Talk:The Jesuit Relations

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 October 2021 and 13 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Isobel.w18. Peer reviewers: Enryonokatamarikun, Sophia.guo30.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:12, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Untitled
This article makes a good start but there are some omissions and inaccuracies that need to be addressed. 1. Besides the Thwaites edition/translation of the 1890s and early 1900s, there are other "modern" (i.e., 19th- and 20th-century) editions of the Relations that should be noted here, above all the critical editions directed by Lucien Campeau under the title Monumenta Novae Franciae, 8 vols. (1967–96). 2. It is inaccurate (or at least highly misleading) to assert, as the current version of this article does (twice), that the Relations cover a period of 200 years. This is true only of the Thwaites compilation, which includes, in addition to the text of the original Jesuit Relations, many additional documents, referred to in the full title of the Thwaites edition as "allied documents." Readers of this Wikipedia article should be informed as to the distinction between the New France relations proper, which were published between 1632 and 1673, and later compilations (like Thwaites' and Campeau's) which include additional materials (including some unpublished manuscripts) covering a longer time period, both before and after 1632-73. Although in the decade following the suppression of the Relations in the wake of papal brief of 1673, the Jesuits in New France continued to prepare materials in the event that the political obstacles to publication created by the papal brief would be overcome and allow publication to resume, but this did not happen, and so the Jesuits simply ceased preparing their Relations. This is outlined by historian Alain Beaulieu (Université du Québec à Montréal) in his introduction to Library and Archive Canada's online presentation of the Thwaites edition of the Jesuit Relations at http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/206/301/lac-bac/jesuit_relations-ef/jesuit-relations/h19-230-e.html.

Although the "allied documents" translated and published by Thwaites were written by Jesuits and shed additional light on the missions in New France after the 1670s and 1680s, they stand apart from the original Jesuit relations which were expressly created for rapid publication and circulation within France.

It would also be useful for readers to know about the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, 34 vols. (1702-76), compiled by Jesuits from reports from their various missions around the world, including North America. In a sense this series continued the seventeenth-century Jesuit relations, albeit in a very different political and intellectual context.PC8k (talk) 22:25, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Good start, but...
The article starts of well, but towards the end degenerates into speculation about "possible" conspiracies to subvert the truth about what was going on in the missions. Such speculations have no place in an encyclopedia article without references to notable speculators.

The article would be improved if such hyperventilating conspiracy theories would be removed. Rwflammang (talk) 03:06, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Could Use Additional Details
This is a fairly balanced article, but it could benefit from including key figures or increasing the presence of the indigenous perspective. MoBMila (talk) 03:14, 6 November 2021 (UTC)