Talk:J. R. R. Tolkien's ambiguity

J. R. R. Tolkien's ambiguity is currently a Language and literature good article nominee. Nominated by Chiswick Chap (talk) at 08:56, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

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Short description: Literary theme in Tolkien's writing

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GA Review[edit]

This review is transcluded from Talk:J. R. R. Tolkien's ambiguity/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 08:56, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk · contribs) 16:31, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for taking this on. I'm used to working with reviewers and will address any issues you raise promptly. I personally find it easier if comments are listed outside the table for me to reply to, and then the table is basically just for final summaries; I hope that would work for you? Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:42, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I can put the comments outside the table. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:46, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.
2. Verifiable with no original research, as shown by a source spot-check:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).
	2c. it contains no original research.
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.
	7. Overall assessment.

Specific comments on general writing[edit]

"Shippey considered Tolkien lucky to have been able to balance" - this seems like a weird thing to say in the lead. Surely Tolkien was not just lucky, but skilled? uncommonly successful?
- Good point, reworded.
"freedom for the reader" - freedom for what? I see that this is in the lead ("to imagine different aspects of Middle-earth"). I think that level of specificity should also be in a little introduction to this section.
- Added a lead-in sentence for the section.
If Raffel concluded that LoTR wasn't literature, then what was it?
- Just popular trash, presumably, but he didn't put that into print!

Specific comments on summary style[edit]

My initial impression is that this is a very detailed article about a hyper-specific part of literary criticism of Tolkien. Is this level of detail necessary? Clearly there are secondary sources to support it.
- Happy to slim anything down if you feel it's gone too far in some directions.

The sub-section "Ambiguous diction" summarizes a single article by Steve Walker. As a literary criticism nerd, I like this level of detail. As a Wikipedia editor, I want to think about this a little more. I have a similar feeling about the tables for the specific quotes. Are tables in literary criticism used in other parts of Wikipedia? I'm used to seeing them for awards and band members.
- Tables can be used for a wide range of purposes. They're useful in this kind of article for summarizing examples in a way which allows readers to compare items easily, and to present the essence of a piece of scholarly analysis without repeating large amounts of it in quotation marks. Some editors object, too, to stepping through an author's argument to explain and summarize it, which does make it rather difficult to explain such a thing in ordinary text. Actually as I read the policy, the one thing you can't do is repeat an author's argument without attribution in Wikipedia's voice, using similar words to the original without quotation marks; the case is quite different if one is explicitly explaining the author's point of view: but that doesn't stop people from objecting.

I know it's customary to quote a lot of literary criticism when discussing it, but there are too many direct quotes. Please change some of them to summaries. For example, instead of "Flieger states that he "trimmed his sails to meet winds from different directions"" consider summarizing this as "Flieger states that he adjusted his explanations of his work to best suit his audience".
- Done that one, and a few others.