Portal talk:Literature/Archive 1

Subpages[edit]

For easy one-stop editing or watchlisting of the subpage "masters", here's the list:

Horror icon[edit]

I strongly protest to the horror icon -- is it not rather puerile? A smiley face with vampire teeth... Please, alter that.

A new category for literature: Essayists[edit]

I believe that this category should be added, in addition to the existing one of 'Essays'. I can't, however, figure out how to do that. If someone knows, could they help me out with that? Thank you.

Damian.kelleher 09:47, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can't get it on the main page of categories, however, when you click on the word literature in blue above the list, it shows up on a page of subcategories. Sorry that I couldn't be of more help.

Isabella123 -- 00:48, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The role of the editor in literature[edit]

Doesn't seem to be a good article about the profession that looks at the work of an author and makes amendments. All we seem to have is the rather poor editing.

I don't know what an article on literary editing would properly be called. But if anyone wants to take it upon themselves, they might want to add this external link:

Black day for the blue pencil
- an extensive article from The Guardian, August 6, 2005 by Blake Morrison suggesting that the art of literary editing is in decline and discussing the relationship between famous authors and their editors.

--bodnotbod 18:21, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

Edit links[edit]

Someone should fix the edit links, they link to editing redirect pages... feydey 21:16, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed myself. feydey 21:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Portal:Literature/Did you know[edit]

Is that page meant to be updated on a regular basis similar to Template:Did you know? It hasn't been edited for over a year. And what about Portal:Literature/Things you can do? <KF> 17:45, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Chapbooks[edit]

What about the category of Small Press publications, both poetry and prose, of Chapbooks. Pamphlet sized books of less than 48 pages, saddlestitched. WayneRay 23:30, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Swahili literature[edit]

Could you please take a look at the Swahili literature article and exp,ad if possible? -- Szvest 00:27, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Literature awards: Please contribute to a discussion about awards lists[edit]

A proposal (at Talk:Poetry prizes) has been made to merge Poetry prizes into List of poetry awards. The discussion has been broadened in an attempt to get opinions on several proposals for improving poetry awards articles (mostly made up of lists of awards). But poetry awards articles aren't much different from literary awards articles, and the same standards or guidelines (or perhaps just suggestions) should apply to all literary awards. There's also a question about how to organize the growing number of literary awards articles. Currently there is no one page for all literary awards, although List of prizes, medals, and awards#Literature has a good-sized list, and "Category:Literary awards" exists.

Incidentally, the lists of award winners are slowly being cross indexed with the "[year] in literature" articles (example: 2005 in literature), and together with the biographies of writers on Wikipedia, this project could soon produce the best site on the Web for anyone researching or even just browsing literary award winners. For people searching for a book to read and looking for clues as to who the better authors are, this could be very useful.

So please contribute to the discussion at Talk:Poetry prizes. Noroton 16:33, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Translate Wikipedia articles about awards; for example, de zilveren griffel (Zilveren Griffel), a big Dutch award for which notable American authors, Doris Buchanan Smith, Roald Dahl, and many others have been recipients. Currently, there is only the Dutch language article, yet an English translation would be great. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Howardrandallsmith (talk • contribs) 15:58, 3 May 2011 (UTC) Howardrandallsmith (talk) 16:02, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Book cover replacement project[edit]

(Sorry for some cross-posting, but I'm hoping to get the word out.) I've started WikiProject Free book covers, which used to be in my user space, as a project to replace fair use images of old books with public domain ones. All of these images are affected by the replaceable clause of the fair use policy, so this is a crucial task. We've gotten a lot done while it was in user space but there's still a lot of work to be done, so please come lend a hand. Every replacement advertises the project, so even doing one or two will help. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks! Chick Bowen 21:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Policy re: using "year in literature" linking.[edit]

I originally posted this at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), but though subsequent questions have attracted a fair bit of comment, nobody seems to have a view on this. Can anyone here help?...

I was planning on working through our articles on writers. I was going to use those 'year in literature links', eg 1939 in literature, but with a pipe, so that just the year appears, eg 1939.

I felt that this would be an especially useful thing to do for the year of publication of a writer's works, since clicking then brings up other works released that year. And if you use such links for dates of birth and death, clicking brings up other writers born/deceased in those years.

However, I figured I'd better check I was doing the right thing. I started out by looking at two literature featured articles; Samuel Beckett and Robert A. Heinlein. Neither of those articles seem to favour linking the years at all, let alone specifically.

I checked out the relevant bit of the style guide: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), but that doesn't seem to help on this point.

Any advice? I'm rather keen on my approach, but I'm made uncertain by looking at the Featured Articles. --bodnotbod 20:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, great minds think alike. I've been doing the same thing linking poets articles with with years-in-poetry pages although if I come across a writer who is both a poet and a playwright, or novelist, or short story writer, any years for those books I link to the years in literature pages. I absolutely think that the birth and death years should be linked to literature except for those who are best known for their poetry — for people reading articles on authors these literature and poetry pages are much more useful than are the general year pages. These years-in pages also have links to the general year articles (generally). These years in literature and years in poetry articles have been expanding recently, and I don't think the style guides have caught up with that. Thanks for doing it and please continue. And please consider poetry links for poetry — every year since 1800 is now represented, and a good number before that, which is continuing to expand (see List of years in poetry Noroton 19:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh, I hadn't realised there were poetry ones too. Thanks for making me aware of that, and I'll endeavour to use whichever is most appropriate. --bodnotbod 19:29, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Historical Fiction[edit]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but Historical Fiction now redirects to Historical Novel. As a novel would fit under a specific literary genre, shouldln't it be the other way around? If this is the wrong place to ask for a direction to go with this sorry, I'm just not sure who handles literary articles. Hewinsj 20:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

drowning ruth (novel)[edit]

Someone screwed with this, if you read the bottom it is like a radio shout out. This needs to be edited, I hate how people can't leave things alone! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.109.255.7 (talk) 20:12, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Drowning Ruth Has now been reverted to remove vandalism and discussion page header now in place Boylo 00:50, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

when not to use the Portal tag?[edit]

Should the Lit Portal tag be used on all articles related to Authors and individual works? Aristophanes68 (talk) 03:14, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Master and Margarita[edit]

No one seems to read this talk about the Easter week as "timeline" for the novel. I have read in the first page of the novel that the history begins in May and "May" is incompatible with Easter. Is there someone who may explain? --Schickaneder (talk) 06:39, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion[edit]

Look at the new banner made by User:Stef48 in the top of French « Portail de la Littérature » here. Fine result, is not it ? You can have it too ! It's a gallery of pictures randomly selected from the list here. Import model, and complete lists if you want. (Sorry for using basic English).PRA (talk) 13:39, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A possibly useful external link for articles on Poets.[edit]

See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/lyrikline.org. There was briefly an article here on lyrikline.org, it was speedy deleted under a mistaken impression that the user who created it was affiliated with the site, due to having taken a user name here of Lyriker (i.e., "poet."). I have had the article userfied, it's now at User:Abd/Lyrikline.org. Currently the site is blacklisted due to alleged linkspam, which consisted simply of several editors (at least two, apparently) adding many links to articles on poets pointing to the poets' pages on lyrikline. The only wiki which currently permits links to lyrikline.org, as far as I can tell, is de.wikipedia, and they have experienced no linkspamming since they whitelisted it, according to Lustiger seth, who is admin on both de and en.wikipedia, but they do have the link in many articles on poets, and the links are stable without apparent controversy. I would like the opinion of en.wikipedia editors involved with articles on notable poets to consider the usefulness of this site, it seems to meet the general guidelines for external links. It's non-commercial, with support from reputable individuals and institutions. It is nearly certain that it has permission to host all that it hosts. For each poet included, it has text, audio files of the poet reading, generally contributed by the poets, a bibliography, and a biography. Given that it is an edited source with inclusion standards, it should be considered a reliable source, and would also show notability. It is multilingual, so, for many different languages, one can read the original language, hear the poet reading the work, and read translations. I can't link to it here, because of the blacklist, but the de.wikipedia article has a link at the bottom.

If there are a few editors who consider the site usable, it should be possible to get specific pages whitelisted, even if the whole site remains blacklisted. However, there really isn't any reason I've been able to find for continuing the blacklisting; if a number of pages are whitelisted, and especially if the article is undeleted (as I consider likely, I'll inform this page of deletion review when it comes up), it should be fairly easy to either get the whole site whitelisted here, or delisted on meta, where the global blacklist is maintained. --Abd (talk) 22:14, 10 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

With the cooperation of the administrator who originally deleted Lyrikline.org, it has been restored and improved with some references. It's still blacklisted; the link to the site at the bottom of the page is specifically whitelisted, it's the URL for the english-language home page: lyrikline.org. No other page at lyrikline can presently be added to any WikiMedia project except de.wikipedia. If any editor wishes to use a link to lyrikline, the editor can propose whitelisting at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist; any admin can directly add a link to the whitelist. I'd appreciate notice of attempted whitelistings for lyrikline.org pages, I may be able to assist. I failed in one attempt, but, that was then, this is now. I was able to get the article undeleted, have support from a number of administrators -- though I wouldn't ask them to whitelist or delist -- and I know the arguments and history and expect that I'll eventually be able to get lyrikline.org delisted, perhaps, or whitelisted here, which is more likely.) --Abd (talk) 01:32, 13 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to admin Beetstra and others who supported the whitelist request, the English-language pages at Lyrikline.org are now whitelisted on en.wikipedia, so they may be used in articles, see Chirikure Chirikure for the first addition. ("English" refers to the user interface, not the language of the poet.) I will start adding links to articles on poets; there is a list of hosted poets at User:Abd/Lyrikline poets, for reference. Because of wikipolitics, please suggest a link on an article talk page before adding it, wait a day, I'd say, at least. Please also consider WP:EL. Lyrikline.org not only hosts audio of poets reading their work, being hosted on lyrikline is evidence of notability, and there is a biography for each poet there; I'd consider lyrikline a reasonably reliable source. --Abd (talk) 04:04, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ernest Hemingway project?[edit]

I am interested in starting am Ernest Hemingway project to improve content related to his life and works. Is there anything like this already going on. Would that be ok to do? kilbad (talk) 21:30, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cobbe portrait[edit]

Shouldn't this be in the news section? Wrad (talk) 01:56, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pictures[edit]

I've set up a May picture, from Tristram Shandy, at Portal:Literature/Selected picture archive/May 2009. I also have a lot of Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Byron and Shakespeare, much of which may be of featurable status Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 20:08, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Sun Also Rises[edit]

Dear wikipedians,

What has the Vietnam era to do with the theme of the sun also rises? Can someone please tell me? Quote: "The Sun Also Rises appealed to what Beegel calls the lost generation of the Vietnam era.[111]"

Yours faithfully,

Lierob 83.82.221.119 (talk) 18:28, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Replied on the talk page. Truthkeeper (talk) 19:11, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is a story?[edit]

I started by looking at protagonist and found it to be incoherent and quite muddled about the function this important character plays in a story. Not just that article, but articles on similar and related topics such as hero, focal character, antagonist and others are all completely confused about what any of these words mean, the functions any of these characters fulfill in a story, the roles they play and so on precisely because none of the editors involved appear to understand what a story is. Until you know what a story is how on earth can you possibly know what function the protagonist serves, that would be like trying to explain what function the engine takes in a car without bothering to understand what a car is. Or do editors just assume that readers know what a story is?
This deficit can also be found in the description of literary forms. The novel article deals with it as a historical artifact, as the vehicle for literary theory, development through time but nowhere mentions what a story is or how we would know one if we saw it. That article defines a novel as a prose narrative. Wikipedia's Index of literary terms doesn't even include the word story, but a short story is defined as a work of fiction in narrative prose. So both novel and short story are defined as works of narrative prose.
The narrative article, however, simply says that, "story is a synonym for narrative", and then the article on storytelling claims that narrative is a crucial element of story. So, according to this, A equals B, is an element of B and is also the way we communicate B to the audience, which, to put it mildly, is a story.
A search for story brought me to a disambiguation page, where the top entry, "a recounting of a sequence of events" takes me, surprisingly, to a page on time, where a story is mentioned in passing as just one use of a sequence of events. So, the sum total of this encyclopedia's definition of story, the most crucial element of fictional literature and the building block upon which everything else should depend can be summarised as, "well, it's a bit like a narrative, sort of."
Unfortunately, correcting this is not as simple as creating an article called Story and getting on with it. All the articles I started with, antagonist, hero, protagonist, anti-hero, narrative, are substantially wrong because their editors have no idea what a story is, whether or not these characters are functions of the story, if so which function do they fulfill, and so on. As a result these articles wander aimlessly all over the place and read like my ten-year-old niece's homework rather than as encyclopedia articles. For example, the protagonist is described as, "the main character" which is possible but not necessary. He is also defined as, "ends up in conflict because of the antagonist" which has the cart before the horse, the antagonist attempts to defeat the protagonist's purpose, so it makes no logical sense to define the protagonist as the one who opposes the antagonist. He is also defined as, "with whom the audience is intended to most identify" which is, quite frankly, gibberish. The audience is meant to identify with the main character; that is pretty much the definition of main character. He may or may not be the protagonist, but again it is not necessary and therefore completely wrong to define the protagonist as the main character.
Similarly, antagonist is pretty accurately defined as, "a character, ...against which the protagonist must contend." but then it digresses into fantasy with, "A person, or a group of people who oppose the main character" clearly demonstrating the same incorrect conflation of protagonist with main character. There is nothing in the correct definition of main character that necessarily puts him into conflict with anyone.
This will therefore require both one new article to explain what a story is, possibly by amending the storytelling article, and a substantial re-write of most of these other articles, so, I thought the correct approach was to come here to discuss it first. Thoughts, response, ideas, should I have posted this somewhere else, would you prefer I just bugger off? Cottonshirt τ 05:57, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]