Talk:Isle of the Cross

Weakness of this article
This article should be deleted, as it only consists of speculation. There is no evidence that Melville ever wrote a whole novel and destroyed the manuscript without having it published. And what it says about Bartleby is unconvincing as well.MackyBeth (talk) 16:14, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * this Google books search found 3800 hits for '"Isle of the Cross" Melville'. However, the article could use better referencing. RJFJR (talk) 17:25, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that Google link. If you take the trouble to just read the first five or so results, you will find out that its existence is controversial among scholars. Result nr. 3 is Elizabeth Schultz pointing out that there is "only tentative evidence" that it existed, and result nr. 4 is the signalling that scholar Robert Milder did not include The Isle of the Cross in his book.MackyBeth (talk) 17:49, 3 December 2013 (UTC)


 * As long as it is well sourced speculation, it might be ok for an article anyway. Hershel Parker (source for first sentence) seems to be a notable opinion on the subject, but I have no idea how accepted his view is. Is he the only one who thinks this? Are there scholars that argue against him? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:57, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Herman Melville bibliography source Isle of the Cross to: Robert S. Levine, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville. Cambridge, England and New York City: Cambridge University Press (1998), xviii. ISBN 0-521-55571-X. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:05, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
 * And THAT source (thank you Google books) says that "Evidence suggests that he completes a book manuscript, The Isle of the Cross, which the Harpers choose not to publish." It seems WP is overstating its sources on this book. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:18, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Indeed the point is that there is no general acceptance among Melville scholars that the title refers to a book. Otherwise you would find plenty of references to the title that do not lead to the same scholar.MackyBeth (talk) 13:55, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Let's take a deep breath! Wikipedia policy requires that editors NOT come to conclusions, only to report and summarize WP:RELIABLESOURCES in a way which reflects Neutral Point of View. To do otherwise is Original Research, which in these parts is the next thing to Original Sin. We must report minority views in proportion, but we are not required to give equal time to Flat Earthists or outliers.

We report the controversy, we do not take part in it. A better way to handle this type of article is to have a flat statement in the lede, then a section called "COntroversy" or "Disputed Arguments."

In this case, Herschel Parker is a recognized authority, published in a peer reviewed journal, and Levine's Cambridge Companion is likewise a Reliable Source. The 1991 American Literature piece should be given proper citation, with author and full title so that its dissenting argument can be fully used.

So to answer the question, the mark is appropriate because we do not know who Stephen Scott Norsworthy is and why we should give his blog credence. On the face of it, the arguments stated in blog piece are detailed and weighty, but we have no way of knowing any background.

While on the subject of NPOV, it is admirable report the criticisms and disagreements with Levine and Parker, but the use of words like "purported" and "allege" is not.

Finally, I am flabbergasted that an outstanding, hardworking, and well intentioned editor such as MackyBeth would even think of deleting an article because it contains controversy and ideas she or he disagrees with. ch (talk) 04:15, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I inserted "purported" in the lead sentence, since I think it reflects the sources used there (one which I added). If you remove that word, you say something the sources don´t. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:34, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * You are right. My objection was that there were a whole bunch of judgmental words, but now "purported" is simply reporting. ch (talk) 19:24, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Friends: I took the liberty of making a few more nips and tucks without, I think, changing the balance of the article. I hope that adding the names of the particular scholars makes it more clear what their issues were without taking sides. ch (talk) 19:28, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I feel that the recent amendments have improved the article. As for my reasons for requesting to delete it, the article as it originally stood was taking sides, because its mere existence would suggest that there was no question that The Isle of the Cross existed. I would still prefer to see this article gone and its contents integrated into the Herman Melville page, but then again, Melville's Bartleby would no doubt "prefer not to". But this fine for now. Let's move on, because there is still an enormous amount of hard facts about Melville and his works that should be added to articles on him and his works.MackyBeth (talk) 21:24, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Nice, but do we know that Hershel was the first to suggest this? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:26, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes we do, see note 1 of the article (I mean the article this is the Talk page of). Parker's essay "The Isle of the Cross: A Survey and a Chronology" in American Literature for March 1990 is the first suggestion that it was a book. Note 9 is a protest against Parker's conclusions from the evidence, and an alternative interpretation of the evidence. The issue has not been debated much since, and other Melville scholars have been reluctant to accept the view that it was a book. And this is precisely what my point is: Wikipedia policy of objectivity requires that not the view of Parker be reflected, but said reluctance.MackyBeth (talk) 16:35, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Friends, I must apologize for having made further changes, partly at MackyBeth's suggestion that this article not simply be a repeat of what is in the main HM article. I added a better description of the plot.

I have now read the sources cited, that is, the first part of Pepper's article and Wineapple's review of Parker with page citations to the 1996 biography. Though Wineapple does not accept each and every one of Parker's conclusions, she says he "nicely calls" Isle of the Cross the "missing link." I have to now conclude that that with Parker, Levine, Peppers, and, to a lesser extent Wineapple, who published in a magazine which is not peer reviewed, that "purported" is too strong as a report of the state of the field, and that "possible" is more judicious. There is no cited source that challenges its existence, only its length. So to make the history of the work clear, I added some details supplied by Wineapple from Parker.

It obviously would be better to quote directly from Parker's 1996 bio, however. Further discussion should be based on reading this most basic source, not the 1991 article, though other scholarship should be warmly welcomed.

Please forgive me! ch (talk) 19:28, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


 * You have nothing to apologize, because this issue here precisely pertains to the heart of the Wikipedia policy, and I'm glad to see how serious contributors are to hold up the requirement of objectivity. That said, one small addition: Parker's biography of Melville is a 2,000 page work in two volumes, Vol. I (1996) ending with the publication of MD in the fall of 1851, and Vol. II (2002) covering the years 1851-1891. Since The Isle of the Cross is attached to 1853, it is Parker (2002) that is to be consulted. For the moment this is all for me, because I am adding to the Moby-Dick page and don't like to be distracted from that project now. Cheers!!MackyBeth (talk) 20:28, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I reluctantly forgive you for keeping improving an article that caught my intrest ;-). I must ask: that Melville turned in a manuscript in 1853, that is accepted fact, and not just speculation? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:46, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, he turned in a manuscript but was "prevented" from publishing it at the time, as he wrote in a letter. But the meaning of prevented here is not exactly clear. If you type Google the three words Melville Delbanco Interview, you will find an interview on the Morning News website, where Andrew Delbanco says that for Henry James we have 12,000 letters, and for Melville just 300, of which many are perfunctory. That got me thinking that if you work on Melville all your life, you might get to the point where you squeeze information out of the sparse evidence until you get to the point where you draw conclusions that the evidence just can't carry. When a Melville scholar senses this tendency, he may do good to take some time studying James, then return to Melville with a fresh view and judgment of the sparse material.MackyBeth (talk) 21:59, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I did some reading about this some years ago, and it seems to me there's been easily enough discussion on this subject that it's worthy of an article. It's accepted that Melville submitted a manuscript that was "prevented" from being published at least for a time in 1853. Parker's suggestion that it was the Agatha story and that it was titled "Isle of the Cross" is not universally accepted but it has been widely discussed. In fact, I think it's pretty common for writers to call this manuscript "Isle of the Cross", at least conventionally, regardless of whether they think it was a lost version of the Agatha story. I think we could write a comprehensive article covering all the major points and debates.--Cúchullain t/ c 23:41, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Citation from Norsworthy
I added a sentence from Norsworthy and in note 11 that sentence is attributed to the link in note 10. So I don't get why the word [who?] is added to my sentence, for I thought the source is clear enough.MackyBeth (talk) 17:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I gave my two cents on the question above, but can also comment on how to make the sourcing more clear. The format for multiple citations of the same source is given at WP:CITE, section 3.1.4. Cheers! ch (talk) 04:23, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I took the Stephen Scott Norsworthy bits out. He wrote a book, but just blogging on this subject doesn´t make him a WP:RS. For him to be used here, there need to be more than a blog-post. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:12, 5 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that Wiki-link on Citations, I indeed need to consult it. And as for the Norsworthy deletion, there is indeed so much scholarly material available for Melville that we seem not to need to rely on blogs for sources, but I must add that but a few scholars have gone into the Isle of the Cross.MackyBeth (talk) 14:55, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Delbanco on The Isle of the Cross
Checked what Delbanco writes on this in his 2005 biography. The Index says page 206, but it is actually on 208. This is it:

"The result was a novel-length manuscript, now lost, submitted the following spring to Harpers under the title The Isle of the Cross and promptly rejected, possibly because the Harpers anticipated a legal dispute involving descendants of Agatha and her bigamous husband. Melville later made cryptic reference to having been 'prevented from printing' it." The prevented-quotation is keyed with an endnote to the letter of November 24, 1953. If this book is otherwise well-indexed, this quotation is all Delbanco says on the title.MackyBeth (talk) 15:24, 9 December 2013 (UTC)