Humanities desk
< July 22	<< Jun \| July \| Aug >>	July 24 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

July 23

Sources on a multiple murder in Switzerland in May 1991

This is for a list article so it's not that important but my complete inability to find more than one source on this incident is confusing me. I'm trying to improve the list of massacres in Switzerland article and there's one incident that I can't find anything on other than one tangential mention in an article about a different shooting. The source is this on the Lugano District shooting, but at the end it mentions this: "In May, a 42-year-old businessman shot and killed all five members of his family before shooting himself in an Alpine chalet." I cannot find any other mentions of this.

The murder of 5 people in Switzerland where the only coverage I can find is more than a year later in an English publication on a different shooting? This seems like it would be in the headlines for a while even in America, given Switzerland's low rates of gun violence it seems shocking that I can find nothing. Did this even happen? If there was any coverage it was in German and French but I tried searching and other than this I've got nothing. Again, list article in a country with very little gun violence so it's not that pressing, but I'm quite curious. The one listed right after is attested in other sources PARAKANYAA (talk) 04:33, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a contemporary news report on the incident (in French): [1] --Viennese Waltz 10:18, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much! Exactly what I was looking for, I really appreciate it :) PARAKANYAA (talk) 05:19, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Roots of Nordicism

Why exactly did Gobineau et al. – or rather their predecessors drawn on – originally associate Nordic physical traits such as blondness and blue eyes with superiority, considering particularly that, in historical reality, Nordic peoples had in fact been dominated by southerners (i.e., Romans), and the great ancient European civilizations had been Greece and Rome (and not, e.g., Scandinavia or Germany)? Hildeoc (talk) 12:43, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Was he blond himself? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:33, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Gobineau's writings were quickly praised by white supremacist, pro-slavery Americans like Josiah C. Nott and Henry Hotze, who translated his book into English. They omitted around 1,000 pages of the original book, including those parts that negatively described Americans as a racially mixed population. It's always fun to see racists justifying their views using the opinions of other racists who would have looked down on them as being racially inferior. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 18:04, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Baseball Bugs: Does that matter in this context? Hildeoc (talk) 19:05, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It could be. If someone makes claims about superiority based on outward appearance it is likely that they base it on characteristics they share. Obviously this not universal as can easily be seen by looking at some of the hardly nordic looking major figures of the Nazi Party. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 20:06, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Probably part of it was that non-southern-Europeans wanted to distinguish themselves from southern Europeans (who were considered to be "swarthy", and perhaps on a slippery slope leading to non-whiteness), and Nordics were supposedly maximally distinct from southern Europeans. AnonMoos (talk) 19:37, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@AnonMoos: Okay, but then why would they actually see the need to perform such an intellectual perversion – i.e., elevate the Nordics to superior culture-bearers despite the ancient Greeks and Romans having been the true origins and multipliers of European culture and civilization for centuries? Hildeoc (talk) 20:59, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to rationally figure out the "why" of racism is a fool's errand. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:07, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

They might have seen the (largely self-) claimed cultural superiority of the Romans in particular (who or whose intellectual heirs wrote most of the history books) as being exaggerated (and there is current scholastic argument that the Romans' supposed superiority was based on their looting and/or suppressing and/or talking down the cultures of their neighbors such as the Greeks, Celts and Dacians), and they likely placed high value on the (supposed) simple natural nobility of honourable northern peoples as opposed to the degenerate corruption that (arguably) emerged in the overcrowded cities of the south. Most people unconsciously wear spectacles tinted one colour or another. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.198.140.169 (talk) 00:16, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Romans actually held Greek culture in high esteem (Greek itself was an official language of large parts of the Empire) and absorbed, not annihilated, most of the cultures they encountered. It wasn't their fault if Celts almost didn't have an alphabet. --195.62.160.60 (talk) 06:52, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"simple natural nobility of honourable northern peoples"? Hildeoc (talk) 17:09, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There were a number of alphabets (seen at right) which derived from Etruscan independently of Latin (which also derived its alphabet from Etruscan). Some of these languages are of disputed or unknown history, so how close they may have been to Celtic is debatable, but some like Lepontic language are clearly Celtic. It is possible or even likely that Futhark and other Germanic runic alphabets derived from these earlier Celtic alphabets, thus the Celts may have had an alphabet in wide use before the Germanic peoples. Gaulish was also apparently written in the Greek alphabet where there was contact with Greek speakers, such as near Massalia. Then there's the case of Ogham, in Ireland. Nearly all pre-Latin alphabets in Western Europe were replaced by some variation of the Latin alphabet, generally as part of the Christianization process. --Jayron 32 14:24, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article section Nordicism#Background goes into this. There are some variations, but the basic idea is "Nordicists claimed that Nordics had formed upper tiers of ancient civilisations, even in the Mediterranean civilisations of antiquity, which had declined once this dominant race had been assimilated." --Amble (talk) 18:03, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Amble: But the ulterior question then still remains: What would initially have led them into believing / claiming so? Hildeoc (talk) 20:58, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it answers the initial question: they didn't believe that Nordic peoples had been dominated by southerners, they believed that the people doing the dominating were in some sense "really" Nordic people. As for why they believed this, are you more interested in the evidence they called on to try to prove the point, or the reasons why they might have been predisposed to this kind of belief? --Amble (talk) 21:31, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Amble: Mainly the latter. Hildeoc (talk) 00:44, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article Scientific_racism gives some of the earlier history before Gobineau. In general, people seem to easily believe that people similar to themselves have the best customs, the best appearance, and the best attributes. --Amble (talk) 15:56, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Any other ideas?--Hildeoc (talk) 23:49, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

First Multi-POV Novel?

What was the first English-language novel to be published that was narrated not in an omniscient POV, nor a single third-person POV, but switching between multiple different close third-person points of view that each relate only what the current POV character is aware of? -- Avocado (talk) 14:14, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Many of the early English novels were epistolary, and if there was more than one letter-writer, necessarily multi-POV. Just looking at my shelves, there are "Pamela", "Humphrey Clinker", "Evelina", etc. Of course, the letters are in first-person... AnonMoos (talk) 19:26, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I'm specifically interested in multiple third-person POVs, not first-person, fwiw. -- Avocado (talk) 11:58, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Does The Canterbury Tales count? Staecker (talk) 12:58, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, first published in 1818, seems to fit the bill. --Viennese Waltz 13:20, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't Frankenstein in first person? -- Avocado (talk) 16:06, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It is, similar to Dracula, it is multiple first person POVs, switching between Victor and the Creature and Captain Walton. --Jayron 32 16:52, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, definitely looking for third-person examples, not first-person. -- Avocado (talk) 18:54, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Canterbury Tales is more of a collection of short stories along with a framing narrative. It's also not really a novel; English language novels are generally taken to date from the early 18th century or so, Robinson Crusoe being the canonical "first" such novel, from 1719, though there are other contenders, see List of claimed first novels in English, some dating to several centuries earlier. That lists Le Morte d'Arthur as a contender for the first novel, and there are multiple third person POVs, but it's really not a novel in form; it's a collection of extant stories (Matter of Britain), which Mallory acted more as a collector and reframer than strictly as the author of. Mallory's work does shift between multiple third person POVs, (indeed, for much of the middle part of the book, Arthur is barely around at all, as we follow individual Knights on their various quests and stories) so perhaps if you consider that a novel, you've got a contender there. --Jayron 32 14:05, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Aside from their being essentially collections of shorter tales, my vague recollection from reading Le Morte D'Arthur and the Canterbury Tales is that they're written in a very distant point of view that can't really be distinguished between third and omniscient because it doesn't relay any character's thoughts/feelings, only what they did and said (a bit like a film without a narrator). Hopping on Gutenberg to skim them seems to confirm that.

What I'm really trying to figure out is the earliest emergence of what eventually developed into the modern style of switching between multiple close third-person POVs from one chapter/scene to another. -- Avocado (talk) 16:14, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Akin to the style George R. R. Martin uses in A Song of Ice and Fire then? --Jayron 32 16:50, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Er, I haven't read that. But the style I'm thinking of is basically the same for the vast majority of modern novels written in 3rd person with multiple POVs. Omniscient is pretty rare nowadays afaict. -- Avocado (talk) 18:49, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Update: just downloaded a copy from the library (isn't modern technology grand?) Yes, that'll do as an example of the style I'm thinking of! -- Avocado (talk) 18:58, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Woman in White (novel) (1859) might be a candidate. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 17:04, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that also multiple first-person rather than third-person POVs? -- Avocado (talk) 20:17, 25 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

D’oh! So sorry Avocado, was checking off your boxes and missed that one. You’re right. OK best I have then is Ulysses (1922), which switches from the POV of Stephen to Bloom, both in the third person. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 21:51, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hm... so maybe we can narrow it down a bit. Oliver Twist (1837) was the earliest book I could think of that I'd read that's anything like a modern multiple-third, but it's still a relatively distant third person (not showing a lot of the thoughts and feelings of the character whose POV we're following), with IIRC some occasional slight tipping over into omniscient. But it's sort of on its way there.

Of course that doesn't rule out an example being published earlier. On the other hand, I remember reading somewhere that Persuasion (1817) is the first book to really use the sort of close third-person POV that we're now accustomed to. And even that is fully realized only in scattered short passages, although the whole thing is in a closer POV than is common for its time -- certainly closer than Oliver Twist. So maybe close third takes multiple decades to catch on? Of course, Persuasion is single-POV.

How close a third person is Ulysses? (I never did manage to read it.) -- Avocado (talk) 02:32, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think Ulysses qualifies but you will need to test against your own definition. A random example from each narrator:

Stephen: Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.

Bloom: In Westland row he halted before the window of the Belfast and Oriental Tea Company and read the legends of leadpapered packets: choice blend, finest quality, family tea. Rather warm. Tea. Must get some from Tom Kernan. Couldn’t ask him at a funeral, though. While his eyes still read blandly he took off his hat quietly inhaling his hairoil and sent his right hand with slow grace over his brow and hair. Very warm morning. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 14:46, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's definitely a close third POV. Thank you! Being Ulysses, of course, it's very different in style from pretty much anything else, but it definitely establishes that that type of close third is in use by then.

Can we push the date back even further with another novel? -- Avocado (talk) 15:03, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Found Point of View in Fiction: The Development of a Critical Concept (interestingly, written in 1955) which looks like it’s discussing the decline of the omniscient narrator, so may contain useful examples. My institution doesn’t have full access; if you’re in the same boat you may request it at WP:RX if you intend to use it to improve a wiki article or from your own library if it’s for personal interest. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 19:04, 27 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh, nice find!

I've got access to it, and it points out a few authors who mention this emerging closer third person POV. Henry James (in a 1907 preface) and Edith Wharton (as well as Joyce) are the earliest examples mentioned after the ancient Greeks. I snagged a few of their books from Gutenberg and skimmed a few samples.

Washington Square, from 1880, isn't all that far off from Persuasion in its POV -- if anything, a bit more distant. The Age of Innocence (1920) really does start to feel recognizable as a modern third-person POV, and while it's still not filtered through the POV character's thoughts and feelings in the same way something like GoT is, it does give the sense of seeing the story through this character's eyes. Both are single-POV, though, so basically an evolutionary rather than revolutionary development from what Austen does in Persuasion. In fact, some of those stream-of-consciousness passages in Persuasion are far more modern.

In some ways it's a big surprise to me how recent a development this use of 3rd person POV is; but it does help explain what it is about 19thC literature that makes it feel older despite being leaps and bounds more modern than 18thC literature.

Still haven't found another multi-POV example, in the meantime. I'm thinking Absalom, Absalom! might be an interesting book to look at, but can't remember if it's in first or third and can't get hold of a copy just now. -- Avocado (talk) 01:49, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Glad it helped! It’s been interesting topic. Absalom Absalom is public domain in my country so took a quick skim (NB it’s published 1936). Quentin’s part is third person. Not quite clear who the other narrators are supposed to be but also found a chapter all set in italics that was in first person and then near the end, a long flashback in italics and third person that might be from Henry’s POV, might be omniscient.

Quentin: It was a summer of wistaria. The twilight was full of it and of the smell of his father’s cigar as they sat on the front gallery after supper until it would be time for Quentin to start, while in the deep shaggy lawn below the veranda the fireflies blew and drifted in soft random—the odor, the scent, which five months later Mr Compson’s letter would carry up from Mississippi and over the long iron New England snow and into Quentin’s sitting-room at Harvard.

Possibly Henry: The sentry gestures him into the tent. He stoops through the entrance, the canvas falls behind him as someone, the only occupant of the tent, rises from a camp chair behind the table on which the candle sits, his shadow swooping high and huge up the canvas wall. He (Henry) comes to salute facing a gray sleeve with colonel’s braid on it, one bearded cheek, a jutting nose, a shaggy droop of iron-riddle hair—a face which Henry does not recognize, not because he has not seen it in four years and does not expect to see it here and now, but rather because he is not looking at it. He just salutes the braided cuff and stands so until the other says,—Henry. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 15:14, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Charles Dickens's Chair

One of the books I am reading at the moment is Clarke, Tom (1939). My Lloyd George Diary. London: Methuen & Co Ltd.. It is Tom Clarke's memoir of his time editing The Daily News and the News Chronicle. On page 19 we read "Tom Curtis, the general manager... told me the actual chair that Dickens had used as editor of the Daily News in 1846 was lying in the storerooms... I suggested it should be carefully overhauled by an expert and that a simple brass plate should be put on it so that posterity might identify this historic bit of journalistic furniture. These things were eventually done and Dickens's chair had a place of honour in my room". Do we know what happened to the chair? Are there any pictures of it? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 22:54, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Here's[2] one donated to the Charles Dickens Museum by retiring managing director, Mr G. B. Crossfield, can't find a date for Crossfield. Here's[3] a claim of one from the collection of an A.H. Whittaker. fiveby(zero) 23:37, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think George Bertram Crosfield (only one "s") was there to the very end of the News Chronicle. The Crosfields were Quaker soap manufacturers and intermarried with the Cadburys. DuncanHill (talk) 08:46, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Unrelated but fun fact-I was told by a volunteer at the St Bride Library in London, which holds materials on the history of printing, that he found in the archives a record of a BBC radio play from the 1940s or 1950s about the News Chronicle's history, I think maybe marking its centenary, which had come from the newspaper's collection. He called the BBC archives. "No, you can't have that. It wasn't recorded. It was a live production." (I'm paraphrasing but the first sentence is more or less right.) Turns out the newspaper had arranged for a copy to be made and it wasn't kept by the BBC archives. It's "quite stagey", we were told. Their events are well worth visiting if you're interested in the history of printing. Blythwood (talk) 01:37, 26 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Memorial donation

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Please note I'm only voicing my opinion, not using the reference desk as a crystal ball, nor am I asking for any type of advice. But since the tragedy of the Titan submersible implosion, I feel OceanGate should definitely make a $1,250,000 donation to the Titanic Historical Society. Why all that money? It's simple. I calculated the cost of the tickets at $250,000 five times. (There were five passengers aboard Titan (submersible) at the time of the tragedy.) $1,250,000 turned out to be the total. What's your opinion about that amount of money? (The THS still believes the wreckage is sacred ground that should be left in peace.)2603:7000:8641:810E:80FB:579C:558A:6873 (talk) 23:51, 23 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]