Talk:Herman Melville/Archive 2

Isle of the Cross
Hello, Wikipedians interested in Herman Melville (or at least his wikipediaarticle).

User:MackyBeth Asked at the Help desk how to delete Isle of the Cross. Isle of the Cross is according to WP a lost work by Melville.


 * Herman Melville states that this book existed, unsourced.
 * Isle of the Cross states that this book existed, sourced to, which seems to be one scholars (Hershel Parker) opinion/research.
 * Herman Melville bibliography states that this book existed, sourced to "The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville", which says ""Evidence suggests that he completes a book manuscript, The Isle of the Cross, which the Harpers choose not to publish."

So, I´d like to hear your input on if we should change how we mention this book in these articles, and if there are other sources we should use. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:49, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * For starters it would be a good idea to stop referring to this title as a book, because the title might just be the working title to (an episode of) a short story. There really is not much more than the title itself.MackyBeth (talk) 14:02, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I just edited the page for Isle of the Cross, and added a reference to an essay protesting the claim it was a book.MackyBeth (talk) 14:22, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * And I changed the first sentence. I think "The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville" is a good source at this point. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:14, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Agreed. I just checked what this article, Herman Melville, actually says about the title. I have no intention of removing that unsourced sentence...yet. But I will say that any unsourced material has no place in a Wikipedia article on an author of his stature. We have a wealth of publications to base a thorough biography on.MackyBeth (talk) 16:14, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Agreed. If noone else chimes in, I think a similar change with the same source can be made in this article. But let´s give it 24h so other editors have a reasonable chance to comment first. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 16:36, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * No worries, I am editing the article in chronological order and it is going to take a long time before I get to that passage.MackyBeth (talk) 16:51, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * If you haven´t looked at this, you might want to: Good_article_criteria. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:03, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I already read that awhile ago, and it will be worth to read it again every now and then. But let's take it one step at a time.MackyBeth (talk) 17:18, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Information on Melville's portraits
I added some information that appears right under the pictures and paintings of Melville. I did not supply a source for this information, but in case anybody wonders or finds it necessary that this should be sourced: the info for all images is the list of illustrations that appears in Andrew Delbanco, Melville: His World and Work, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2005, ix.MackyBeth (talk) 17:56, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Melvilles parents, religion and adulthood
In a biographical stub that discusses ancestry and the divergent religious views of the parents a sentence about the continuing struggle, into adulthood, of the son is rather germane. Why, indeed, include any mention of the parents differing approaches to religion without at least noting the apparent effect upon the son. The section on the parents view is sourced and the sentence that I added included a source quoting Nathaniel Hawthorne making clear note of the struggle of the adult Herman. That the continuing struggle of the son (Herman) was a direct result of the parents is an inference, and yes there might be other factors involved, but it is a pretty strong parallel and not to, at least, make note of it would not be a neutral point of view. If my wording is problematic or incomplete, please feel free to edit. TreebeardTheEnt (talk) 16:53, 21 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Melville's religious position is an interesting topic and essential to his art. The first thorough discussion of this dates back from 1943: William Braswell, Melville's Religious Thought. Over the decades, many follow-up studies have appeared. As for the more specific points:


 * 1) The question: why no discussion of the effect of the parents's differing religious stance upon the son? There is no reason why that should be omitted, the article is just not yet developed enough to include this.
 * 2) I am convinced that a good encyclopedian description of the influence of the parents in this respect is no hard fact, but at best the result of interpretation, and therefore if we don't cite sources the impression will be that such discussion is the editor's own opinion. I mean, Wikipedia requires references for everything, but matters of interpretation need references more than matters of fact.
 * 3) The quotation from Hawthorne is a famous one and indeed deserves inclusion in the article, but preferably in its correct chronological place, at 1857.
 * 4) To give an idea of the kind of developing this page needs to go through: so far the Hawthorne-Melville friendship is hardly touched upon, but this friendship is so important in American literature that I think it will not be an exaggeration to say that this topic eventually deserves a "daughter page" of its own.

So there is a lot of work to do, and as long as editors here can keep each other's enthusiasm going on, it will be interesting and fun to do it.MackyBeth (talk) 17:38, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Melville's Religion
I removed the following paragraph from the section "Melville's death," since it had nothing to do with it and did not logically fit there. But it is not complete or balanced enough to form a section of its own, since it is only one piece of information, from a single source, and with an allusion to further work, not an actual reference. But it should be preserved until someone wants to put together a much needed defensible section, "Melville's religion" or "Controversies over Melville's religion," or some such, which would be nicely parallel to the others. Here is the text I removed:


 * In Herman Melville's Religious Journey (1998), Walter Donald Kring detailed his discovery of letters indicating that Melville had been a member of the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City. Until this revelation, little had been known of his religious affiliation. Hershel Parker, in the second volume (2002) of his biography of the writer, says that Melville became a nominal member only to placate his wife. Parker wrote that Melville despised Unitarianism and its associated "ism", Utilitarianism. (The great English Unitarians were Utilitarians.) See the 2006 Norton Critical Edition of The Confidence-Man for more detail on Melville and religion than in Parker's 2002 volume.

Hope this is helpful. ch (talk) 03:51, 25 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I will look up what Hershel Parker says precisely in his biography volume 2. It is hard to judge the summary, but it seems possible that it casts Parker's discussion in more certain terms than Parker actually uses.MackyBeth (talk) 11:36, 25 December 2013 (UTC)