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Edit Template Herman Melville

I would like to edit the template to reflect the fact that Typee, Omoo, White Jacket are Travel literature, not novels. Typee and Omoo are already listed in the Travel literature article, but I would request an administrator to revise the links across Wikipedia to reflect the change. Unless somebody has a better idea, I will go ahead in a week or so. ch ( talk) 05:59, 22 October 2011 (UTC) reply

Makes sense to me. -- Midnightdreary ( talk) 14:16, 22 October 2011 (UTC) reply
I'm not exactly sure what constitutes "Travel Literature" so I'd like to hear more from you about why you want to make this change. All of the academic Melville literature I've encountered makes reference to these books as novels. Which seems to me sufficient reason for Wikipedia to refer to them as such. Are you suggesting travel lit as a sub-category? The whole categorization issue is inherently fuzzy, don't you think? ~ Alcmaeonid ( talk) 14:30, 24 October 2011 (UTC) reply
You are the reigning head honcho of the HM bibliography article, Alcmaenonid, so I take your point seriously, and the word "fuzzy" hits the spot. But as your info on the bibliography page says, Typee came out in Murray's travel series and he called it a "narrative." I don't see the books called "novels" in the the Historical Notes for Typee and Omoo in the NU-Newberry editions, or in what I could find by a search of Google books except for descriptions of reprints. Hershel Parker's biography (Vol 1 p. 234) said that HM was inspired by Gulliver's TRavels and Robinson Crusoe, what "we can only uneasily call novels, about as uneasily as we can call M.'s first books novels." [1]. My own reading of the books is disallowed as Original Research, but HM does present the narrative as true (even though he lifted a lot of it).
More to the point, from what I can find in reliable sources, rather thanTypee, Omoo, and Whitejacket were romances or travel. The Student Companion to Melville is not definitive, but it seems to sum up the literature when it says that only with Moby Dick did HM write a "novel." [2].
It does seem important that the Template reflect that HM's technique was developing and that he became more ambitious in going from writing travel or adventure to writing novels, inspired by Hawthorne. Perry Miller's The Raven and the Whale discusses the debates of the time about the romance and the novel, with the travel writings being romance and Moby Dick a novel. [3]
I'd be happy to see references to them as novels, but the only ones I found were on the covers of reprints or other tertiary stuff.
But you are surely right that this is fuzzy and maybe even fussy. So would it be ok to add Travel to the Template and list Typee, Omoo, and Whitejacket; to change the description of them as novels in the articles; but retain the Category "Novel" at the foot of the article pages? This way, we'd get the advantages of both. Readers who use the categories would find the early books but also be able to see how they were categorized at the time and appreciate HM's development? We would add information, not subtract it. Cheers in any case. ch ( talk) 20:51, 24 October 2011 (UTC) reply
Hi CH. Wow it does my heart good to see some real interesting discussion generated in the Melville wiki-world. To the point: please define Travel Literature for me. Does it have to be a true depiction of things that actually happened? If not, how much fiction does it take to render a candidate not applicable? As you point out, Melville's books (even Moby-Dick) contain experiences from his life, the amount of which seems to vary from title to title (much is uncertain when it comes to this subject). Add to this mix: book research, tales he heard both at sea and after, forecastle traditions, &etc., and we get a witches brew that has taken scholars decades to come to terms with (it's still ongoing!). In the case of John Murray w/ Typee, he believed M when told that this book was a true account of the author's own experiences. After the first reviews cast doubt on this claim, he developed strong reservations which the "Story of Toby" only partially allayed. Yet this book was a good-seller for him. Strong motivation to add Omoo to the Colonial Library.
More questions. Why only these 3 titles? Why not Redburn, a narrative based on M's first voyage at sea?
My main concern is this: I don't want Wikipedia to use non-standard categories but to stick to the academic model which is to refer to them as novels. Some desultory samples:
  • "Melville's early development as a writer of sea adventures is discussed in chapter 3, which examines his first five novels: Typee, Omoo, Mardi, Redburn and Moby-Dick." - Student companion to Herman Melville, Sharon Talley
  • "The story begins and ends with the garment, which also appears reiteratively throughout the novel, a true recurrent theme." - "White-Jacket": An Essay in Interpretation, Howard P. Vincent, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Sep., 1949), pg. 306
  • "By sustaining the thematic oppositions in Typee, Melville justifies the overriding, synthetic power which style comes to accrue in the novel, and thus the undeniable proof of his own authorial identity." - Herman Melville, Harold Bloom, Infobase Publishing, 2008, pg. 97
The list goes on and on. I'm not going to be hard about this though. If you feel strongly about it I will respectfully disagree but will not revert. As far as the individual articles go perhaps an explanation as to how they are viewed both as novels & travel lit? I do want to keep the bibliography categories minimal & clear, though, as they are now. Respectfully, ~ Alcmaeonid ( talk) 15:29, 25 October 2011 (UTC) reply
Too bad we can't get together over a cup or glass of the liquid of our choice -- or maybe a bowl of fish chowder! But I think we on this page have reached a working consensus. I will go ahead with the changes in the Template, leave the "Novel" category on the individual article pages, and tweak the wording on them to reflect your well put concerns. And you are right about Redburn. My idea is not to decide what is Travel or Novel or Romance, but to help the readers see the very interesting questions about these categories that our discussion has touched on (though without letting the discussion get out of proportion). I can adapt the language on the NU/Newberry dustjacket of Typee: "Melville's first book has been recognized as a classic in the literature of travel and adventure." This skirts the problem of genre, which can be briefly discussed later in the article. Many thanks for your work and good spirit. ch ( talk) 16:31, 25 October 2011 (UTC) reply

Isle of the Cross

I feel that it's not right to mention this title as if it were a novel on the same rank as books that actually are available in any good bookstore. This implies an equality of status that is just not there. Second, it is only a theory thet Melville wrote such book. Most scholars feel that this was just the working title of a short piece that was published under a different name. The template wrongly suggest facts where there is only assumption and suspicion. "The works of Herman Melville" should really only include the works we are sure of. MackyBeth ( talk) 19:25, 2 December 2013 (UTC) reply

It says "lost" in the template and links to Isle of the Cross with more information. Such templates are called navigation templates and their main purpose is to provide navigation to other relevant articles. If there was no article then the entry could be removed but it shouldn't be removed when we have an article. There might instead be a separate template row for unconfirmed works but if there is only one with an article then it would look bad. PrimeHunter ( talk) 22:09, 2 December 2013 (UTC) reply
The entry should be removed from the template because the template is for Works of Herman Melville and thus implies that Isle of the Cross belongs to that category, even if it the entry is accompanied by the qualification "lost", which is only a theory. There simply is no evidence to warrant the entry. Oh, forgot to sign in. MackyBeth ( talk) 16:06, 3 December 2013 (UTC) reply
The template is for navigation and people looking for works by Melville are likely to also want a way to navigate to this article. The word "lost" might be amended but we shouldn't break the navigation by entirely removing the link. PrimeHunter ( talk) 22:39, 3 December 2013 (UTC) reply
The article itself needs to vanish since there is not enough evidence that this title referes to an unknown work by HM at all. It might be the working title of a short story. MackyBeth ( talk) 14:50, 4 December 2013 (UTC) reply
How about changing "lost" to "suggested", "purported" or somesuch? I can´t think of a similar case, so I don´t know if there is "standard" word to use in the "he-probably-wrote-it-but-maybe-not" [4] situation. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 15:27, 4 December 2013 (UTC) reply
It's a rare case isn't it? Maybe it's helpful to compare this with painting. The template for Rembrandt or any other old painter probably includes works that have now been stolen or have been destroyed (one Rembrandt was stolen from a Boston museum in 1990). These works would still have to be listed because we are sure they existed, and probably photographs of the works still exist. But if somebody wrote a letter and talks of a Rembrandt painting referred to as The Shadows, that no one has ever seen and that some scholars believe to be The Nightwatch before its restauration, would The Shadows deserve a Wikipedia article of its own? That is the issue here at hand. MackyBeth ( talk) 15:37, 4 December 2013 (UTC) reply
@ User:PrimeHunter: If we accept what Isle of the Cross says, that this book was written, but maybe not, and that it was a novel, but maybe a short story, how about this solution: Isle of the Cross gets it own section in the template, under "Works by Herman Melville", beside novels, essays, etc. Call it Lost or Lost Works. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 15:09, 5 December 2013 (UTC) reply
In that case it should be labelled "Rumored" or so, but not "Lost", because labelling it Lost still indicates that we are sure that it ever existed. MackyBeth ( talk) 18:40, 5 December 2013 (UTC) reply
"Rumored" sounds to weak to me. Would "Other" be acceptable? Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 18:59, 5 December 2013 (UTC) reply
Or " Purported". Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 19:12, 5 December 2013 (UTC) reply
Both suggestions are fine by me. Oops, orgot to log in. MackyBeth ( talk) 20:06, 5 December 2013 (UTC) reply
I agree with MackyBeth that it might be appropriate to put Isle in some other category than "Novel," but the category is already is "fuzzy," (as noted in the discussion above, "Edit Template Herman Melville"). Of those in the category, Moby Dick is the first which which can be unequivocally classified as a "novel" (whatever that is). But the purpose of the Template is practical, so labeling Isle using the word from the article, "purported," seems the most practical thing.
BTW, we should be careful to follow No Original Research. Comments by a respected and highly competent editor that the "Template should only include the works we are sure of" might be misinterpreted as meaning that "we" is the editors decide these facts. Wikipedia policy does not allow us to make this type of judgment, only to report what the range of Reliable Sources say. If Herschel Parker's biography had said that Herman Melville was a Japanese sumo wrestler, we would have had to include this, NOT followed by our own conclusion that this must have been a misprint, but only by sourced comments, e.g. "Reviewers #1 & #2 found this assertion unconvincing while Reviewer #3 labelled it 'the best joke of the year.'" The Wikipedia principle is not truth but Verifiability. So Isle must stay! Cheers! ch ( talk) 18:12, 6 December 2013 (UTC) reply
What a coincidence, this touches on what I just posted on the Talk page for Isle of the Cross. It must indeed be avoided that Wikipedia editors are going to weigh evidence by themselves. A good article should reflect what the community of experts in the field agree upon, and its already difficult enough to reflect this, or else WP would have more "featured content" articles than it does. The example of the sumo wrestler is fun, but really misses the point. For that sumo wrestling information might be added to the biographical part without having to create a new article. And that is just the point: However I look at it, the creation of an article for TIOTC implies that it did exist--why else create an article for it? MackyBeth ( talk) 18:54, 6 December 2013 (UTC) reply
ch, I´m uncertain what you meant at the end there. Isle must stay as an article, or where it is in the template? If we three are in consensus (move to purported) about the template-thing, I suggest waiting for other comments 48h, and then if noone objects make the change (then we change the Melville, Melville biography and Lost work articles accordingly (there might be more)). I´ve never messed with a template before, so I´d prefer someone else do it. Mackybeth, WP is full of things that did, did not or perhaps did exist, so having the article is not a problem as I see it. At least two professors have written about Isle, and there´s the Cambridge book, and the maybe-author is who he is. I say keep the article, but you can always start a delete/merge discussion. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 21:31, 6 December 2013 (UTC) reply
SOrry, Gråbergs Gråa Sång -- my head was swimming at that point and I in turn was not clear whether MackyBeth had suggested that the article "must vanish" from the Template or from Wikipedia (or from this galaxy!). I should have made clear that I didn't think it should or by Wikipedia procedures could disappear from either. To make matters worse, I now have read a little more and think that even "purported" is too strong and that "possible" more accurately reflects the range of Reliable Sources. ch ( talk) 05:24, 7 December 2013 (UTC) reply
MOdifying the template entry with purported is fine by me, I really have spent enough time with this. The thing for me is, that a Template should let's say simply mirror the Collected Writings of the author involved. MackyBeth ( talk) 21:51, 6 December 2013 (UTC) reply
This is just a navigation template and my main concern is navigation. I'm OK with almost any template version which has a link to the article as long as the article exists. "lost", "purported" "hypothesized", "unconfirmed", whatever, and whether in a normal template section or its own section. PrimeHunter ( talk) 22:00, 6 December 2013 (UTC) reply
ch, If you say so, "Possible" is fine. So: shall we move Isle, in the template, to it´s own section, "Possible"? Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 07:15, 7 December 2013 (UTC) reply
"Possible" sounds excellent. @PrimeHunter Navigation contains an element of orientation and a template should not be misleading in this respect. MackyBeth ( talk) 10:16, 7 December 2013 (UTC) reply
I moved it. We´ll see if it sticks. Gråbergs Gråa Sång ( talk) 10:33, 10 December 2013 (UTC) reply
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