Template:Did you know nominations/The Spirit of Romance


 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as |this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page.  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Victuallers (talk) 22:18, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

The Spirit of Romance

 * ... that Ezra Pound used his The Spirit of Romance (pictured) to both defy the doctoral committee at the University of Pennsylvania and to try and get his degree?
 * ALT1:... that Ezra Pound's first work of literary criticism, The Spirit of Romance (pictured), has many similarities to his lengthy poem The Cantos?
 * Reviewed: Hertha Feist

Created by Crisco 1492 (talk). Self nominated at 08:22, 22 February 2014 (UTC).


 * Symbol question.svg Article is beautiful and looks like it's been here for years. I personally am now curious for more details about what exactly was considered time-wasting about the Lope de Vega proposal, but the article is still good stuff.

The problem is with the hooks. Original hook is better than ALT1 but seems to misread the current sources. The instance of 'defiance' in the article is his prominent display of his status, but that's not really the spirit of "use" or "defy" here. The actual defiance might be trying to use an essay collection&mdash;including his previously rejected work on Lope de Vega&mdash;to get his degree, although that's not clear: was this essay on "quality" talking about jesters or something altogether different? Possible emendation to simply say something like ... that U. Penn. denied Ezra Pound's PhD twice: once for wasting time and again 12 years later when he tried to use The Spirit of Romance, a collection of literary criticism, as his dissertation?

Really, though, I think the buried lead here is something that's not precisely spelled out in this article (not sure if they'd need to be ported over from the EP main article or not): ... that the University of Pennsylvania declined consideration of Ezra Pound's dissertation The Spirit of Romance, after he had already helped publish "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and Ulysses? —  Llywelyn II   17:51, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The Ezra Pound article goes into more detail. I've worked some of it into this article.
 * I like your first alt, though (for the sake of non-American readers) I'd suggest against abbreviating U. Penn., as I doubt someone in the UK or Australia will automatically recognize the abbreviation. I don't think tying Pound's academic work to poems by other writers will help much; most academic committees I've met couldn't care less how much poetry you've published / helped publish, focusing instead on the quality of academic writing. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:35, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I do take your point but even he admitted that the volume wasn't that good and that he effectively couldn't be arsed to do separate qualifying work. The thrust of the hook is this is Ezra Pound we're talking about, and his having been instrumental in getting those two (frankly much better-known) works published goes to the heart of he-was-a-master-of-what-they-claimed-to-be-gatekeepers-of. (Having looked at the timing, it's quite possible that his involvement in the Ulysses obscenity trial counted against him. Not sure if there are sources for that, though.)

I also prefer not abbreviating U. Penn. but it's a very verbose institutional name and the hook was already bumping up against 200 characters. Maybe they can relax it for the sake of clarity, though. — Llywelyn II   08:21, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Re: defying the committee (in case you don't have access to the article): the original source has "The original tide was The Spirit of Romance: An Attempt to Define Somewhat the Charm of the Pre-Renaissance Literature of Latin Europe by "Ezra Pound, M.A." (emphasis mine) and clearly bespoke Pound's trepidatious, if self-conscious, defiance of his doctoral dissertation committee's refusal to grant him an official doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania." — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:39, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * ...which is what the article currently explains and, as I said, that's not really what "use" or "defy" seems to imply in the hook. It still seems more a single act of thumbing his nose somewhat and not the volume itself being an act of defiance. "Use" does give you enough wiggle-room that it's not technically wrong and I suppose it's essentially that I disagree with your source's phrasing, but hopefully we can come up with something better. (Or another editor can come along and tell you you're fine.) — Llywelyn II   08:21, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Alright. I have no issue with the wording of your ALT hook, if you prefer to approve that one. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:27, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Also, the links to need to remember to use the permanent address and not the automatically-created ones. Right now they're producing s. —  Llywelyn II   17:51, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Pardon? The links to Jstor are all the stable urls (example). Not sure why you are getting errors. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:35, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Be that as it may (and I can see that the word "stable" appears in all the s), clicking on the links to Riobo & al.'s articles bring up error pages and not the permanent versions. It's not something I've run into before, but I guess you've done what you can and it's a problem with Wiki,, my browser, or some combination. — Llywelyn II   08:21, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I think it's an issue with Jstor, as even their search engine is (currently) not linking to the paper. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:27, 25 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Symbol confirmed.svg Symbol voting keep.svg Symbol question.svg Symbol possible vote.svg Symbol delete vote.svg Symbol redirect vote 4.svg We could use a second set of eyes to finish this puppy up and herd it into the queue with original or modified hook. Since everyone seems to ignore the ?again icon, maybe using everything will bring someone in... ^_^  —  Llywelyn II   12:02, 1 March 2014 (UTC)
 * To make it more explicit, here's the ALT Llywelyn suggested above:
 * ALT2: ... that U. Penn. denied Ezra Pound's PhD twice: once for wasting time and again 12 years later when he tried to use The Spirit of Romance (pictured), a collection of literary criticism, as his dissertation? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:40, 1 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Symbol confirmed.svg Good article. ALT2 is best. GTG. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:27, 12 March 2014 (UTC)