This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Samuel Johnson article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
This article uses British English and international date formatting. |
Samuel Johnson is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on January 31, 2009. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This
level-4 vital article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article has been viewed enough times in a single week to appear in the
Top 25 Report. The week in which this happened:
|
I have corrected a number of citation and MOS errors, and removed some text that has been added since the FA version. This article uses Summary style; when adding new text, please consider if it would better fit into a sub-article. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 15:10, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
Given the Character sketch section covers his views on slavery, religion, politics and cats - it probably deserves a sentence on his view of women in society. I don't have access to the books referenced, and don't want to change the article without context, but this thesis [1] is a good place to start -- Spacepine ( talk) 12:24, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
@ Xover: Per Wikipedia:WikiProject Bibliographies#Sourcing bibliographic entries, WP:V is applicable here as well. This needs some sort of off-Wikipedia reference to verify the names, publication dates, etc. Thanks. — howcheng { chat} 19:15, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
If an entry does not have a Wikipedia article and there might be any doubt that it belongs in the bibliography, it should be cited with a reliable source that verifies its relevance(my ephasis). Most of the works there have their own article (cf. the first bullet in the list you linked to), and if you genuinely and non-POINTily believe that any of the works in that section are not relevant in a list whose inclusion criteria is "major [as opposed to minor or incidental, and also as opposed to a comprehensive list of all works] by Samuel Johnson", then please tag each such item individually including a specific (actionable!) rationale.But WP:BIB's guidelines are, as mentioned, not really relevant here. The bottom line is that all items in that list are already cited: they are implicitly cited to themselves, as they are reliable primary sources for their own existence (per WP:PSTS and WP:RS). Thus to require further sourcing (from a secondary source, say) there must be some actual additional concern, and that concern must be explicit and specific (just a
{{
refimprove|section}}
is not sufficient). --
Xover (
talk) 20:36, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
{{
refimprove|section}}
does not apply) and any specific concerns must be dealt with individually.PS. My Wikipedia time is a bit erratic and unpredictable so I always appreciate a ping in replies so I don't forget to check back in to a discussion next time I'm online. And apologies in advance if I'm late in replyiing, for the same reason. --
Xover (
talk) 22:00, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
I have removed this section as it is undeveloped and so creates a problem of undue weight, as well as generally diluting the quality of the article. There is the problem that influences are discussed in the "Character sketch" section and elsewhere in the article but not in this new section, for example. It needs major work before it is re-added if it is to be in keeping with the article's featured article status. Hrodvarsson ( talk) 04:42, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
Here is the section as written:
As I young man, Johnson was rather stubborn and wanted to go his own ways. Regarding his life as a student when he was nineteen, he wrote: "I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all authority." [1]Later, one of the writers who influenced Johnson, was the Church of England priest William Law. Commenting on Law's A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729), Johnson wrote: "But I found Law quite an overmatch for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion after I became capable of rational inquiry." [2]
In her book Abyssinia's Samuel Johnson: Ethiopian Thought in the Making of an English Author (Oxford University Press, 2012), Princeton professor Wendy Laura Belcher argues that Johnson was "formed by the texts on the Abyssinian highlands in today's Ethiopia." [3] She demonstrates how Johnson's translation of A Voyage to Abyssinia, by Jeronimi Lobo, "left an indelible imprint on Johnson." [4]
Belcher also finds traces of African discourse in Johnson’s only work conceived for the stage, Irene; several of his short stories; and, in his most famous fiction, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. Thus, she "proposes a new model of transcultural intertextuality – one that illuminates how the Western literary canon is globally produced". [5]
References
- ^ Boswell, James; Malone, Edmond (1830). The Life of Samuel Johnson ... With copious notes and biographical illustrations, by Malone, etc. John Sharpe.
- ^ Boswell, James (1847). Life of Samuel Johnson, Comprehending an Account of His Studies, and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order: With His Correspondence and Conversations.
- ^ Belcher, Wendy Laura. Abyssinia's Samuel Johnson : Ethiopian thought in the making of an English author. New York. ISBN 9780199793211. OCLC 755004191.
- ^ "Abyssinia's Samuel Johnson - Wendy Laura Belcher". wendybelcher.com. Retrieved 2019-06-16.
- ^ Herbjørnsrud, Dag (2019-05-10). "Beyond decolonizing: global intellectual history and reconstruction of a comparative method". Global Intellectual History. 0 (0): 1–27. doi: 10.1080/23801883.2019.1616310. ISSN 2380-1883.
Recent edits to this article are being discussed at Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Archive 19#Samuel Johnson, Ann Radcliffe. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 15:57, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
The article currently contains the following claim about Johnson's views on patriotism
In 1774 he printed The Patriot, a critique of what he viewed as false patriotism. On the evening of 7 April 1775, he made the famous statement, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." [1] This line was not, as widely believed, about patriotism in general, but the false use of the term "patriotism" by John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (the patriot-minister) and his supporters, who played upon his non-English descent. Johnson opposed "self-professed Patriots" in general, but valued what he considered "true" patriotism. [2]
Notes
But Johnson's statement was in fact aimed at John Wilkes (who Johnson opposed) and not Bute (who Johnson supported). As it happens, this is pretty much what the source cited by the article - Griffin's Patriotism and Poetry in Eighteenth-Century Britain - actually says. Here's the relevant quote from page 21 of Griffin:
Wilkes raised a "Patriot" banner in the 1760s, and it was Wilkesite patriotism that Johnson had in mind both in his famous definition of "patriot" in the 1773 revision of the Dictionary ("a factious disturber of the government") and in his political pamphlet, The Patriot (1774).
I've tagged the claim in the main article with "failed verification" for now, but it should ideally be amended either to remove the discussion of who the target was, or to make it clear that scholars believe the line to have been about Wilkes' false patriotism. -- 86.136.14.26 ( talk) 21:50, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
This line was not, as widely believed, about patriotism in general, but what Johnson considered to be the false use of the term "patriotism" by John Wilkes and his supporters. Johnson opposed "self-professed Patriots" in general, but valued what he considered "true" patriotism.-- 86.136.14.26 ( talk) 14:15, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
References
There is a new Wikipedia Category:Conversationalists. Would it be an impertinence to add the Doctor? 45ossington ( talk) 11:37, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
It is very common for writers to take Johnson out of context and you see it all the time with what is arguably his most well known quote, "how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?". A quick reading of the whole Tract proves quite distinctly, that he is not at all criticizing southern slaveholders on some mythical grounds of hypocrisy. However, even though this wiki article does not go down that specious road, it still does not really clarify just what that section is all about. Johnson wrote:
But there is one writer, and perhaps many who do not write, to whom the contraction of these pernicious privileges appears very dangerous, and who startle at the thoughts of England free and America in chains. Children fly from their own shadow, and rhetoricians are frighted by their own voices. Chains is undoubtedly a dreadful word; but perhaps the masters of civil wisdom may discover some gradations between chains and anarchy. Chains need not be put upon those who will be restrained without them. This contest may end in the softer phrase of English Superiority and American Obedience. We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties: an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
Now this article does elude to Johnson's view of England's domination over the thirteen colonies, it doesn't really clarify. The point is this: if you have a writer who is quite open about the view of England free and America in chains, and Johnson is in fact making this point, then it makes perfect sense that you hear the loudest yelps among the drivers of negroes (to use Johnson's characterization) because those on British plantations are seeing first hand what British domination looks like and they're seeing it closer than anybody else can see it. Of all the people that the British Empire dominated, nobody was more brutally treated by the British than those that Britain shipped out of Africa. So the British slave-owning citizens on those plantations were on the front lines of seeing exactly what their future looked like, Johnson is saying. And they're yelping because of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.79.27.34 ( talk) 20:58, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
The article sorely lacks a bibliography. Is there a project/someone working on it? Gulielmus estavius ( talk) 17:58, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
The article is an FA, but it was promoted in 2008, since when our FA standards have risen more than somewhat. Not that there is anything wrong with the article, but it could be better, and I'm not sure how to approach an overhaul. One doesn't want to barge in and meddle extensively with an approved FA, so how best to approach rewriting to bring the article up to current FA standards? Advice, please, colleagues. (If the consensus is that the article doesn't in fact need upgrading I'll pipe down, of course.) Tim riley talk 20:52, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
Z1720 asked me to have a look at this before it runs at TFA next year, so here's some brief comments. I am by no means an expert on Johnson or his works, so my perspective is almost that of a lay reader. I'll make minor copyedits as I go, but larger issues I will only flag for the moment. Vanamonde ( Talk) 23:25, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
I'll return to this later, but some thoughts on a first look:
Vanamonde ( Talk) 23:25, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
Most of the additions here seem to be trivia, and they introduce CITEVAR issues. I would support a revert. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 14:49, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Samuel Johnson article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
This article uses British English and international date formatting. |
Samuel Johnson is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on January 31, 2009. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This
level-4 vital article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article has been viewed enough times in a single week to appear in the
Top 25 Report. The week in which this happened:
|
I have corrected a number of citation and MOS errors, and removed some text that has been added since the FA version. This article uses Summary style; when adding new text, please consider if it would better fit into a sub-article. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 15:10, 5 May 2018 (UTC)
Given the Character sketch section covers his views on slavery, religion, politics and cats - it probably deserves a sentence on his view of women in society. I don't have access to the books referenced, and don't want to change the article without context, but this thesis [1] is a good place to start -- Spacepine ( talk) 12:24, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
@ Xover: Per Wikipedia:WikiProject Bibliographies#Sourcing bibliographic entries, WP:V is applicable here as well. This needs some sort of off-Wikipedia reference to verify the names, publication dates, etc. Thanks. — howcheng { chat} 19:15, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
If an entry does not have a Wikipedia article and there might be any doubt that it belongs in the bibliography, it should be cited with a reliable source that verifies its relevance(my ephasis). Most of the works there have their own article (cf. the first bullet in the list you linked to), and if you genuinely and non-POINTily believe that any of the works in that section are not relevant in a list whose inclusion criteria is "major [as opposed to minor or incidental, and also as opposed to a comprehensive list of all works] by Samuel Johnson", then please tag each such item individually including a specific (actionable!) rationale.But WP:BIB's guidelines are, as mentioned, not really relevant here. The bottom line is that all items in that list are already cited: they are implicitly cited to themselves, as they are reliable primary sources for their own existence (per WP:PSTS and WP:RS). Thus to require further sourcing (from a secondary source, say) there must be some actual additional concern, and that concern must be explicit and specific (just a
{{
refimprove|section}}
is not sufficient). --
Xover (
talk) 20:36, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
{{
refimprove|section}}
does not apply) and any specific concerns must be dealt with individually.PS. My Wikipedia time is a bit erratic and unpredictable so I always appreciate a ping in replies so I don't forget to check back in to a discussion next time I'm online. And apologies in advance if I'm late in replyiing, for the same reason. --
Xover (
talk) 22:00, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
I have removed this section as it is undeveloped and so creates a problem of undue weight, as well as generally diluting the quality of the article. There is the problem that influences are discussed in the "Character sketch" section and elsewhere in the article but not in this new section, for example. It needs major work before it is re-added if it is to be in keeping with the article's featured article status. Hrodvarsson ( talk) 04:42, 19 June 2019 (UTC)
Here is the section as written:
As I young man, Johnson was rather stubborn and wanted to go his own ways. Regarding his life as a student when he was nineteen, he wrote: "I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all authority." [1]Later, one of the writers who influenced Johnson, was the Church of England priest William Law. Commenting on Law's A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729), Johnson wrote: "But I found Law quite an overmatch for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion after I became capable of rational inquiry." [2]
In her book Abyssinia's Samuel Johnson: Ethiopian Thought in the Making of an English Author (Oxford University Press, 2012), Princeton professor Wendy Laura Belcher argues that Johnson was "formed by the texts on the Abyssinian highlands in today's Ethiopia." [3] She demonstrates how Johnson's translation of A Voyage to Abyssinia, by Jeronimi Lobo, "left an indelible imprint on Johnson." [4]
Belcher also finds traces of African discourse in Johnson’s only work conceived for the stage, Irene; several of his short stories; and, in his most famous fiction, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. Thus, she "proposes a new model of transcultural intertextuality – one that illuminates how the Western literary canon is globally produced". [5]
References
- ^ Boswell, James; Malone, Edmond (1830). The Life of Samuel Johnson ... With copious notes and biographical illustrations, by Malone, etc. John Sharpe.
- ^ Boswell, James (1847). Life of Samuel Johnson, Comprehending an Account of His Studies, and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order: With His Correspondence and Conversations.
- ^ Belcher, Wendy Laura. Abyssinia's Samuel Johnson : Ethiopian thought in the making of an English author. New York. ISBN 9780199793211. OCLC 755004191.
- ^ "Abyssinia's Samuel Johnson - Wendy Laura Belcher". wendybelcher.com. Retrieved 2019-06-16.
- ^ Herbjørnsrud, Dag (2019-05-10). "Beyond decolonizing: global intellectual history and reconstruction of a comparative method". Global Intellectual History. 0 (0): 1–27. doi: 10.1080/23801883.2019.1616310. ISSN 2380-1883.
Recent edits to this article are being discussed at Wikipedia:Education noticeboard/Archive 19#Samuel Johnson, Ann Radcliffe. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 15:57, 16 December 2019 (UTC)
The article currently contains the following claim about Johnson's views on patriotism
In 1774 he printed The Patriot, a critique of what he viewed as false patriotism. On the evening of 7 April 1775, he made the famous statement, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." [1] This line was not, as widely believed, about patriotism in general, but the false use of the term "patriotism" by John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute (the patriot-minister) and his supporters, who played upon his non-English descent. Johnson opposed "self-professed Patriots" in general, but valued what he considered "true" patriotism. [2]
Notes
But Johnson's statement was in fact aimed at John Wilkes (who Johnson opposed) and not Bute (who Johnson supported). As it happens, this is pretty much what the source cited by the article - Griffin's Patriotism and Poetry in Eighteenth-Century Britain - actually says. Here's the relevant quote from page 21 of Griffin:
Wilkes raised a "Patriot" banner in the 1760s, and it was Wilkesite patriotism that Johnson had in mind both in his famous definition of "patriot" in the 1773 revision of the Dictionary ("a factious disturber of the government") and in his political pamphlet, The Patriot (1774).
I've tagged the claim in the main article with "failed verification" for now, but it should ideally be amended either to remove the discussion of who the target was, or to make it clear that scholars believe the line to have been about Wilkes' false patriotism. -- 86.136.14.26 ( talk) 21:50, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
This line was not, as widely believed, about patriotism in general, but what Johnson considered to be the false use of the term "patriotism" by John Wilkes and his supporters. Johnson opposed "self-professed Patriots" in general, but valued what he considered "true" patriotism.-- 86.136.14.26 ( talk) 14:15, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
References
There is a new Wikipedia Category:Conversationalists. Would it be an impertinence to add the Doctor? 45ossington ( talk) 11:37, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
It is very common for writers to take Johnson out of context and you see it all the time with what is arguably his most well known quote, "how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?". A quick reading of the whole Tract proves quite distinctly, that he is not at all criticizing southern slaveholders on some mythical grounds of hypocrisy. However, even though this wiki article does not go down that specious road, it still does not really clarify just what that section is all about. Johnson wrote:
But there is one writer, and perhaps many who do not write, to whom the contraction of these pernicious privileges appears very dangerous, and who startle at the thoughts of England free and America in chains. Children fly from their own shadow, and rhetoricians are frighted by their own voices. Chains is undoubtedly a dreadful word; but perhaps the masters of civil wisdom may discover some gradations between chains and anarchy. Chains need not be put upon those who will be restrained without them. This contest may end in the softer phrase of English Superiority and American Obedience. We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties: an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?
Now this article does elude to Johnson's view of England's domination over the thirteen colonies, it doesn't really clarify. The point is this: if you have a writer who is quite open about the view of England free and America in chains, and Johnson is in fact making this point, then it makes perfect sense that you hear the loudest yelps among the drivers of negroes (to use Johnson's characterization) because those on British plantations are seeing first hand what British domination looks like and they're seeing it closer than anybody else can see it. Of all the people that the British Empire dominated, nobody was more brutally treated by the British than those that Britain shipped out of Africa. So the British slave-owning citizens on those plantations were on the front lines of seeing exactly what their future looked like, Johnson is saying. And they're yelping because of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.79.27.34 ( talk) 20:58, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
The article sorely lacks a bibliography. Is there a project/someone working on it? Gulielmus estavius ( talk) 17:58, 17 January 2021 (UTC)
The article is an FA, but it was promoted in 2008, since when our FA standards have risen more than somewhat. Not that there is anything wrong with the article, but it could be better, and I'm not sure how to approach an overhaul. One doesn't want to barge in and meddle extensively with an approved FA, so how best to approach rewriting to bring the article up to current FA standards? Advice, please, colleagues. (If the consensus is that the article doesn't in fact need upgrading I'll pipe down, of course.) Tim riley talk 20:52, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
Z1720 asked me to have a look at this before it runs at TFA next year, so here's some brief comments. I am by no means an expert on Johnson or his works, so my perspective is almost that of a lay reader. I'll make minor copyedits as I go, but larger issues I will only flag for the moment. Vanamonde ( Talk) 23:25, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
I'll return to this later, but some thoughts on a first look:
Vanamonde ( Talk) 23:25, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
Most of the additions here seem to be trivia, and they introduce CITEVAR issues. I would support a revert. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 14:49, 9 December 2022 (UTC)