Talk:Moby-Dick/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

More thoughts and suggestions on further revisions

Friends -- let us once again thank MackyBeth for energetic intelligence and faithful work which are a shining example for all to follow. I especially appreciate that proposed changes were announced here on the Talk Page, though perhaps a few days wait is not ample warning for major changes, especially in August, when many of us are hot and sleepy or on vacation. I see several issues for discussion.

Some of these go back to the archived discussions of December 2013, where the WP:NOVSTY guidelines were mentioned. The structure of an article on a novel should generally be:

• Lead section
• Plot
• Characters
• Major themes
• Style
• Background
• Publication history
• Reception
• Adaptations
• Footnotes and references

Of course, each article has different needs, but it's not up to us to get too far from the pattern.

Thoughts:

• The length of the article. My basic worry is that at c. 76,000kb the article is getting too long for readers to see clearly. The guideline WP:TOOBIG says articles which are:

> 100 kB Almost certainly should be divided

> 60 kB Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material)

> 50 kB May need to be divided (likelihood goes up with size)

This suggests that the article already "probably should be divided," though there is certainly wiggle room, but we should discuss before we make major additions.

Taking the top ten novels in the Greatest Books site, this table shows that our Moby Dick article is the longest of the top ten; that the lead is also the longest; and that most of the others do not have quotes from famous authors or critics, though many do (the numbers are rounded):

Rank	ARTICLE	CLASS	LENGTH	WORDS IN LEAD
5	Moby Dick	B	76,000	361 words (4 quotes) cut to 276, one quote
1	Ulysses (novel)	C	50,000	282 (one quote)
2	In Search of Lost Time	C	74,000	324 (no quote)
3	Don Quixote	B	50,000	229 (one quote)
4	The Great Gatsby	GOOD	67,000	321 (no quote, but rank)
6	Lolita	C	73,000	225 (no quotes)
7	The Sound and the Fury	C	30,000	122 (no quotes)
8	Madame Bovary	C	23,000	196(1 quote)
9	One Hundred Years of Solitude	B	49,000	123 (no quotes)
10	Anna Karenina	C	45,000	175 (4 quotes)

Of course, we can find ten other random or specifically chosen articles showing other features, so let's not get caught up in specific comparisons, only a general idea of parameters in a bunch of representative articles.

This is only to show that the MD article would not be an outlier if we pared it down.

• The section on characters. It strikes me that this is actually a desirable section. The suggestion at Content removal is that content should not be removed simply to reduce article size, here to make room for a plot summary. Still, of the ten articles in the table only about half have a section on characters, so it's not a big deal. You may be right that the links to the individual articles for each character are enough, but it also may be that the themes of the book could be clarified and enriched by a section on the most important characters. My suggestion is that we consider restoring a short section on Characters. There should be room for it if the Plot Summary is reduced -- dare I say "tried out"?
• Plot summary: The essay WP:PLOTSUMNOT suggests that the summary "should not cover every scene and every moment of a story" and that "While longer descriptions may appear to provide more data to the reader, a more concise summary may in fact be more informative as it highlights the most important elements." In any case, the plot summary should not get longer.

This guideline also warns

"Do not attempt to recreate the emotional impact of the work through the plot summary. Wikipedia is not a substitute for the original."

"The three basic elements of a story are plot, character and theme. Anything that is not necessary for a reader's understanding of these three elements, or is not widely recognized as an integral or iconic part of the work's notability, should not be included."

Just by eyeballing, I would guess that we could reduce the length by a third to a half and increase the usefulness.

• The lead. The length has crept up (most additions are fine taken one by one, but they do not all belong in the lead) and the focus gotten fuzzy (the themes would be more effective if organized paragraph by paragraph). I explained my edits one by one in the edit summaries.

The Encyclopedia Britannica article "Moby Dick" is a model of concision.

Again, much appreciation for considering these thoughts! ch (talk) 04:02, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

• • Thanks ch for your thoughtful comments, and for your tightening of the article. I was starting to feel a bit lonely here. I tightened the lead some more and took out the discussion of Hawthorne's influence, because it suggests a knowledge about the course of composition that we do not have: consensus among 21st-century scholars is difficult to pin down, but the section "composition" has a quotation from the 2007 Longman Edition in which the editors say that nothing is known about this.

1. I deleted some subheadings for sections that are too small to warrant a heading of their own. The result is that you can see more clearly that the Table of Content is in agreement with Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Novels.
2. As for the list of characters, I did not remove it to make room for the plot summary, but because the list was excessively long and the major characters have subpages of their own. The subpage List of Moby-Dick characters was created in March, and on 12 August the list of characters as a section on the main page was removed. From that date the page view statistics show an increase in views of the characters subpage. So it may be wise indeed to tighten the character list and then put it back on the main page.
3. I wrote the Plot summary after having first carefully read the Wikipedia plot summary guidelines you are quoting from, so I am familiar with them. These guidelines state that for long or complex works the plot may be somewhat longer. Moby-Dick is both long and complex, and a special difficulty is that it has no straight "cause-and-effect" plot, which makes it less obvious to see what can be left out. For instance, the meeting with the nine ships: the Pequod does not meet ship number seven because she first met number three: no cause-and-effect here. But these meetings serve to give the book a kind of structure, and therefore I decided to include all nine meetings in the plot summary rather than just three or four by way of example. A plot summary should not just indicate what the book is about, but supply a genuine summary. One other book difficult to summarize according to a conservative interpretation of the guidelines is the Ulysses on the above list. Look how elaborate the description of the chapters in that article is. These two books are exceptional cases, and it is difficult to see how a plot summary within the boundaries of the guidelines can still be adequate. For these difficult works it will be more important to reach consensu through Talk pages rather than appeal to what guidelines say. Let me be clear that I am not against shortening the plot summary per se, but these aspects deserve consideration first.
4. The length of the article as a whole is a concern indeed, especially since important sections as Style and Themes are hardly developed at all. Sections that I added on Publication and Composition are way too expansive. The section on Reception may be curbed as well. But hey, concise encyclopedic writing is a skill that takes Time, Strength, and Patience (but not Cash) to develop.
5. As for my typos, I should indeed be more careful. The solution will be for me to shape material in a sandbox and then read it over before I add it to the page.
6. I have looked at the guidelines for article size, Wikipedia:Article_size#Size_guideline and there they distinguish between the size of readable prose and the wiki markup size. So if the above stated length in bytes count for the markup size and not for just the language on the page, then we may still have some leeway. But even if that is the case, it is reasonable to shorten some sections. I think Publication, Background are candidates. The thing is that the size of a book reasonably only bears on the size of the plot, but there is no reason why other sections should be bigger.MackyBeth (talk) 15:58, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Hope that I was of help, MackyBeth -- and sorry that the TalkPage was feeling lonely. Here are some thoughts on your comments on my comments:

• I'm not sure I understand the reason for taking Hawthorne out of the lead. At the very least it's of basic importance that the book is dedicated to him. The section on Composition which you refer to, says that HM's essay on Hawthorne's Mosses is

so deeply related to Melville's imaginative and intellectual world while writing Moby-Dick," Bezanson finds, "as to be everybody's prime piece of contextual reading."

Besides, there are so many letters from HM to NH which profess a debt that I don't think there's any doubt of Hawthorne's influence while he was writing, nor that "over the course of composition, the work became more metaphysical and questioning." What is the "21st century scholarship" that would doubt that it was "probably under the influence of Nathaniel Hawthorne"? I'd be happy to rephrase.

• Deleting the subheadings was a very good move, one which does indeed make the TOC easier to map to the article's contents.
• You are right that a plot summary for MD is a unique challenge, and you have set sail in the right direction. But still it's a "draught, or a draught of a draught," so if we don't have the cash, at least we have the time and the patience! If it's OK, I'll pare things down just a little more to make room for other additions. Another possibility would be to rack our brains for ways to make the structure of the book more apparent, if, indeed, there is such a structure. The plot summary for Ulysses is complicated but clearly structured. But HM's botches and doublings are tougher, since much of the "plot" is metaphysical and might make more sense in your sections on theme. I agree that you are right that length is not the main consideration, but we need to honor the guidelines when they say that "a more concise summary may in fact be more informative as it highlights the most important elements."

Cheers once again! ch (talk) 05:50, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Hawthorne and the two Moby-Dicks theory

Hello ch! Your sensible edits and suggestions are helpful indeed, and you are right that Hawthorne deserves to be mentioned in the lede because the book was dedicated to him. (This makes me think that, since all of Melville's book have dedications, they should be mentioned in all the leads to insure as uniform a policy as we can muster.) Your sentence on Hawthorne stated that "over the course of composition, the book became more metaphysical and questioning, probably under the influence of Hawthorne." This contradicts what is in the article itself, especially the paragraph of Composition that I quote here for convenience:

"The book would be finished a year later than announced, giving room for scholars to develop a theory about the work's course of completion which holds that Melville's original conception was a straight narrative of a whaling voyage, only changed into the book it became after he met Hawthorne. The theory has been harpooned in two ways by Bezanson: he disagrees with both the underlying assumption about Melville's intellectual development before 1850 and the way scholars have been evaluating the evidence. "The implication here," Bezanson argues, "is that Melville was not ready for the kind of book Moby-Dick became, that he despaired of picking up where he had left off with Mardi, that the critics, or financial need, or self-doubt, or a combination of these for six months had him tied down. But the profile that emerges from reading the documents, beginning with the almost rudely bold letter he wrote to John Murray on 25 March 1848, a virtual declaration of literary independence, takes quite another shape." Melville's letters of this period show him denouncing his last two straight narratives, Redburn and White-Jacket, as two books written just for the money, and he firmly stood by Mardi as the kind of book he believed in. His language is already "richly steeped in seventeenth century mannerisms," which are characteristic of the style of Moby-Dick."

Not (yet) quoted in the article is what John Bryant and Haskell Springer write in the introduction to their 2007 Longman Critical Edition of Moby-Dick: "No one knows how Melville came upon the idea of writing Moby-Dick, whether he first conceived it as just another personal narrative, or as an ambitious fiction, like Mardi" (viii). Whether Melville found a plot "or simply determined that he would discover his plot in the process of writing, is not known" (ix). In 1988 the Northwestern-Newberry edition of Moby-Dick appeared, with an essay by Harrison Hayford detailing the development of "the two Moby-Dicks"-theory, which holds that Melville's ambition changed after he met Hawthorne. In his review of the book in Melville Society Extracts (74, September 1988), Warner Berthoff is sceptical and says that "some positive discovery of new archival data" is needed to carry us further. Here is a link to that page of his thorough review (the whole review is worth reading, especially for Berthoff's discussion of questionable textual emendations): Warner Berthoff on the composition of Moby-Dick.

In SUMMARY of the above: in 1954 Stewart started the two Moby-Dicks theory of composition, which was carried further in the following decades by, among others, important scholars as Leon Howard and Harrison Hayford. Though the total of scholars engaging in this enterprise is only six, these men were so influential that the theory has become sort of accepted. However, in 1977 Robert Milder published "A Review and a Prospect" on the theory in ESQ, which exposed the theory's weaknesses and discussed counterevidence. In 1986 Bezanson's essay in A Companion to Melville Studies argues against the theory. Since the 1988 Moby-Dick no one has contributed further on the theory, and in 2007 Bryant and Springer state explicitly that nothing is known about how Moby-Dick was written. Current scholarly consensus, which is what Wikipedia should reflect, seems to me to be this: the theory is unconvincing, because 1)there is not enough evidence to work with, and 2) the existing evidence, such as statements in Melville's letters, is ambiguous.

Back to HAWTHORNE: the dedication says: "In token of my admiration for his genius." It does not say something like "For Hawthorne, without whom this book could not have been written" or anything like that, but instead expresses admiration for Hawthorne himself, independent of whatever influence he may have had. So a sentence in the lead of the dedication to Hawthorne should not imply any influence on the composition of Moby-Dick.MackyBeth (talk) 08:55, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Source for Moby-Dick#Publication_history online

Google Books offers a generous amount of pages for preview, including much of the Editorial Appendix: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. I have just linked this web address twice on the Moby-Dick page, first at the first citation of the appendix, which occurs at the beginning of the section "Publication history" (currently numbered note 53), and second at the appearance of the edition in "Sources," Melville (1988). The basis for virtually all of the information in the section "Publication history" of the Wikipedia article is section VI of the "Note on the Text," which according to what the appendix states is attributed in "Sources" to G. Thomas Tanselle. Much of Tanselle's contribution is immediately accessible by clicking the Google Books link above and then scroll through to pages 659-688. Maybe somebody who has some minutes or so to spare will be so kind as to check if the Wikipedia language (section "Publication history") is removed far away from Tanselle's formulations so as not to violate policy. Tanselle's contribution is one of the most interesting parts of the editorial matter, your time will be well spent. MackyBeth (talk) 18:49, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale and The Whale; or, Moby-Dick

At Moby-Dick#Last-minute_change_of_title the article says that the British edition has a title page with the title The Whale; or, Moby-Dick, and it makes sense that sooner or later a reader would perceive this as a mistake and change the order of the words, which edit Holothurion has now made. However, the British version was published as The Whale, because the new title arrived too late for the publisher to change this. So he made a gesture and added Moby-Dick to a title page. It seems likely that in the future others will stumble upon this too and make the same edit to correct the perceived "mistake." Then it would probably be wise to delete this admittedly minor fact from the article altogether. Fortunately, the page in the editorial appendix where this is detailed is among the pages Google Books allows us to read: See page 672 for the title The Whale; or, Moby-Dick.

Cheers, MackyBeth (talk) 07:58, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, the real mistake was completely on my part, as I edited the text based on the title page shown at the article's top, only to realize almost immediately (but after saving the changes) that it belongs to the first American edition, not to the English one (my bad for not double-checking, which I always do). I corroborated the actual fact precisely on the version to which you kindly provide a link to (albeit on a different source) and was in the process of reverting said edit when I noticed that it was already been corrected (thanks for that!), a long with the notification pertaining this talk.

Regarding the matter of deleting or not the fact from the text, I suggest to keep it on it, as, although minor, it complements the information about the book's publication history and the differences between the American and English editions, adding to the picture as a whole. — Holothurion (talk) 08:48, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Your edit is of the kind that could be included in the Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith policy as a terrifically clear example of an edit made with every intention to improve the article. As for your suggestion about keeping it, I have no intention yet to remove it, but as you can see above, we have been discussing that the article is now quite long already, and the most literary sections (Theme and Style) have not even been sufficiently developed. Eventually some sections will have to be shortened to keep the size in line with the conciseness characteristic of encyclopdiac writing.MackyBeth (talk) 09:41, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree with MackyBeth in welcoming Holothurion's attention to the article, and also that this section on the publication history is running a little long. We might consolidate the subsection on the change in title but keep the basic fact that there was such a change. I warned future editors by adding a comment which is invisible to readers but visible when editing by putting it between "<!--" and "-->". (If you look at the previous sentence in editing mode you can see that I had to mark it with "nowiki" for the darn thing to show since it made itself invisible!) ch (talk) 18:23, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

That's a cool device! Recently I looked at some FA articles to see how concise they are, and to learn from that. I just copied the complete section "Publication history" onto my sandbox and saw it was 15,500 bytes. Obviously this is too long. The Manual of Style for Novels requires 7 sections that should be included in any article on a work of fiction (Plot, Theme, Style, Background, Publication history, Reception, Adaptation). As a rule of thumb, I would propose that a section should never exceed 10,000 bytes. The first step is to curb this section and its subsections in my sandbox first, and then transfer the shortened sections one by one onto the main page. The good news is: there are some lengthy quotations that can be shortened easily. That will not only save us some bytes but also make the section look tighter right away.MackyBeth (talk) 19:14, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

The Rachel

The names of the characters are given extensive discussion in this article, as Melville clearly chose them for their associations. The name of the ship, Rachel, is also an allusion, and the image of Rachel crying for her children is taken from Jeremiah 31, along with the prophet's message of comfort. Shouldn't this allusion be included in the discussion as well?MackyBeth (talk) 17:33, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Nomination for the "Did you know" section on the Main Page

The page has recently evolved so much that it is time to let readers know that Moby-Dick is alive, at least here on Wikipedia.. MackyBeth (talk) 17:33, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

A review of the article as it currently stands, and a few suggestions

It may be of some use to editors to mention what editing I think the article as it now stands needs most:

• Lead. Since the lead is supposed to prepare readers for the body of the article, the lead will develop along with the article itself.
• Plot summary. Needs serious shortening, even if editors should agree that it is defensibly one of the longest plot summaries guidelines allow. The advantage of the current summary is that it is complete in the sense that whatever editors find essential enough to keep is already there. The only thing is to reach consensus of what may be missed. I am all for retaining the meetings with the ships, all nine of them. But we could do with fewer scenes of lowering of whaleboats and Ahab pacing the deck.
  • List of characters. Currently removed to subpage. Should it come back and in what shape. A useful suggestion may be to have only a list of the Pequod crew who appear in the whole narrative, and leave the landsmen, well, leave them ashore.
• Themes/Style. These are probably the most important sections from a literary point of view, but clearly underdeveloped.
• Autobiographical elements. Should this be a separate section, or merge with Background?
• Background. A. Sources. Too many quotes set off from the main text, which gives the impression of disorderliness and even carelessness.
• Background. B. Composition. At the beginning four lengty quotations appear. The first two on Shakespeare should be shortened and be integrated in the main text. The point of them, which is that Melville discovered Shakespeare in 1849, can even be stated without any direct quotation. (However beautiful these quotes are, I have to remind myself time and again that Wikipedia is not an anthology.) I am not sure about the other two, which are the earliest and very important statements about the book's composition. Since they have been and will be the object of scholarly analysis, it is of more importance to have these two in their original wording.
• Publication history. Shortened this weekend to a reasonable size. In the process editors realized that one or two additional sentences are still needed, a short description of the nature of the expurgated religious passages, and an indication of the specific audience that English three-deckers were aiming at. (This fashion never carried over to the US.) This indication can be found in Tanselle (1988) and would do a lot for readers' understanding of why the book was so heavily censored. (Without Melville's knowledge we must assume, for he refused to accept Bentley's offer, which was to publish Pierre on the condition that it would be excised if necessary.)
• Reception. A. Contemporary. Should focus on Moby-Dick alone and not include comparisons with the reception of earlier works, as the articles for those works themselves will inform readers of their respective reception histories. Poorly developed section, but that is easy to repair for anybody, since a large part of the editorial matter in the Nortwestern-Newberry edition is included in the Google Books preview. There Hershel Parker details the reception, and though he should not be the only source, this is a source that can improve the section a lot.
• Reception. B. Later. Seems to be a series of independent sentences, as if at various times various editors stumbled across some information that they simply added. Wonderful, Hawthorne's quotation, but was it a public statement and if not, does it belong in a reception history? (If I recall it correctly, he wrote this to a publisher friend.) The quotation from D.H. Lawrence goes with an unsourced assessment of the importance of his book. F.O. Matthiessen's estimation of American literature looks slightly misrepresented to me: his American Renaissance is not a study of what he finds the "most prominent figures," but other writers simply did not fit into his scheme. He went beyond these five writers to supply the chapter on Poe for Literary History of the United States (1948), and published two books on Henry James (and family). For improvement of this section editors may again turn to Parker in the 1988 edition.MackyBeth (talk) 18:32, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree once more with MackyBeth's well-informed and detailed suggestions, but but have a few sub-suggestions -- would it be clearer if I put them into the text above, where they would be an indented comment, or would people prefer a new list? ch (talk) 17:25, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

I guess putting them into the above text would nicely put together what belongs together, just make sure your indentions are clear so that we don't have to search too hard for your comments.MackyBeth (talk) 18:59, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

The Lede, first paragraph

The entrance for any article is the lead, and therefore the lead deserves special attention. Even if the lead is not fully developed, it is important that it does not contain elements that indicate sloppy editing. The opening paragraph has been edited by Bede735 in a series of edits made to the leads of a string of articles, and perhaps this is the reason that the result, at least for Moby-Dick, is an opening paragraph that flows not as fluently as it should. Please take the time to look at the context of the edits you make, because as it is now, information on the publishing date in the third sentence appears in the first as well. Attaching information about the opening sentence to the last sentence of the paragraph makes the sentence quite long, containing two times the same conjunctive "and." Also, the word "opening" appears twice in that last sentence. Not a good impression for a first paragraph.

Talking about the opening paragraph, over the last year there have been so many changes to the quotations in the lead that I think it is wise to discuss any more changes here before making edits. I made the lead so quotation-heavy that it started to look like an imitation of the "Extracts" in Moby-Dick itself, but lately ch edited out 3 of the 4 quotations. Fortunately we seem to agree that the D.H. Lawrence quotation should remain. What I am now propsing is a slight enlargement, because taken out of context of Lawrence's essay the only descriptive phrase in the quotation is "book of the sea" and that seems to me a bit meagre a description. Here is the quotation in its context as it appears on page 168:

"So ends one of the strongest and most wonderful books in the world, closing up its mystery and its tortured symbolism. It is an epic of the sea such as no man has equalled; and it is a book of esoteric symbolism of profound significance, and of considerable tiresomeness. [Paragraph break] But it is a great book, a very great book, the greatest book of the sea ever written. It moves awe in the soul."

My proposal is that we enlarge the quotation into something along the line of this: D.H. Lawrence found it "one of the strongest and most wonderful books in the world," and decided/concluded that it was/labeled it or whatever verb "the greatest book of the sea ever written."MackyBeth (talk) 17:35, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi all. I just revised the first paragraph of the lead according to what I just stated here. It may be good to remind editors that the article is currently rated B, which I still think is rather generous, and the next level is "Good article" status. That can only happen if no unsourced material is allowed to stand, which is why I edited out the sentence about the opening of the book. The lead is supposed to prepare the reader for everything that follows and therefore may include material for which sources are cited in the article itself. The statement about the opening sentence is no doubt true, but no source is ever given in the article itself. Plus that I honestly feel that such trivia should have no place in the lead. The idea is that the lead will engage readers to keep reading, and I believe this purpose is better served by including the story behind the difference in the title(s), so that readers may think: Oh, so this is why it's called Moby-Dick; or, The Whale!MackyBeth (talk) 19:42, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Tightening Publication history

I just copied the complete section "Publication history" onto my sandbox and saw it was 15,500 bytes. Obviously this is too long. The Manual of Style for Novels requires 7 sections that should be included in any article on a work of fiction (Plot, Theme, Style, Background, Publication history, Reception, Adaptation). As a rule of thumb, I would propose that a section should never exceed 10,000 bytes. Here are the results:

• Main heading-part tightened: 1,800 bytes shorter.MackyBeth (talk) 19:37, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
• Additional tightening by ch saves another 425 bytes.
• Tightening of "Last-minute change of title" saves 644 bytes.MackyBeth (talk) 19:58, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
• And tightening "American vs. Englis" saves almost 2,000 bytes.

I guess ch will look at the last two sections to see what may be removed. (The report on the total number of pages in both editions must remain, because it justifies the Infobox statement at the top of the page.) Shortening as it now stands amounts to approximately 5,000 bytes. Which means the section is now around 10,000 bytes. Not bad for such a complicated history. And the long version is still in my sandbox, so if anybody thinks some piece of information should be put back, that can be done. Oh, and the note with the Google Books link to the Editorial Apparatus where this section is based on, is still number 53.MackyBeth (talk) 20:35, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Hello ch! You are right that it is better to paraphrase our sources as much as possible, and do direct quotations only when necessary, because the statement is very famous, hard to paraphrase, carries exceptional weight in the exposition, etcetera. You also added one explanatory sentence to the short list of expurgations at "American vs. English edition", number 1 of the list, which are expurgations of religious words and passages perceived as blasphemy. While I agree with you that it is necessary to supply a short description of the precise nature of these passages, I don't think your sentence does the job: "Attributing human failures to God was grounds for excision or revision, as was comparing human shortcomings to divine ones." The only source cited in that area is Tanselle (1988), 681-682. These specific pages are included in the Google Books preview linked at note 53 There, Tanselle says that "References to God were altered" (even omitted) and that "Biblical figures could not be alluded to flippantly or used as the objects of unfavorable comparisons, and to associate them with sexual activity was unthinkable." If your sentence was intended to paraphrase these words, I don't think it carries the same meaning.MackyBeth (talk) 16:50, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your careful attention to these details, since we should be preparing the article for another run at "Good" status. We want to cross every "i" and dot very "t", even if HM didn't! We rely on each other to pick up mistakes. But in this case fn #75 refers to Tanselle p. 784 in addition to p. 681. If this page is not on Google: "When unworthy human traits are attributed to God" or "when there is a suggestion that God's power may be limited..." Which doesn't mean that my language can't still be improved, of course.ch (talk) 20:00, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

That page is not on Google, so I have to look at the paper version of the NN edition which I have at home. From what you are quoting I would say that the paraphrase could be a bit more general to include all the religious reasons for expurgation. Oh, and we shall indeed move into the direction of "Good" status, and also not forget that there is a chance that this page will feature on the main page on 18 October.MackyBeth (talk) 20:18, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Good. Though "sacrilegious" is already quite general, and is Tanselle's word (p. 784). The following sentences, though, are needed to give our readers an idea of what Bentley's reader cut. ch (talk) 20:25, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Have looked it up. Tanselle's discussion on page 784 has to do with the reasons for expurgation of certain individual cases, which is why I pointed to that page in the footnote. Therefore it would seem more reliable to use ror paraphrase only his general description of the religious excisions, which is on page 681.MackyBeth (talk) 16:25, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

The tightening of the Publication history and the subsequent flipping through the Editorial Appendix made me look again at Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Novels#Publication_history to check what should be said about other printings than the first. Only if something interesting could be related, should the later printings be included. The bad sales of Moby-Dick are so legendary that I thought it would be appropiate to include an account of this. So after the tightening by more than 5000 bytes, here are 1,600 new bytes. But hey, the section is still a lot shorter than it was, and more comprehensive at the same time. Or almost the same time.MackyBeth (talk) 22:18, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Lawrence Buell and revising Composition

Today went to the library to assemble material for the section "Style," and lo! Lawrence Buell's new book on The Great American Novel was added to the shelves. So I read what he says on Moby-Dick, and guess what? He finds the evidence for a turn in the composition of Moby-Dick "on the whole convincing" (his book, page 364), so the Composition section needs to be revised. There appears to be no consensus, because some scholar don't find the theory convincing at all (Robert Milder, Walter Bezanson, John Bryant), while others accept it. But that section needed to be tightened anyway, so why not do it now.MackyBeth (talk) 17:44, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

The section Composition is now a comprehensive account on the composition of the book. The section has become slightly shorter while the viewpoints of more scholars are now included. So I would now like to dive into matters of Style, Structure, and eventually Theme. Hopefully someone else will have some time to look at the Composition section to see if anything is unclear or badly written or not adequately referenced.MackyBeth (talk) 17:33, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Censorship and other differences

It is correct to say that censorhip was not the only difference. But censorship was the major difference, and a subheading should I think indicate that, so that readers will have an idea of the main difference even without reading that section. If we use subheadings they better be as informative as they can.MackyBeth (talk) 19:13, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

A review of the article as it currently stands, and a few suggestions

Here is an updated version of what I put here last week. No one has addressed these issues yet.

• Lead. Since the lead is supposed to prepare readers for the body of the article, the lead will develop along with the article itself.
• Plot summary. Needs shortening. Probably best to first look at the plot summaries for other long works and to see how they handle the plot.
  • List of characters. Currently removed to subpage, but it could come back with shorter descriptions. Look at Crime and Punishment.
• Themes/Style. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Novels says Themes is one of the most important sections, but takes a long time to develop. And we haven't even started yet. Style, same thing. Look at this The_Sun_Also_Rises#Writing_style, and the Hemingway style is known as simple. Think about how such a section on Moby-Dick would have to look like.
• Autobiographical elements. Should this be a separate section, or merge with Background?
• Background. A. Sources. Too many quotes set off from the main text, which gives the impression of disorderliness and even carelessness.
• Background. B. Composition. This section was tightened this week and is sort of finished: all that the word "finished" in Wikipedia context can mean is that the editor using that word cannot think of what further to add. But other editors may think otherwise.
• Publication history. Still needs to supply information about the specific audience that English three-deckers were aiming at. This indication can be found in Tanselle (1988) and would do a lot for readers' understanding of why the book was so heavily censored.
• Reception. A. Contemporary. Should focus on Moby-Dick alone and not include comparisons with the reception of earlier works, as the articles for those works themselves will inform readers of their respective reception histories. Poorly developed section, but that is easy to repair for anybody, since a large part of the editorial matter in the Nortwestern-Newberry edition is included in the Google Books preview. There Hershel Parker details the reception, and though he should not be the only source, this is a source that can improve the section a lot.
• Reception. B. Later. Seems to be a series of independent sentences, as if at various times various editors stumbled across some information that they simply added. Wonderful, Hawthorne's quotation, but was it a public statement and if not, does it belong in a reception history? (If I recall it correctly, he wrote this to a publisher friend.) The quotation from D.H. Lawrence goes with an unsourced assessment of the importance of his book. F.O. Matthiessen's estimation of American literature looks slightly misrepresented to me: his American Renaissance is not a study of what he finds the "most prominent figures," but other writers simply did not fit into his scheme. He went beyond these five writers to supply the chapter on Poe for Literary History of the United States (1948), and published two books on Henry James (and family). For improvement of this section editors may again turn to Parker in the 1988 edition.

The main suggestion I have is that editors focus on the sections that still need to be developed instead of altering details on fully developed sections. The point is: the article can never run for GA status so long as required sections are still not sufficiently developed. Simple as that. But when such review takes place, the reviewers will have helpful suggestions on how to cut down sections that need curbing.MackyBeth (talk) 20:13, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Please do not introduce chapter mentions when tightening the plot summary

Hello again ch. I see you are tightening the plot, but it looks like you are introducing an element that should not be in any plot summary. Half a year or so ago, when I put a draft of the plot summary on this Talk page, Victoria pointed out that plot summaries do not mention chapters, which is indeed the case for featured articles as The Sun Also Rises and To Kill a Mockingbird.

In the current plot summary, chapters are mentioned only to account for quotations. But since I am not sure if even that is allowed, I took care that removing these mentions can be done in a few minutes, because doing so will not necessitate any adjustment of syntax anywhere.MackyBeth (talk) 17:24, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks!! Learn something new every day! But when I look at WP:PLOTSUM#Citations, I don't see any advice on this. The article is "advice" or "opinions" so we could develop a consensus. All I see is "Citations about the plot summary itself, however, may refer to the primary source—the work of fiction itself." Are there other guidelines elsewhere? I may have missed them. Ulysses (novel), Anna Karenina, and In Search of Lost Time cite and organize by section headings, though they are not not in-line.

Buell includes his thoughts on how the novel breaks down, so we might organize the chapters under headings and sub-headings (On Land... The Third Day) But that would involve re-organizing.

What do people think?

My other thought is that we might put some of the great quotes MackyBeth selected into boxes. ch (talk) 17:51, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

To start with responding to your last sentence: as per WP:PLOTSUM#Citations I selected these quotes not because I personally think they are great, but because I think these are notable quotes. But I may have overlooked notable quotes, and the book has so many famous passages that eventually we might even have to setlle for just the most notable quotes of all the notable quotes. That same section "Citations," second paragraph, sentence two, says that chapters may be mentioned for these quotes in the plot summary. And my suggestion is to do just that, because doing so will automatically enhance readers' navigation through the plot summary, because the quotes indicate what part of the book they are at. Indeed there is no advice on mentioning chapters in the plot summary, but if you just look at the articles I mentioned above, and also at Faulkner's Light in August which has GA status, there is really only the summary itself. Ulysses (novel) is another matter, since there is a section Structure but not a plot summary at all: the article is rated C for a reason. The idea of a plot summary is that it should force as little interpretation as possible upon the reader and therefore any organization along the lines of a structure identified by a critic (in this case Buell) is a nono. Quotes should be integrated in the summary itself and not be highlighted in quoteboxes. I never saw that organization for a plot summary.MackyBeth (talk) 18:41, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Here are more examples of Good Articles that may serve as examples: Crime and Punishment has a not too-long plot summary, but a long list of characters. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket has its plot summary divided into episodes. Which makes me think, all of a sudden: what if we divide the plot summary of Moby-Dick according to the English three volume edition? It has 135 chapters, which is exactly 3 x 45, if we forget that one chapter was omitted. As for now, I would suggest that before we act, we 1) think at how the plot may be divided into units so that it is no longer one huge mass of text, and 2) look at high-rated articles on lengthy books, to get some idea of how long a plot summary can be.MackyBeth (talk) 19:08, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Restored the plot summary so that it does comply with common usage. The tightening has been lost in the process, but I suggest we leave the plot for the moment until we find a more convenient organization for it. So if anyone knows an article on a big book that has a plot summary we can learn from, please say so. Please respect that it took me hours and hours to make this plot summary, so be thoughtful with your alterations.MackyBeth (talk) 20:28, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I'm very sorry to have given the impression that I was not thoughtful or respectful. I deeply apologize. ch (talk) 04:40, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Don't worry about that. Yesterday I was a bit irritated that you did not repair the plot summary after I pointed out that chapters are usually not mentioned. The thing to keep in mind is this: the next level for the article is GA status and in order to achieve this the editors involved (which is mostly you and me at the moment) need to develop their awareness of the way other GA articles deal with the difficulties that are specific for lengthy books.MackyBeth (talk) 08:42, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

A possible lay-out for the "Style" section

Readers are invited to look at the section "Writing style" at Herman Melville and see if the organization of that section is a good idea that should be used for the Moby-Dick "Style" section as well. Quoteboxes are used in many articles, usually only to highlight passages, but I used one quotebox to place Nathalia's Wright glosses directly unto the relevant phrases.MackyBeth (talk) 16:05, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Publication history and British censorship versus Melville's revisions Suggestion

MackyBeth's comments (above August 29) are to the point, namely that the section title should tell the reader what is in the section. Here are some thoughts:

• Tanselle says that Bentley’s “revisers” (p. 681) had “concerns” to “purge” the book of “material that might give offense for any reason” and they “removed” them. Other differences which our readers need to understand fall into several categories, as our article describes: “obvious corrections”; moving the preliminaries to the end; the epigraph; omission of the epilogue; authorial changes (the largest being the addition of the gally footnotes); corrections of M’s notorious mistakes; compositor’s errors; changes intended to improve; style; and expurgations. (Tanselle p. 783-784).

However, a Google search of the Northwestern-Newberry MD which we have been using does not turn up the word "censor" or "censorship" Search = censor or Search = censorship.

So my impression is that “British censorship” doesn't include all the things that the section covers and adds a characterization not found in the source cited.

The “vs.” may be left over from the earlier title, “British vs. American editions” and I’d be willing to omit it.

What to call the sub-section?

"Differences between the British and American editions" would cover the section’s material in a neutral way. “Expurgations, omissions, and revisions between the British and American editions” is a little awkward, but covers the ground. Which seems better?

• The topic sentence might be clarified by moving the sentence from several paragraphs above: “The London edition differs from the American edition in over 700 wordings, and thousands of punctuation and spelling changes. Bentley's London printers set their text from the American page proofs, which had Melville's revisions and corrections.
• The sub-section “Last-minute change of title” logically follows the section which it now precedes so the two sub-sections should be flipped.

Cheers in any case ch (talk) 18:52, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for these thoughtful comments. To start with your last point, somehow I never noticed this myself but you are absolutely correct that the change of title, being almost the last thing that happened, should come after the subsection about the expurgations instead of preceding it. The other points I will respond to, but as for now, switching these sections is fine with me. Best, MackyBeth (talk) 20:39, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

The issue whether the word "censorship" can be used to paraphrase discourse that only uses the word "expurgation" is something that, I think, touches on the broader issue that we should present the general scholarly consensus but have to use a limited amount of sources to do that with, and so the risk is that we use a loaded word like censorship when such load is absent from our sources. The consensus is this: nobody believes that Melville knew his work would be handled in this way. When Melville offered Bentley to publish his next work, Pierre, Bentley asked him to comply with such changes as Bentley deemed necessary. Melville refused and Pierre found no British publisher. The expurgations in MD are unauthorized and that is why I used the word censorship. But ch's objection is correct. The solution would be to simply find a source that uses the word "censorship" and quote that. I will have to look up in the biographies whether they use it. Or in the 2006 Longman edition. It is pure coincidence, but this week I reread the review of that edition in Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies by scholar Steven Olsen-Smith, and he uses the phrase "acts of outright censorship" when describing the expurgations. As a matter of fact, in that review he calls for research to identify the individual who carried it out.MackyBeth (talk) 21:09, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

And one more reply. As for the title of the subsection, the title should preferable be as short as it can be without being misleading. It is impossible to enumerate every difference between the editions in the title, and it seems reasonable that a title should mention the greatest differences. These are the excisions, to bring up another word we may use, and Melville's revisions. These are the two elements that run throughout the whole work, and Tanselle says that the expurgations account for the greatest alteration in the tone of the work.MackyBeth (talk) 21:24, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

But.... to take just one example, moving the preliminaries and losing the Epilogue had a major impact on the British reception! Tanselle say that "one of the reviser's concerns was to purge the book of material that might give offense for any reason." (p. 681) (emphasis supplied) Maybe divide into tree subsections? One with "censorship" or "purges," one for the title, and one with the other changes? ch (talk) 21:49, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

A well--organized article discusses material in the sections where that should be done. The impact on the Reception will have to be taken up in, well, in Reception. That section still needs a lot of work, but the NN edition supplies all the necessary information. These changes (preliminaries and Epilogue) had important consequences, but they are local events (Epiloge is one page).MackyBeth (talk) 22:00, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Your suggestion to change the way the subsections are divided is worth discussion, especially since the information on "Sales and earnings" should actually come after Reception. What it all boils down to, Publication history is a summary of Tanselle's Section VI and essentially the elements are still in the order he takes them up. We are just entering the process of loosening the organization from the sources.MackyBeth (talk) 22:16, 31 August 2014 (UTC)