Talk:Sonnet 11/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Xover (talk · contribs) 20:12, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Overall status

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Beginning review, more to come as I have time… --Xover (talk) 20:12, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Writing good articles on individual sonnets is difficult, and this was a valiant effort. It covers the most significant aspects (broad) mostly without going into too much incidental detail (focused). It is mostly well cited. However, the prose is atrocious in places, to the point of being incomprehensible, and parts of it appear to be insufficiently understood by its editors.

I'm putting this on hold for now, to allow the nominator(s) to fix the issues identified below. Please feel free to ping me if you have any questions. --Xover (talk) 20:49, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Xover thank you for the review and it may take a little while to get to reviewing it, if that is okay with you. Crookemily (talk) 16:41, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

@Crookemily: No problem. So long as I see actual progress on the article I'm happy to leave the nomination open past the customary 7 days. --Xover (talk) 16:59, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

@Crookemily: I'm still not seeing any work being done on the article. Are you still planning to work on it or should I just close this review? Keep in mind that you can just renominate it when you feel it is ready and the only downside is that you will have to wait for another reviewer to pick it up (which can sometimes take some time). There's no penalty or quarantine period or similar. --Xover (talk) 20:15, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Detailed points

Lede

• (6) The article lacks illustrations. Could perhaps a cropped scan of this sonnet from the 1609 quarto be added?
• (1b) The lede does not adequately summarise the rest of the article.

Synopsis

• (1a) "Sonnet 11 is part of the first block of 17 sonnets …" Which sonnets are these? What distinguishes this block from the others in the Fair Youth sequence, and who has grouped them so?
• (1a) "… describes Shakespeare's call for …" The identification of Shakespeare with the poet of the sonnets is not usually considered to be as literal as this sentence suggests. It's not Shakespeare the son of a glover from Stratford that so urges, it is the persona of the poet embodied in the sonnet that does so. How closely aligned the two entities are is a separate matter, but there is a definitive distinction and one usually made when writing about the sonnets.
• (1a) "… to copulate with a woman in marriage and conceive …" Dude, seriously… Who talks like that? Try something straightforward like "marry and have children".
• (1a) "… and conceive a boy …" I'll grant you that male primogeniture was probably what was the assumption when the sonnet was written, but in 2015 this just reads weirdly sexist. The sonnet doesn't specifically mention the gender of the wished-for child, so this synopsis shouldn't either. If it is an issue the cited sources make, then split it into a separate sentence that explains whatever that issue is.
• (1a) "… to attested to …" Attest, I presume?
• (1a) "… in further manipulating the Youth …" Further? He's manipulated him before? Why hasn't the article mentioned this? Also, I'd recommend spelling out "Fair Youth" every time it's used.
• (1a) "… not complying to 'print more'." The article hasn't explained "print more" yet, so this is confusing to a reader that is not intimately familiar with the sonnet already.

Structure/Style

• The solidus connotes that you are uncertain whether you mean A or B (at best it means "or", which is equally unfortunate here). Either pick one of "Structure" and "Style" to be the focus of this section, or explicitly connect them with "and". I would suggest "Structure" as the most appropriate heading.
• Mad props for lucidly and accurately describing the relationship between Shakspearean, English, and Surreyan sonnets; and their relationship to Petrarchan sonnets. Judging by recent experience, this is evidently confusing to some.
• (1a) "However, as it came to be the most popular …" This sentence, though, confused me. The explanation in the Sonnet article is fairly decent: Shakespeare is so famous a sonneteer in this style, that it is best known as Shakespeare's style rather than its other names.
• (1a) "An English sonnet is made up of …" At this point it would be most appropriate to refer to it as a "Shakespearean sonnet", or, given the context, just a "sonnet". Calling it an "English sonnet" here is just confusing.
• (1a) "… on iambic pentameter …" The article has not introduced or explained iambic pentameter yet, nor is the term wikilinked. I'd suggest doing both before diving into these details.
• (1a) I would also like to see a breakdown of a line from the sonnet in pentameter to illustrate, similar to what has been done for other sonnet articles (Sonnet 18 being the standard example).
• (1a,2b) "… some argue there are up to six." Who? Just Atkins?
• (1a) "Carl D. Atkin's" Doesn't need to be wikilinked, and I believe the posessive is misplaced there.
• (2b) The quote from Atkins is not cited (all direct quotes must be cited separately).
• Neither is the last sentence (iambic pentameter used throughout).

Context and Analysis

• Headings on Wikipedia don't use initial-caps. "Context and analysis".
• (1a) "The most common theory is a Mr. W.H." This makes no sense without the context. At a minimum it needs to mention where "Mr. W.H." comes from (the dedication), and its relationship with the personas exhibited in the sonnets (that the identity of Mr. W.H. is a separate issue from whether or not the dedicatee of the 1609 quarto is also one of the personas in the sonnets).
• (1a) "And still even …" Redundant.
• (1a) "… upon which persons should claim the title of …" This sounds pretty archaic. Are you perhaps echoing Muir here?
• (1a) This section relies too heavily (almost entirely) on Muir. For instance, more recent scholarship holds up Southampton and Pembroke as the main contenders, and the latter isn't even mentioned here. A significant revamp to incorporate other sources and rebalance away from Muir would be the order of the day here.
• (1a) The Muir quote is good and apropos, but a bit extensive. It would be better to explain these points in your own words.
• (1a) "… the author was in love with the …" There is a world of difference between "in love with" and "loved". The latter leaves open the possibility of platonic love, where the former inevitably implies romantic and sexual love. If there are works in the field of Gay and Lesbian studies, or Queer theory, that discuss this sonnet then the distinction might fruitfully be explored in a separate section. But absent that, I would suggest using the more general word, which also better follows the cited source.
• (1a) "… it would be 'folly' for the Youth …" Wikipedia's house style is to use double quote marks. However, I don't really see a need to scare quote "folly" here.
• (1a) "Shakespeare famed for …" Missing "is"?

Exegesis

• (1a) "… of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets." This is redundant at this point in the article.
• (1a) "Shakespeare's main objective in this sonnet is to manipulate the Youth into preserving his beauty." It is equally valid to say that the objective is getting the Fair Youth to procreate, and appealing to his vanity is his method for achieving that objective. Which do the sources pick, and do they agree or disagree on this?
• (1a) "… pushed the message …" That's a bit informal.
• (1a) "…son." Again with the gender assumption.

Quatrain 1

• I don't think repeating the lines of the sonnet for each quatrain adds much value here.
• This section relies too heavily on direct quotes from its sources, and incorporates them insufficiently, leading to choppy and hard to comprehend prose. There are also issues such as excessive adverbs ("This verse truly sets the stage …") that a good copy-edit would fix.

Quatrain 2

• (1a) The first paragraph of this section is a single sentence. This needs to be split up. And the years/generation bit seems to have been added in some haste; it very nearly manages to say what the cited sources actually say.
• (1a) "… begins with 'Herein,' alluding to the concept of marriage and procreation …" This entire sentence is unparseable. Having just read Duncan-Jones I think I understand what it is you're trying to say here, but it's come out so garbled as to be incomprensible. Oh, and quote marks should be double quotes.
• (1a) "… not following this 'plan' of procreation …" From where is "plan" quoted? Why is it in scare quotes?
• (1a) "With the phrase 'minded so' in line 7 …" This sentence is an incredibly complicated way to say "If everyone though so".
• (1a) Overall this section is so confused that I can barely make out what it's trying to say. A thorough copy-edit is needed here.

Quatrain 3

• (1a) "… takes on a slightly different path …" Is a path something one takes on? I believe one typically takes a path, but takes on a tone, hue, tint, tinge, and so forth.
• (1a) "… in addressing to the Youth." Stray "to"? Also, use "Fair Youth" in full.
• (1a) "…and little to those who already had nothing …" Uhm, no, not really. It says those who are not physically attractive and possessed of many (subjective) virtues (i.e. they're not keepers, not made for store) should just sod off and die childless (barrenly perish), but the second part of Matt. 25:29 is missing (incidentally, isn't this really Mark 4:25?). Does Hammond really make this direct comparison with Matt. 25:29, or does he just use it to elucidate the "whom she best endowed, she gave the more" part?
• (1a) "… (this example can be found in the Synopsis)." Which the reader has just recently read so I'm sure they'll remember.
• (1a) "As definitions of certain words have changed from their meanings in the sixteenth-century an explanation of their original content is needed to understand quatrain 3 in its entirety." Then explain them; don't explain that you need to explain them.
• (1a) "One of these words is 'store' which Hammond points out that within the context of the line means, 'The breeding of animals'."
  • That's rather long-winded. A copy-edit for brevity is called for.
  • Use double quotes.
  • Are you sure that's what Hammond is saying? Duncan-Jones glosses over it with just "for increase", while Burrow specifies that "store" refers to keeping animals for breeding (i.e. rather than slaughter a bull, you might keep him, "store" him, because he could be used for studding later).
  • Who is Hammond? Where does he "point out" this? Why does he need to point it out, why can't he just say it?
  • What does "within the context of the line" mean?
• (1a) "This supports the theme of the sonnet in its wish of the Youth to have a child." The sonnet is an inanimate object without wishes or wants.
• (1a) "Another expansion on this quatrain further explores …" That's a lot of words to say very little.
• (1a) "… nature giving more to those whom she's already gifted …" This again? Didn't we already cover that two sentences ago?
• (1a) "… and how John Kerrigan sees this as …" You've lost me. Somewhere in this long and twisty sentence you took a turn that threw me off the path. Also, who is John Kerrigan and in what context did he "see" this?
• (1a) "This quatrain is able to bring out the sort of beliefs in the idea of beauty and power in the time of Shakespeare." I don't know what that means.
• Overall this section leaves me with the impression that the person that wrote it has not actually understood what their sources are telling them, and is constructing wordy run-on sentences with lots of quotes and incidental details to cover up this fact. Hopefully that's just due to hurry and insufficient copy-editing.

Couplet

• (2b) "The couplet of a sonnet often serves one of three purposes …" I'm not going to trawl through all 170+ pages of Muir to figure out where in there he supports this claim. Page number please!
• (1a) "The closing couplet …" This would be clearer if you indicate that you're now talking about this sonnet and not couplets in general.
• (1a) "… must spawn a child …" Lacking a page number I can't check whether you're copying Muir directly or merely adopting his phrasing, but either way this is a bit flowery for an encyclopedia article.
• Quotation marks are used inconsistently in this section.
• (1a) "… and/or …" Pick one. Incidentally, I don't believe Duncan-Jones supports the meaning "possess" here.
• (1a) "… one scholar notes …" Who? Where?
• (1a) "… in Golding's translation it is argued that here Shakespeare uses …" I very much doubt Golding commented on Shakespeare.

Further reading

• (1b) Do all of these works really add something unique to the reader's understanding of the sonnet and which can't be incorporated directly into this article?