Talk:Influences on Tolkien/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Ffranc (talk · contribs) 08:39, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Your work on Tolkien articles is very impressive and I'll be happy to review this one. The review will hopefully be up in a few hours from now. Ffranc (talk) 08:39, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks for taking this on, and the kind words. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:46, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Sources

A first look at the sources:

• The URLs for Asia Times, Birzer, Bradley J. (3 August 2001) and National Geographic seem to be dead. Can they be rescued with updated links or archived versions?

Asia Times: updated one URL, removed the other.

BirzerL: cited correctly, but text is no longer available online.

Nat. Geog.: removed, it's covered by other sources.

• Who/what is the publisher of Roman Inscriptions of Britain? It looks legitimate, but it would be good to have some name beyond the name of the website. "RIB Online is part of LatinNow" says the site, is LatinNow the publisher?

The site is published by Scott Vanderbilt. He is funded by the European Research Council via the LatinNow project.

• Gunnell, Terry (13 September 2002) is a blog post of a lecture. Is there a stronger source it can be replaced with?

Replaced ref.

• Is there any stronger source than Encyclopedia of Arda that can be used for the spear comparison?

Not that I can find; removed, there is plenty of similar material in the section.

• Neither the original nor the archive link works for Jardillier, Claire (2003).

Added journal's URL; alas, their downloads don't go as far back as 2003.

• Who/what is the publisher of Orthodox England?

Added.

Only the dead URLs are serious issues, and hopefully they're easy to fix. Ffranc (talk) 09:36, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Comments

Here's the full review. It's mostly about cosmetic stuff.

• I think it would be helpful to mention the titles of the major books somewhere in the lede.

Done.

• Tolkien stated in a letter to his American publisher Houghton Mifflin on 30 June 1955 that his earlier remark to the poet and The New York Times book reviewer Harvey Breit "I am a philologist and all my work is philological." was meant to imply that his work was "all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic [sic] in inspiration. ... The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows." I had to reread this a couple of time to be sure I read it correctly. Perhaps you can split the sentence into two, with one quotation in each.

Done.

• He stated that Sigel meant "both sun and jewel", the former as it was the name of the Sun rune *sowilō (ᛋ), the latter ... from Latin sigillum, a seal. Why is there an ellipsis here? Should there be another set of quotation marks somewhere?

Removed.

• I'm not sure if the Lydney Park cult is considered a mystery cult. I see that Shippey writes "some kind of mystery cult", but other sources only say "cult". Religion in Roman Britain seems to contrast it with at least the conventional mystery cults.

Removed.

• Tolkien sought to dismiss critics' direct comparisons to Wagner, telling his publisher, "Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases." There needs to be a citation after the quote.

Letter ref added.

• Some researchers take an intermediate position: that both the authors used the same sources, but that Tolkien was influenced by Wagner's development of the mythology, especially the "concept of the Ring as giving the owner mastery of the world that was Wagner's own contribution to the myth of the Ring". Who is being quoted here?

Paraphrased.

• Does the source explicitly say that Ohlmarks' translation is "much-criticized?" Tolkien hated it, that is well documented, but this is a very sensitive subject in Sweden. Perhaps "controversial", or nothing at all, would be better? ("Funnily enough, this is likely also a part of why The Lord of the Rings became so popular in Sweden, and why many people still, after all these years, praise and defend Ohlmarks' translation.")

Done.

• Who is the quote about Ohlmarks' translation/interpretation/improvement from? There are two different sources attached to it.

Removed, all we need to say there is that it was likely Tolkien's reaction to Ohlmarks.

• Postwar literary figures such as Anthony Burgess, Edwin Muir and Philip Toynbee sneered at The Lord of the Rings and people like W. H. Auden who championed it, but others like Naomi Mitchison and Iris Murdoch respected the work. This could read a bit better. The contrast between sneering and respecting becomes odd when "Auden who championed it" is in the middle of the sentence.

Rejigged.

• If Tolkien was intending to create a new mythology for England, that would fit, Buck writes, that would relate to the tradition of English post-colonial literature and the many novelists and poets who reflect on the state of modern English society and the nature of Englishness. Can this be written in a more direct way?

Yes, done.

• The words "ent" and "hobbit" are mostly written in lower case, but a few times they are capitalised. I don't know what's preferable, but it would be good if it was consistent. ("a supposed source of Hobbit-lore", "The Ent attack on Isengard").

Fixed.

• The Battle of the Catalaunian Fields doesn't fit well under "Personal experience". It's not connected to WWI or WWII either, so it's not necessary to have a shared subheading for "Ancient and contemporary warfare". It can be lifted out and placed somewhere else.

Well spotted. Done.

That should be everything. It's obviously a very well researched article, the layout looks good, there are no copyright issues or edit wars, and all images are relevant, free and properly tagged on Commons. Ffranc (talk) 13:27, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Many thanks! Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:39, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

All the criteria appear to be met. Everything is balanced and follows the MoS, the prose is clear and consistent, and everything is attributed that needs to be. Excellent work! Ffranc (talk) 10:34, 26 August 2020 (UTC)