Talk:Eros the Bittersweet

Notability & Redirect
Hello I wanted to discuss the possibility of reverting your redirect, and creating the Eros the Bittersweet page.

You are right that as the page stood, the book's notability was not clear – I culled existing information from the main Anne Carson page (which I am currently in the process of reworking) and moved it here as a stub to be expanded in due course.

However, I do believe the book meets Wikipedia's standards for notability, more specifically (and with selected references):

– The book has been the subject of published works.

– The book has been the subject of instruction and research at universities.

– The book (Carson's first, and a reworking of her 1981 doctoral thesis) has been recognised as a significant part of her oeuvre that influenced her subsequent works: in the words of Ian Rae, it is this book in which she "formulated the ideas on desire that would come to dominate her poetic output".

– Regarding her subsequent output, Carson meets standards of notability as the recipient of numerous honours for her writing (including: Griffin Poetry Prize (twice), Guggenheim Fellowship, Lannan Literary Award, MacArthur Fellowship, Member of the Order of Canada, Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, T. S. Eliot Prize).

– John D'Agata has described the book's growing recognition in the fifteen years after it was published in 1986: the book "first stunned the classics community as a work of Greek scholarship; then it stunned the nonfiction community as an inspired return to the lyrically based essays once produced by Seneca, Montaigne, and Emerson; and then, and only then, deep into the 1990s, reissued as 'literature' and redesigned for an entirely new audience, it finally stunned the poets."

– By the late 1990s / early 2000s, the book had also entered into popular culture, voted onto the 1999 Modern Library Reader's List for the 100 Best Nonfiction books of the 20th century, and referenced (alongside Autobiography of Red) in The L Word.

I hope this information answers your reservations. If you are agreed, I would like to revert the redirect, and expand the stub to include some of the above, clarifying the book's notability.

Many thanks for your time! Kyrichips (talk) 20:31, 16 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Me again! I just wanted to give you a heads up that I am going to undo your redirect and try to get the page up to notability standard for a stub with a selection from the above references, using an /  in the meantime (I'm learning…!). Please let's talk here if you have any advice. Thanks again! Kyrichips (talk) 22:47, 17 September 2020 (UTC)