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Article Evaluation: "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman"
I chose to evaluate the Wikipedia article about Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, which I just finished reading for another English class. When I first opened the page, it looked well-organized, with headings and sub-headings that appeared relevant and well-captioned graphics of specific scenes from the novel. After reading the brief introduction, however, I began to suspect that the page may not be as well-maintained as I thought. That short paragraph contained awkward phrasing and a three-item list with links to the first two items but not the third. Tristram Shandy has a highly unorthodox narrative structure, and the "Synopsis and style" section did a serviceable job conveying that, but I think that its final paragraph went too in-depth into the events which befall Tristram specifically, despite an earlier paragraph alluding to the fact that other characters, such as Uncle Toby and Walter Shandy, are more central to the story. Perusing the page's other sections, most of the information I read was true to TS and the many endnotes I read in my Penguin critical copy, yet it felt cursory or undeveloped at times. The "Narrative structure and reader involvement" section, for example, is only four sentences long, despite mentioning the techniques that radically set TS apart from more conventional novels: fourth-wall breaks in which Tristram addresses different audiences, blank pages, missing pages, and doodles to illustrate the narrator's points. Additionally, this section does not include a single citation, despite making the sweeping claim that Sterne's authorial presence in the book "changed the course of traditional novelistic interpretations," which strikes me as a blatant plagiarism issue. Besides expanding and providing sources for the information in "Narrative structure and reader involvement," this section would probably be better organized as another sub-heading under the "Techniques and influences" heading. In the "Abolitionists" sub-heading, two separate contributors appear to have given the same information in successive sentences. One voice sounds less competent and can probably be cut out to polish the page.

Although I did not check every link, there were a number of issues that I found with some that I did try. There are at least three links in the article to pages that no longer exist: one for Sterne's publisher Becket and DeHont, another for the person who translated TS into Hungarian, and a third for a short story (the title of which has been inappropriately italicized rather than placed in quotation marks) that references TS. When I clicked the link for "inability to comprehend," a phrase highlighted in the "Synopsis and style" section, I was directed to the "Hermeticism" page, but I could not figure out why one was connected to the other. Another link to "Hermes Trismegistus" appears earlier in the same sentence as "inability to comprehend," anyway, so the second link seems redundant. The source I was directed too for the translation history of TS was in Catalan, so I could not read it. The citation for the major claim in the "Reception and influence" section that Sterne made "permanent additions to the English lexicon" in TS was listed as the Oxford English Dictionary, but the editor who linked it did so through the University of Maine system, so I could not directly access the OED entry without permission. In one of the sources I was able to access directly, I found some of the same phrasing from the Wikipedia article, such as "mindless plagiarism." None of the similarities between the original source and the article appeared too egregious, but the paraphrasing still struck me as awfully close for Wikipedia's self-proclaimed standards.

After trying some links, I finally opened up the "Talk" section for this article. The TS page is part of the WikiProject Novels campaign, and falls under the category of the highest importance, yet the page garners only a C-Class rating, indicating that it "may still have signifcant problems or require substantial cleanup." Based on the issues I observed, my general recommendations for the page, in addition to correcting everything I have already noted, would be to update the page sources with more twenty-first-century analysis, expand on the major themes of TS and the satiric strategies Sterne uses, and edit the article's writing to eliminate inconsistencies and poor wording. The endnotes of my 2003 edition of TS, an updated version of the so-called "Florida TS" (it was edited by Sterne scholars at the University of Florida) could be a great starting resource to spur further work on this article.

"Cymbeline" Revision Ideas

 * Dylan’s Page Revision Ideas
 * Replace “Reputation” heading with “Criticism and Interpretation”
 * Make sub-heading entitled “Critical Reception” for existing information (?)
 * Add genre-related comments to existing content to clarify remarks
 * Ideas from “Cymbeline: Shakespeare’s Last Roman Play” (1980) by David M. Bergeron:
 * Thesis: “Shakespeare’s probable knowledge of ancient Roman history shapes several events and influences his conception of a number of his British characters in Cymbeline, especially Cloten and the Queen.” In summary, Bergeron believes the characters of Cymbeline may have been based on historical accounts of the Augustan family.
 * A number of scholars have likened the reign of James I to Roman emperor Augustus because both created important unifications that promoted peace
 * A number of books detailing the Augustan era of Roman history were published or republished around 1600 that Shakespeare could have used for inspiration
 * Jupiter is primary deity, referenced thirty times
 * Similarities between historical Augustus and literary Cymbeline, such as number of children, lack of male heir, and banishment/reconciliation of progeny
 * Posthumus’s dead relatives pray to Jupiter, tilting him toward Roman identity
 * Other scholars have described the Queen as “evil incarnate,” with no direct real-life analogue, but Bergeron believes the similarity to Livia, Augustus’s wife, is more than coincidental
 * Ideas from “Anachronistic Italy: Cultural Alliances and National Identity in Cymbeline” (2002) by Peter A. Parolin
 * Guiderius and Arviragus exemplify “a feared barbarism and a desired civility,” one of Cymebline’s key themes
 * Scenes ostensibly set in ancient Rome are more clearly analogous to sixteenth-century “Italy,” which allowed British auidences to align themselves with Roman virtue while decrying the excess and treachery of Italy, as embodied by Iachimo
 * By presenting contemporary Italy, Cymebline also raises the anxieties about Britain’s future--will it too degrade from Roman ideals, as Italy did?
 * James I self-identified as the “British Augustus,” considered the ideal Roman emperor by the Elizabethans
 * Britain defines itself in relation to Rome in the play, even when considering secession
 * Parolin challenges that “Britain successfully claims Rome’s legacy in Cymbeline” because of anachronistic Italy
 * Italy presents fears about civilization such as interacting with other cultures. Posthumus is corrupted by Iachimo
 * Italy had seductive power already at work in Cymbeline’s court: the Queen’s obsession with poisons and Cloten’s extreme hunger for revenge
 * Guiderius and Arviragus are safe from corruption in their Welsh cave, but without acting on the historical stage, no one will note their virtue
 * Italy’s association with femininity also disillusions male ideals of Roman legacy

Critical Reception
Though once held in very high regard, Cymbeline lost favour with critics in the 18th century. The most famous comments were made by Samuel Johnson:

Lytton Strachey famously found it "difficult to resist the conclusion that he [Shakespeare] was getting bored himself. Bored with people, bored with real life, bored with drama, bored, in fact, with everything except poetry and poetical dreams."[13] Harley Granville-Barker had similar views, saying that the play shows that Shakespeare was becoming a "wearied artist".[13]

William Hazlitt and John Keats, however, numbered it among their favourite plays.

Some have taken the convoluted plot as evidence that the play deliberately parodies its own content. Harold Bloom says "Cymbeline, in my judgment, is partly a Shakespearean self parody; many of his prior plays and characters are mocked by it."[14] In Act V Scene IV, "Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt." After stating that Posthumus' fortunes will improve, Jupiter returns to heaven on his eagle. In one scene, a character seems to say that a plot point is to be "laughed at". When it is explained how the king's children were abducted, a minor character adds, "the negligence may well be laughed at, Yet is it true, sir."[15]

(Above taken from current sub-heading of "Cymbeline" entitled "Reputation.")

Although the members of Cymbeline’s court have ostensibly British identities, Shakespeare may have based these characters on the family of Augustus, first emperor of Rome, which some scholars have used as evidence to read Cymbeline as an allegory favoring James I’s attempts to unify Scotland with England and Wales. However, Peter A. Parolin argues that the anachronistic presence of sixteenth-century Italy and Iachimo, an Italian, reveal contemporary English anxieties about alliances with other cultures. Elizabethan British writers characterized Italy as a place where vice, debauchery, and treachery had supplanted the virtue of ancient Rome. Cymbeline concludes with a peace forged between Britain and Rome, but Iachimo’s corruption of Posthumus and “metaphorical rape” of Innogen demonstrate fears of potentially malign foreign influences resulting from Britain’s entrance into empire.