Talk:Sonnet 14/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Xover (talk · contribs) 15:37, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Overall status

Good Article review progress box

Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV ()

3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant ()

Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

~~Beginning review, more to come. --Xover (talk) 15:37, 24 October 2015 (UTC)~~[reply]

Writing articles on individual sonnets is difficult, and this one falls a bit short. Its most egregious shortcoming is the lack of a Structure section to provide needed background and context to the reader, and its reliance of fringe and outdated sources. That some sections are far too thin doesn't help either.

All in all it's a good attempt that falls quite a bit short, so I'm failing this for now. Please do renominate the article once its issues have been addressed, and feel free to ping me if you have questions or if there is anything I can help with. --Xover (talk) 15:37, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Detailed points

Lede

(6) The article lacks illustrations. Could perhaps a cropped scan of this sonnet from the 1609 quarto be added?
(1b) The lede does not adequately summarise the rest of the article.

Historical Context

(1b) Wikipedia doesn't use Title Caps for headings: "Historical context"
(1a,2b) "Some critics argue …" Who?
(1a) "… follows a story-line told by …" What story-line is that?
(1a) "… there is an argument that …" Whose?
(1a) "Critics believe that …" All critics?
(2b) Several parts of this section are cited to the "Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter". This is the newsletter of the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship, an organisation that promotes the fringe theory known as Oxfordian theory. Hence this is not a reliable source. Parts of the article supported by this source will need to either be cited to a different source, or will need to be removed.
(1a,2b) "… most critics agree that Shakespeare wrote this sonnet in order to convince him …" Now we stipulate as fact what the previous sentence describes as "To this day … debated …". And the identification of the Fair Youth with Southampton is still just speculation, so most modern scholars avoid focussing on it too much. I think you've been led down the garden path by the Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter and need to rethink this entire section in light of better sources.

Paraphrase

(1a) "Sonnet 14 contains a speaker …" No it doesn't. It's a poem, it contains words. Try something along the lines of "In Sonnet 14, the speaker …" and rephrase the sentence to be less… colloquial.
(1a) "The following passage is a paraphrase of Sonnet 14." No, it's a verbatim copy of the paraphrase from shakespeare-online.com, and hence a copyright violation. The entire paraphrase will need to be removed and rewritten from scratch.

Exegesis

(1a) "The meaning of Sonnet 14 is relatively clear compared to other sonnets written by Shakespeare." According to whom? By what measure?
(1a) "… there is debate on what influenced certain phrases …" Which phrases?
(2b) "The following analysis is of the 1609 Quatro version of Sonnet 14." Cited to Shakespeare, William (1960). For some reason I find it rather unlikely that Shakespeare was writing commentary on his own previous works in 1960.

Quatrain 1

I don't think repeating the relevant lines for each quatrain adds much value for the reader.
Why use the original spelling version here when it was considered sufficiently incomprehensible to the modern reader that a modern-spelling version was added to the infobox at the top?
(1a,3a) "Quatrain 1 has …" The term "quatrain" has not yet been explained. Other sonnet articles address this by having a "Structure" section prior to the Exegesis that explains terms like quatrain, couplet, iambic pentameter, and volta.
(1a) "… multiple references to astronomy, and other literature." Astronomy is a form of literature?
(1a) "… Astrophel and Stella is an influence …" You've made Astrophel and Stella an actor in this sentence. Try something along the lines of "Shakespeare was influenced by".
(1a) "… due to the nature of both of the sonnets." That is not an adequate explanation of why Dowden would argue one to have influenced the other.
(1a) "… through the object of their poem's eyes." What does that even mean? A poem doesn't have eyes.
(1a) "According to Frederick Fleays …" Who's he then?
(1a) "… the dearths that followed …" What is a dearth?
(1a) "… an irregularity in the seasons … which all could have influenced these lines …" In what way does "an irregularity in the seasons" influence lines in a poem?
(1a) "… could have influenced these lines …" Their author, not the lines themselves.
(1a) "… these lines from Shakespeare." If the association to Shakespeare is not clear from context at this point then the preceding prose needs a copy-edit.
(2b) Why is every cite in this section to a pre-1950 work, and several to publications from the 19th century? This is the sort of thing you'd end up with if you searched for "Sonnet 14" on Google Books rather than what a proper literature survey in your nearest university library would produce.

Quatrain 2

(1a) "… influences from Ovid's …" Who's he then?
(1a) "George Steevens points out …" Who's he then?
(1a) "… included a line stating …" The line called a press conference and made a statement?
(2b) And Malone is who you first go to for this? Granted I'm a bit of a Malone fan, but still... I'm pretty sure there are sources more recent than the 1700s that discuss this.
(1a) "… explaining the important of …" Typo.
(1a) "… that it is necessary." Why?
(1a) "Ovid's Amores has a similar line 'at mihe te comitem auroras usque futuram- per me perque oculos, siders rostra, tuos.'" That doesn't look very similar to me. Granted most modern readers will find Elizabethan English to be Greek to them, but expecting them to read Ovid in the original Latin may be taking it too far.
(1a) "… Samuel Johnson …" Who's he then?
(1a,3a) But what do modern editors think?

Quatrain 3

(1a) "Lines 10-11 are saying that one can see that truth and beauty would thrive together; if only you would focus on the business of making provisions for yourself." Not really.
(3a) Just one sentence to summarise 400 years of commentary?

Couplet

(1a,3a) This reads more like a new Synopsis than an Exegesis.
(1a) "… it is delivered with a smile." A strong claim. Can you document Shakespeare's state of mind when he wrote it?
(1a) "… when one is dead, their truths and beauties …" Just their truth and beauty?

Interpretations

(3a) Can we not find more to say about these than merely noting their existence?

References

(2b) [WP:FRINGE|fringe]] sources; very old works are cited with preference; most cited works lack critical bibliographical details (e.g. Malone's Supplement is given as Shakespeare, William) such as author and identifiers like ISBN or DOI.

Further reading

(1b) Do these really contain material of value to the reader that cannot be incorporated directly in the article as per WP:ELNO?