Talk:Uta monogatari

What is tanka prose?

This article contains no references to respectable sources on Japanese literature. When I first saw the term "tanka prose" (of course on the disambiguation page that should have its name changed) I assumed it was some obscure translation of the term Uta Monogatari (歌物語). But the page doesn't mention the correct Japanese term once, and inaccurately groups the Tosa Diary in too. All of the sources seem to be non-academic in nature, and the authors are apparently non-notable professional poets (not Japanese scholars), and different online sources brought up by Googling their names indicated a general lack of knowledge about Japanese language and literary history ([1] spells Ariwara no Narihira's name as Narihara, and makes a bizarre, unsourced claim that he and Ono no Komachi used the phrase one thousand times). Can we delete this page or rename it to Uta monogatari and include some small reference to this terminology and how inadequate it is? elvenscout742 (talk) 13:55, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm completely overhauling this article. The previous fancruft was completely wrong and poorly written. The sources cited were apparently all bogus, so I deleted them and replaced them with some nice Keene. If anyone wants to reinstate anything that I have removed, please discuss it here or on my Talk page. elvenscout742 (talk) 16:04, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

In case I forget the rule, I'm putting this here: on Wikipedia a lack of information is better than misleading or false information (Wikipedia:Editing policy) elvenscout742 (talk) 16:17, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Please do not unilaterally move this article

The sources cited in the older version are not reputable academic sources, and the information contained in this article before the move was either completely inaccurate (when it referenced ancient Japanese literature) or fancruft that violated Wikipedia policies on undue weight. If you want to make a new wiki to promote a "new genre of fiction", there is software online that allows you to do that. But Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia based on proper scholarship. The material described in the previous article is not based on anything that was written in pre-modern Japan. The authors cited are all clearly ignorant of Japanese language and literature, as their writings routinely make bizarre claims about what was "standard" in ancient Japanese literature, and they misspell the names of well-known poets, etc. I don't even mind leaving a minor reference to so-called "tanka prose" in this article, but it needs to be kept from overrunning the page with fancruft, and it needs to be worded tastefully and accurately. Wikipedia is not a place for original research, nor is it a place to post material that you found online somewhere but is not notable or worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia article. elvenscout742 (talk) 00:35, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Tanka prose is a contemporary English-language literary form and movement derived from classical Japanese prosimetra (prose plus poetry); your uta monogatari (poem tale) is one type only of the many types of classical Japanese prosimetra, e.g., kotobagaki (headnote or preface), nikki (memoir or diary), shu (poetry collection), kiko (travelogue) and so on. Contemporary examples of tanka prose are not modeled solely upon uta monogatari; most, in fact, are not but adopt some of the other models mentioned immediately above as well as introducing forms unknown to classical Japanese literature.

As for terminology, in lieu of tanka prose, one might have retained wabun (“waka writings”) but no one writes waka in English; poets write tanka in English and, you will admit, it is a short jump from “waka writings” to the analogous “tanka prose.”

Attempting to subsume all of these types of tanka prose, whether of classical Japanese origin or contemporary English derivation, under the banner of uta monogatari only muddies the issue. Your rewrite of “Tanka prose” as “Uta monogatari,” and your redirection of the original Tanka Prose page to your Uta monogatrari, is not so much a revision as a highjacking. I can see the need for a good article on Uta monogatari as well as on nikki, Elvenscout, but the categories tanka prose and uta monogatari are not, as you seem to presume they are, coterminous.

In your rewrite, you retain verbatim, under the sub-heading “Description,” a paragraph from the original “Tanka Prose” article; you have carefully removed the footnotes, however, and have therein committed plagiarism as the definiton of the form there provided is taken directly from the sourced articles, “The Elements of Tanka Prose” and “The Road Ahead for Tanka in English.” You have also carefully removed all other references to contemporary tanka prose writers, and contemporary tanka prose was the point of the original Wiki article. These edits, which are really attempts to obliterate, are consistent with the tone of your comments on this Talk page where you characterize the original article in pejorative terms throughout; it lacks “respectable sources,” those sources are “non-academic,” the cited authors are “non-notable professional poets,” your Googling (!) of said poet’s names “indicated a general lack of knowledge,” the sources are “bogus” and “fancruft.” You set yourself up as the final arbiter of reputable sources, of Japanese scholarship, of contemporary English poetry, and you do so not in the public arena, where you might be challenged, but behind the safe and sterile mask of anonymity.

My view of the proper resolution of this matter, Elvenscout, would be to see you write your scholarly article on Uta monogatari, if you so desire, and to see the Tanka prose article, which is really concerned more with a contemporary English derivation than the Japanese original, retained as is or, perhaps, with slight modification. Tanka prose and uta monogatari, as I mentioned previously, are not synonyms.

Tristan noir (talk) 01:21, 13 September 2012 (UTC)