Wikipedia:Featured article review/Augustan literature/archive1

Augustan literature

Users notified: Geogre, Bishonen, Portal:England

This article fails 1c and 2c of Wikipedia:Featured article criteria

• Criteria 1(c) factually accurate: claims are verifiable against reliable sources, accurately represent the relevant body of published knowledge, and are supported with specific evidence and external citations; this requires a "References" section in which sources are listed, complemented by inline citations where appropriate;

Although there is a list of References at the bottom of the article, they are not specific to statements claimed. Some of the statements seem to be personal opinion or the opinion of a particular group, but not necessarily representative of various opinions given their due weight as in NPOV. The article can be seen as a scholarly essay representing a particular view or evaluation of the subject of the article.

• Criteria 2c: :consistent citations—where required by Criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations.

This article was promoted in 2005 when the standards were more lenient. —Mattisse (Talk) 21:18, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

What statements do you believe require inline citation? Christopher Parham (talk) 23:17, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

• This article has no citations whatsoever. How about:

• ' "Augustan" derives from George I wishing to be seen as Augustus Caesar'
• "Alexander Pope, who had been imitating Horace, wrote an Epistle to Augustus that was to George II and seemingly endorsed the notion of his age being like that of Augustus, when poetry became more mannered, political and satirical than in the era of Julius Caesar."
• Outright quotations are not cited; examples,

• 'Thomas Babington Macaulay would say of Anne that "when in good humour, [she] was meekly stupid and, when in bad humour, was sulkily stupid." '
• '"we are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this day really are, but as they may be conceived then to have been, when the best of men followed the employment" '
• ' "all ages and characters, from Walpole, the steerer of the realm, to Miss Pulteney in the nursery." '

• Seemingly POV comments are not cited: "There were other satirists who worked in a less virulent way, who took a bemused pose and only made lighthearted fun."
• Essay type statements are not cited: "The parodic satire takes apart the cases and plans of policy without necessarily contrasting a normative or positive set of values. Therefore, it was an ideal method of attack for ironists and conservatives—those who would not be able to enunciate a set of values to change toward but could condemn present changes as ill-considered."
• And another essay sample: "These developments can be seen as extensions of Protestantism, as Max Weber argued, for they represent a gradual increase in the implications of Martin Luther's doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, or they can be seen as a growth of the power and assertiveness of the bourgeoisie and an echo of the displacement of the worker from the home in growing industrialization, as Marxists such as E.P. Thompson have argued. It can be argued that the development of the subjective individual against the social individual was a natural reaction to trade over other methods of economic production."
• Many words are in quotes "updating", "learned" for no apparent reason. It would be nice to know why.
• Seemingly OR statements are not cited: "To some degree, Pope was adapting Jonathan Swift's habit, in A Tale of a Tub, of pretending that metaphors were literal truths, and he was inventing a mythos to go with the everyday."
• Even if statements are purported facts they should be sourced: "Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel (1957) still dominates attempts at writing a history of the novel. Watt's view is that the critical feature of the 18th-century novel is the creation of psychological realism. This feature, he argued, would continue on and influence the novel as it has been known in the 20th century. Michael McKeon brought a Marxist approach to the history of the novel in his 1986 The Origins of the English Novel. McKeon viewed the novel as emerging as a constant battleground between two developments of two sets of world view that corresponded to Whig/Tory, Dissenter/Establishment, and Capitalist/Persistent Feudalist." - Is this the editor of the article's views or whose?
• Another example: 'A particular play of unknown authorship entitled A Vision of the Golden Rump was cited when Parliament passed the Licensing Act of 1737. (The "rump" in question is Parliament, on the one hand, and buttocks on the other.)'

These are just examples. As I said, nothing in the article is cited. The references do not seem to include any current scholarship or reviews of the period. Most of the sources seem primary. Many of the historical ones are dated. And the references are not fully cited. Example

• Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class

—Mattisse (Talk) 00:26, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Delete. No infobox. Also various incorrect commas, and missing dashes.

But congratulations to User:Mattisse on managing to restrain himself for almost 24 hours after the FAR of Augustan drama was closed and this one was opened. Perhaps Wikipedia:Unreviewed featured articles can give a clue as to which articles may be next on his "hit list": if he is concentrating solely on User:Geogre's contributions, there is still Jonathan Wild, Ormulum and Peterborough Chronicle; if it is User:Bishonen, there is Colley Cibber and Restoration comedy. It would save time to have an omnibus FAR and damn them all.

In answer to the prickly question at Talk:Augustan literature, plenty of authors (let alone readers) of articles such as this one fo not give two figs for the style-sheet form-filling approach. They care more about the prose in the article than "nofootnotes". It would be more of a "downfall" to pander to the current preoccupation with footnotes then murder the article in seeking to save that brown piece of tinsel which is the FA star. -- Disinfoboxman (talk) 11:44, 12 November 2008 (UTC)