Talk:Valinor/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: TompaDompa (talk · contribs) 16:55, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

I will review this. TompaDompa (talk) 16:55, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Many thanks. The article has been carefully written and cited. If there are any issues, please raise them and I'll address them here in this review. I will be busy on 29 and 30 January but will get to this review promptly after that. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:07, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * It might be a bit longer than I initially estimated before I am done, so here's my first batch of comments for now at least. More to come. TompaDompa (talk) 20:36, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

General comments

 * I have tweaked a few references.
 * Thanks!
 * There are a fair number of repeated links, some within the same section.
 * Swept.
 * There is quite a bit of information that is repeated between different sections (e.g. physical and political geography or geography and history). I'm not sure what the best way to organize the information is, but it should be possible to reduce the redundancy at least somewhat.
 * Tweaked.

Lead

 * the Blessed Realms – singular or plural? The rest of the article uses the singular. This should probably also be in bold as Blessed Realm redirects here.
 * Fixed.
 * Aman was known somewhat misleadingly as "the Undying Lands" – not sure about calling this misleading in WP:WikiVoice.
 * Removed as it's explained in the 2nd half of the sentence.
 * the ancient Greek Atlantis – the link goes to Ancient Greek, the language. Presumably that's not the intended link.
 * Fixed.
 * Not all alternative names in the infobox are mentioned elsewhere in the article. They should either be sourced somewhere (in the infobox or elsewhere in the article) or removed.
 * Fixed.
 * Eressëa is not mentioned elsewhere (though Tol Eressëa is). TompaDompa (talk) 16:22, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Dropped.
 * Verb tense should be harmonized with the body.
 * Done.
 * just as the Earthly Paradise is only a preparation for the Celestial Paradise that is above – I feel like this is missing some kind of "in X" descriptor.
 * Added.
 * Others have compared the account of the beautiful Elvish part of the Undying Lands to the Middle English poem Pearl, stating that the closest literary equivalents of Tolkien's descriptions of these lands are the imrama Celtic tales such as those about Saint Brendan from the early Middle Ages. – this phrasing makes it sound like the imrama stuff is a conclusion based on the Pearl comparison.
 * Edited.

Geography

 * Verb tense is not consistent.
 * Fixed.
 * It's still partly in the present tense and partly in the past tense. This stretches across the "Geography" and "History" sections. TompaDompa (talk) 16:22, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Tolkien's own actions, however, are certainly in the past.
 * The distances in miles should probably have unit conversions to kilometers. This was discussed a couple of weeks ago (Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 30) as arguably falling under WP:GACR 1a, specifically the part about being "understandable to an appropriately broad audience".
 * Done.
 * Pelóri is a circular redirect, as is Helcaraxë.
 * Removed.
 * similar in size to the United States – the contiguous United States, presumably. Is this a comparison made by the sources or a gloss?
 * Removed.
 * The entire continent of Aman – a bit odd to link the second instance of "continent" rather than the first.
 * Fixed.
 * Aman runs from the Arctic latitudes of the Helcaraxë to the subarctic southern region of Middle-earth – about 7000 miles – this seems really off to me, or maybe I'm parsing it incorrectly. It seems to say that the northern tip of Aman is at the Helcaraxë and the southern tip is at Middle-earth. It also seems to say that the northern tip is Arctic and the southern one subarctic, and that they are separated by 7000 miles (more than the distance between the North Pole and the Equator).
 * Fixed, it's Arda not Middle-earth.
 * Ah, that explains it. TompaDompa (talk) 19:48, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, Aman runs way into the Southern Hemisphere.
 * Right. I parsed "subarctic" as referring to latitude in the Northern Hemisphere. Could be rephrased using "subantarctic" or "subpolar", I suppose. TompaDompa (talk) 19:48, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Ah yes. Subpolar it is.
 * I'm finding the things sourced to Fonstad a bit difficult to verify. I can of course see the maps in the "Valinor" section of the book (though the reference says "Lothlórien" in what I'm guessing is meant to indicate the chapter?), but where does the information about the climate come from and which specific maps are the dimensions of Aman and Valinor based on?
 * Aman map page 4. Valinor dimensions are not given in article but are shown on Fonstad maps page 7 and 38.
 * The cited portion of The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia does not verify all the information attributed to it (one example being that Nienna "spent her days crying about all the evil of the world"). In-universe information does not need secondary sources of course, but where the article relies on Tolkien's writings themselves Tolkien should be explicitly cited as the source. This goes both for this section and the following "History" section.
 * Removed several glosses.
 * Oberhelman refs removed, replaced by primary refs.
 * I would write "the Teleri Elves" rather than just "the Teleri" at first mention. The same goes for the Noldor and Vanyar.
 * Done.
 * The Valar would have closed the mountains entirely but, realizing that the Elves needed to be able to breathe the outside air, they kept Calacirya open. – I don't think this is particularly clear to the reader.
 * Removed.
 * most of the Eldar – if it's necessary to use this term it should probably be glossed.
 * Used 'Elves', we're not concerned with the (ahem) Moriquendi here.

History

 * When Eru Ilúvatar responded to the call of the Valar – gloss Eru at first mention.
 * Done.
 * Arda itself became spherical, and was left for Men to govern. The Elves could go there only by the Straight Road – "there" refers to Valinor, but this makes it sound like it refers to Arda.
 * Fixed.
 * The Silmarils are glossed and linked twice.
 * Fixed.
 * The Valar manage to save one last luminous flower from Telperion, and one last luminous fruit from Laurelin. – the Two Trees have not been named before this.
 * Glossed both.

Analysis

 * The first paragraph is a bit difficult to read and parse, at least in part due to consisting largely of rather lengthy sentences with a lot of internal punctuation.
 * Edited.
 * Frodo's final destination – Frodo has not previously been mentioned. I would at least link Frodo Baggins and provide some minimal context such as "at the end of The Lord of the Rings" or "following the events of The Lord of the Rings".
 * Done.
 * Gandalf, one of the Valar's emissaries, the Maiar – true, but more to the point the Istari, which is also what Kelly and Livingston say.
 * Fixed.
 * I'm not sure what Dickerson is cited for, as the preceding text seems to describe Kelly and Livingston's analysis. Nevertheless, Dickerson notes "Two Trees" as a feature common to Valinor and Eden, which might be worth a brief mention.
 * Good idea, done.
 * the Celestial Paradise lies "beyond (or above)", as it does, they note, in Dante's Paradiso – the "beyond (or above)" quote from Kelly and Livingston refers specifically to "Leaf by Niggle", not Valinor.
 * Dropped. Restored; and added mention of Leaf by Niggle.
 * It's a bit odd to include Dante's Paradiso in the table but not the text.
 * Fixed.
 * I don't think we can really connect "celestial paradise" to Pearl using Kelly and Livingston (or Drout) as a source – Kelly and Livingston talk about it in relation to Paradiso (and Drout makes no mention of it).
 * Right, I've put Dante/Paradiso back (in table and text), and named Niggle. The section certainly needs it.
 * in her view, the white benevolent feminine symbol opposing the evil masculine symbol – Burns is not giving her own view here, but quoting O'Neill's.
 * Attributed.
 * he disliked its emphasis on "overmastering pride", which he saw as a sin in Christian terms – I don't get this from the cited source. It talks about sin a lot, but it's Gallant's identification of kinslaying (and the threat thereof by Fëanor towards Fingolfin) as such rather than Tolkien's views on pride.
 * OK, dropped the second half of the sentence.
 * The pride of the Elves in Valinor, to his mind analogous to the original sin of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis, inevitably resulted in a fall analogous to the biblical fall of man. – is that "his" as in Gallant's or Tolkien's? I can't say I find the analogy between original sin and pride, specifically, in the source.
 * Edited.
 * Gallant interprets this as an allusion to the fruit of the biblical tree of knowledge of good and evil and the resulting exit from the Garden of Eden, starting with Fëanor – "starting with Fëanor"?
 * Edited.

Summary
And we're done. Great job! TompaDompa (talk) 19:16, 7 February 2024 (UTC)