add "her daughter" to Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark strongly shaped [her daughter] Shelley's Rambles.
  • Memory and healing section: Is this a typo? Should it read "lie" instead of "like"? ...The treasures of my youth like buried here."[103]
  • This quotation is in the article twice (Part III and Memory and healing sections). I think that is OK, just noting it: I was agitated again by emotions—by passions—and those the deepest a woman's heart can harbor—a dread to see her child even at that instant expire—which then occupied me.[55]
  • Since this was her last book, should her death be mentioned explicitly? Perhaps a sentence at the start of the third paragraph of Reception?
  • I thought the article did a good job on the Risorgimento (sp?) and would not change it (addressing the AuntieRuth comments)
  • This is not part of the review, but I find it odd that she did not have much sympathy for Germany, which was also a divided nation at the time. Since I use a German word for my username, I might not be neutral - also Germany had not yet had its Revolution of 1848 when she traveled there. I guess that Italy is a much more romantic place too...
  • On further consideration, I don't think there was much of a German resistance movement or Diaspora until after 1848 (when you have people as diverse as Karl Marx and Carl Schurz as refugees in other countries). The Prussians were exerting a lot of influence in other parts of Germany at this time, but they were not seen as "foreign" in the way that the French were in Italy. So she doesn't speak the language, doesn't have the past associations and history with Germany, and in her time in France she did not encounter lots of German politcal exiles / refugees (but all these are true for Italy / Italians). So I guess it makes more sense than I originally thought. Thanks for yet another enjoyable and enlightening read. Let me know when this is at FAC and I will gladly support, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 22:06, 18 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I originally found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 22:15, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Besides that second image (scary!), I liked the page. There are some image issues, but I don't really care too much about placement, sizes, etc. The history of travel narrative tends to get a little off topic, but that happens (you could just dump the information into the travel narrative page and summarize in 3 paragraphs or so). Besides all that, it reads as FA level. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:17, 19 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for taking time to review the article - I have the extended discussion of travel narratives because I thought readers would be unfamiliar with the genre, but if I need to cut it down, your idea is a good one. Awadewit (talk) 21:18, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Almost-instinct

Lead

  • "Issued in 1844, it is her last" - mixing tenses?
    • Mixing tenses is fine sometimes, but it has to be logical. To me, this is logical, since we have to say "it is her last", not "it was her last" (it still is her last publication - it never ceased to be). Awadewit (talk) 01:40, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "The sites that Rambles describes are similar to those of other travel books of the time" - doesn't seem to mesh quite, though can't identify any error
    • I just rewrote the whole sentence and eliminated that part: "Shelley differentiated her travel book from others by presenting her material from what she described as "a political point of view"." Awadewit (talk) 01:40, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • "tradition of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Lady Morgan" - there's a tiny ambiguity here (are we talking about 2 ppl or 3?) "tradition of Lady Morgan and Mary Wollstonecraft, her mother" would avoid this
  • "Shelley's aim was to arouse sympathy in England for the Italian revolutionaries, such as Gatteschi" - lose the "the"?
  • In that paragraph mixture of tenses: "challenged", "aim was ", "She rails", "She describes" - just checking that's ok?
  • "Shelley's political commentary on Italy was specifically singled out for praise, particularly since it was written by a woman. However, for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Shelley was known only" - feel the need for an extra word or two somewhere, eg "..was generally known.

Risorgimento

  • "Prior to the nineteenth century, Italy was divided" would prefer something like "From xxx until the 19th..." or "By the start of the 19th....": currently suggest that Italy had never previously been anything other than "duchies and city-states"
  • "Giuseppe Mazzini, a Carbonari who was exiled from Italy" - just checking this plural-looking word is correct for a single person?
  • "These nationalist revolutionaries, ironically with foreign support" - I can see the irony, but actually its pretty typical for other countries to interfere like this (eg French in US), so the word feels a bit naive to me

1840

  • Put the pre-1840 info into the pluperfect tense eg "Mary Shelley and her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley had lived in Italy from 1818 to 1823" maybe? [I do mean "pluperfect" don't I? I remembering from Latin lessons when I was nine]. Especially as you go into it later in paragraph "Mary Shelley had always wanted"
  • "since none of them spoke German, the group was forced to remain together" makes it sound like they actively wanted to get away from one another, when presumably you mean that they had no opportunity to etc etc?
  • "reminisced about how she and Percy had almost rented a villa with Lord Byron" - where? there?
  • "in Italy] I might live – as once I lived—hoping—loving—aspiring enjoying" inconsistency of dashes?

1842–44

  • "She also spent time sitting at Percy Bysshe Shelley’s grave in Rome" something about this bothers me, in the context, but can't work out why. I think I'm wanting to know if it was a series of regular visits, or one long one
  • "He was young—not yet 30—and had participated in a failed Carbonari rebellion against Austria in 1830–31; as a result, he was in exile" would prefer something like "He was young - not yet 30 - and in exile, following his participation in ...." to get rid of slight ambiguity ("He was young....as a result, he was in exile")
  • "Moskal points out that "the strength of [Shelley’s] devotion overturned her previous resolve not to publish again" - can you "point out" an opinion?
  • I know that you're writing in American English but "she wrote Moxon" really jars English eyes. Would "she wrote to Moxon" be possible in American English?

More to come! No need to reply here on any of these points almost-instinct 09:19, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have to reply. :) Awadewit (talk) 02:05, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Next batch:

Description of text Part 1

  • "Shelley becomes ill in Germany and again pauses at Baden-Baden to recover her health" - the "again" is confusing me
  • "After recovering her health and her spirits, the group proceeds..." - it sounds like the group recovered her health

History of the travel narrative

  • "Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Grand Tour became increasingly popular; travel to the Continent for Britain’s elite was not only educational but also nationalistic. All aristocratic gentlemen took similar trips and visited similar sites, often devoted to developing an appreciation of Britain from abroad" - I feel that the structure of these two sentences could be rejigged so that the point I think you're making about the "nationalistic" element is made more straightforwardly. Even just replacing the semi-colon with a fullstop and the fullstop with a colon would help my progress
  • "During the Napoleonic Wars, the Continent was closed to British travellers" - Entirely closed? Largely closed? So closed as to make any attempt pointless? A qualifier would stop me wondering
  • "and the Grand Tour came under increasing criticism, particularly from radicals such as Mary Shelley's father, William Godwin, who scorned its aristocratic connections" - I feel a better word than connections might be available: "aristocratic connections" are those I imagine a person, not a thing, having
  • "That is, they claimed to have experienced the true culture of an area and their reactions to it were specifically personal, as opposed to the generic guidebooks, in which the response is specifically impersonal" - It feels odd to be comparing people ("they" the writers) with books ("generic guidebooks")
  • Good catch - changed to That is, they claimed to have experienced the true culture of an area and their reactions to it were specifically personal, as opposed to the writers of generic guidebooks, whose response was specifically impersonal. Awadewit (talk) 21:16, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Rambles as a travel narrative

  • "Although Shelley even dedicated Rambles to Rogers, her preface acknowledged Lady Morgan" - I found this a little chewy
  • Changed to: Although Shelley dedicated Rambles to Rogers, her preface acknowledged the influence of Lady Morgan, whose travel work, Italy (1821), had been vocal in its criticism of Austria’s rule over Italy and had been placed on the papal list of prohibited books. 21:24, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
  • "In order to make her politics more palatable to her audience, however, Shelley often uses the analysis of literature and art to make her points" - would this be better without the "the"?
  • "Shelley's travel narrative...is a part of the Romantic emphasis on the individual" - is there a better way of phrasing this?

Travel narratives by women writers

  • "Mary Shelley violated the mid-nineteenth century taboo on women discussing politics" - is "on" the right word? "against"? "about"?
  • "Wollstonecraft is described as asking "men’s questions" when she is curious about her surroundings and both Lady Morgan’s and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s travel narratives received hostile reviews because they discussed political issues. Both Shelley and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft" - Two "both"s in quick succession
  • "Also like her mother...Shelley emphasised her role as a mother in the text" seems a bit clumsy.

Italian politics

  • "In writing about the Italian situation, Shelley was also advocating" - you've been using the present tense ("Shelley’s stated aim in Rambles is to raise awareness" "On a general level, she articulates" etc) up to now in this paragraph (mostly!)

National character

  • "It was, in fact, how political events affected the people that Shelley was most interested in describing in Rambles." - I had to read this sentence three times before I got the right end of the stick
  • "she did so again" - again, are you going to be consistent with your use of the present tense?
  • "Shelley's trips to Italy were a way for her to revisit memories of her deceased husband, Percy Shelley, and the children they had buried there. Moskal argues that Shelley needed to "expiate" her survivor guilt.[102] Shelley writes about this process in Rambles" - which process? I'm a little unsure what exactly you're referring back to?

Memory and healing

  • "using the trope of a pilgrimage" - this means nothing to me, I'm afraid. I'm, like, totally "huh?"

Some of these points are so petty that I embarassed to be making them! almost-instinct 23:05, 20 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You shouldn't be embarrassed at all - this was an excellent review! Awadewit (talk) 21:42, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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