Talk:Zhuangzi (book)

Citations

I worked a bit on a good article nomination with White Whirlwind some time ago. Not sure I have the time to be a reviewer for this one, but I would think the first thing a reviewer would want to talk about is the citations. I think it's a good, compressed style, but I've never seen citations done like this before. In addition, the citations make a reference to a 1998 Mair text which doesn't appear in the works cited list, as well as a "authorless" work in the works cited, which seems a bit strange. Are they the same work or what? TI. Gracchus (talk) 19:30, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi there. To answer your questions: the citations are in a pretty standard format for the field. That "Authorless" one is supposed to be a solid line, which is used when you have a bunch of works in a row all by the same author, in this case it saves writing "Victor Mair" over and over. Very standard stuff.  White Whirlwind  咨  03:16, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification! There's still a lot I have to learn, I'm afraid. I'm increasingly tempted to review this article - the only problem is that it is so beautiful already I don't feel qualified to offer any critique. I may try to get help or training from the Good Article gurus to try and address this. My schedule is a bit unpredictable, but I'll see what I can do. It's obvious you've put in a lot of work and I'd like to help if I can. TI. Gracchus (talk) 06:47, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Zhuangzi (book)/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Zanhe (talk · contribs) 00:54, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

My first impression is that that article is quite close to meeting GA criteria, but I'll study the article and sources and give a more detailed review in the next few days. -Zanhe (talk) 00:58, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Lead

• Per Chinese MoS, hanzi should be removed from the lead as it is already in infoboxes. On the other hand, the WG romanization Chuang Tzu is quite often seen in English literature and should be included in the lead.

• "Virtually every major Chinese writer and poet in history ... were familiar with and deeply influenced by the Zhuangzi." This is a bit over the top and should be toned down or at least attributed to Mair. (also in the "Influence" section)

Done.  White Whirlwind  咨  03:14, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Content

• The sentence - "In this anecdote, Zhuangzi humorously and absurdly uses "Wonton", a name for both primordial chaos and, by physical analogy, wonton soup, to demonstrate what he believed were the disastrous consequences of going against things' innate natures." - is uncited and looks dubious. "Wonton" seems to be the idiosyncratic translation used by Mair. The original Chinese word 渾沌 hundun is different from wonton the food, and it's doubtful that wonton soup had been invented in the Zhou dynasty.

Although Mair does tend toward idiosyncrasy, he generally does so with good reasons: in this case, the Chinese word hundun 渾沌 probably is the same as the food and was extant in the late Warring States period, contrary to what you wrote. The connections between hundun Chaos and "wonton" food have been noted since at least Wolfram Eberhard. Mair (1994:386) has a note on the subject, which is also treated in Anderson's The Food of China, which Mair cites.  White Whirlwind  咨  03:25, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

References

• Some sources cited are available on Google books, including Mair 1994, the main source for the article. It would be helpful to add the URLs in to the citation templates, to make it easier for people who'd like to check out the sources and read more.

I've never put Google Books links onto WP sources before, so I wasn't entirely sure what the formatting practice was. Take a look at the two I found and if there's anything wrong with them I'd appreciate anyone fixing them for me.  White Whirlwind  咨  03:32, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Breadth

• The article covers most main points quite well. One major omission I can see is the analysis of the philosophy of the outer and miscellaneous chapters, especially the Yangist chapters (cf. the Zhuangzi entry on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). According to David Nivison in the Cambridge History of Ancient China (p. 786), Yang Zhu or one of his disciples may have been the unnamed "master" quoted in Zhuangzi, and Yangism may have evolved into Zhuangzi's Daoism, so this seems particularly important. The Primitivist and Syncretist chapters also deserve at least a brief summary.

• The article mentions commentaries by Guo Xiang and Cheng Xuanying. I think other important classical commentaries are also worth a mention, perhaps in a list format similar to the "notable translations" list. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy lists a few, and ctext.org has more.

Those are good points, and I additionally was planning to add another area that is not currently in the article, namely the Zhuangzi's huge influence on Zen Buddhism, particularly in Japan. However, I was hoping to leave these for if/when the article gets ready for FA nomination. I'd rather not have to add ALL this material at the moment, if possible.  White Whirlwind  咨  03:41, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Overall this is a very well written article and I enjoyed reading and reviewing it. I'll put it on hold while waiting for your improvement. -Zanhe (talk) 09:49, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Query

What is the status of this review? I see a couple of minor edits from the nominator on March 8, but nothing in the four weeks since then. If the improvements requested aren't going to be done, then the nomination should probably be closed as unsuccessful, given the issues raised. BlueMoonset (talk) 17:49, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I posted a message on the nominator's talk page. Despite the issues raised, it's a high quality article and I really hope it will pass. -Zanhe (talk) 23:19, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

The only issue that seems to be untouched is the breadth note, which he chose to hold off on. Aside from that the issues appear to be fixed now (i handled any that he said he did but didn't), so the article passes. Wizardman 13:33, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Are there any Reliably-sourced non-Zhuangzi versions of the Butterfly dream?

I am currently asking "Are there any Reliably-sourced non-Zhuangzi versions of the Butterfly dream?" at our Reference Desk here. Reliable Sources supplied in the answers, if any, are liable to also be useful for improving this article (and perhaps some of its related articles). Tlhslobus (talk) 07:36, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

See my reply over at the Reference Desk.  White Whirlwind  咨  03:19, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Translation analysis

Hi, thanks for writing this. As a reader seeing this GA-rated article, I had been expecting a little more background and analysis on English translations from the "Modern influence" and "Notable translations" sections to meet GA breadth, i.e., what makes these translations noteworthy? How were they reviewed and which, if any, are the gold standard, particularly in English (since this is the English Wikipedia)? Was Legge the first English translation? Etc. (not watching, please {{ping}}) czar 15:51, 8 November 2020 (UTC)