User:Isobel.w18/The Jesuit Relations/Enryonokatamarikun Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

Isobel


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Isobel.w18/The_Jesuit_Relations?veaction=edit&preload=Template%3ADashboard.wikiedu.org_draft_template


 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * The Jesuit Relations

Evaluate the drafted changes
Dear Isobel,

Since you have more of an outline of your potential additions to the article, I would like to just recommend a few points you might want to cover (or if you need extra work in case your martyrdom discussion runs shorter than expected), as well as some problems I see in the current article. For clarity’s sake, I will go section by section. All in all though, what you have down looks promising and you should be able to find some excellent sources. It was a pleasure to peer review this!

Jack

LEAD

-“these reports are considered among the first ethnographic documents.” This is an unsourced statement but worse, it is subjective and untrue (ancient greek and persian ethnography are prime examples).

HISTORY

-”based in part also upon the oral reports of visiting fathers.” This is important to the discussion of why the overseers extensively edited reports but lacks a reference.

- “According to Thomas Campbell,” who is this? Pretty hard introduction of a source that is not really necessary here (don’t need to know the reference dude’s name as long as there IS a reference).

-“At times the Jesuit Relations read like travel narratives, describing geographical features and observations about the local peoples, flora, and fauna.” I like this idea of an adventure tale and I think it could make a nice segue into a discussion of the literary impact of the Relations in France. I tried to find some sources for this and came up with the impact of the Relations on enlightenment era ideas of the noble savage. In any case, it is worth mentioning that the Jesuits did edit it to make it more exciting.

Healy, George R. “The French Jesuits and the Idea of the Noble Savage.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 2, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1958, pp. 144–67, https://doi.org/10.2307/1919438.

I think there was also an opera piece by baroque century composer Jean Philippe Rameau called Les Indes galantes that was influenced by Jesuit ethnography but I am not sure. Rabbit holing!

CRITICISM

-I really like your topic of martyrdom as it really is a main point of the Relations. I might tie it into the thing about making the Relations artificially exciting to attract readers but it might work well here too in the criticism section. The only thing I would suggest to add to what you have written now, is perhaps a discussion of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (kinda suspicious miracle saint Mohawk woman), as she might be a prime example of the self aggrandizing tendencies of the Jesuits to fudge truth in favor of public funding.

-Indigenous and First Nations opinion on the inaccuracies of the Jesuit Relations might be worth mentioning. Here’s a source but there are others I saw.

Dunn, M. (2016). Neither One Thing Nor the Other: Discursive Polyvalence and Representations of Amerindian Women in the Jesuit Relations, Journal of Jesuit Studies, 3(2), 179-196. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/22141332-00302001

Also:

Korp, Maureen. “Problems of Prejudice in the Thwaites’ Edition of the ‘Jesuit Relations.’” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques, vol. 21, no. 2, Berghahn Books, 1995, pp. 261–76, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41299027.

-“Allan Greer notes that the process of passage” probably worth taking out the unnecessary naming of reference authors unless they are really well known or if it matters to the sentence.

COMPILATION AND MODERN PUBLICATION
-I do not have much to suggest for this section, it seems pretty comprehensive.

-It might be worth trying to find one more photo or so. Not terribly important but just saying. :)