Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dark romanticism


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   no consensus. There is no clear consensus between keeping or redirecting (although there is a clear consensus not to delete); I would suggest that the discussion on the subject (and possible redirect) be continued on the article's talk page --  Phantom Steve / talk &#124; contribs \ 02:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Dark romanticism

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"If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." The article's talk page requested support from reliable sources in early 2007. Nothing has been forthcoming. Links which purport to support the existence of this literary school are either dead or not WP:RS (e.g. a self-published web-page by students). The existence of a literary school and its appropriate characterization - including membership - should be relatively easy to support from the critical literature. As it stands, a mix of WP:OR and WP:SYN.KD Tries Again (talk) 05:24, 6 December 2010 (UTC)KD Tries Again


 * Comment I am inclined to agree that as it stands the article looks like OR and SYN. At the very least, on the basis of these sources, it should read something like "this term was used once in 1974", which would hardly meet the criteria for notability. However, I will hold judgement while I do a search for reliable sources.-- SabreBD  (talk)  07:40, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep This is a widely used term/literary subgenre . Any problems of WP:OR and WP:SYN should be fixable by responsible editing instead of by deleting. --Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 10:24, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. Just because there are no sources cited is not justification for deleting. In two minutes with google I found references to a scholarly journal published by Washington State Univ Press entitled "Poe Studies / Dark Romanticism" and to an exhibition held by the U of Delaware in 2001 under the title "Dark Romanticism" (which, interestingly, dealt only with British writers, not mentioned in the article). While I know nothing about this field, it's clear that the term has been used rather more than just "once in 1974". Jimmy Pitt   talk  15:46, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions.  -- Jclemens-public (talk) 17:39, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 *  Keep and Make redirect. The "scholarly journal" isn't scholarly in the academic sense, they don't usually have most of the articles being 2 pages, its basically a society website and in regard to the exhibition curators will use anything to get the visitors in. Actually reading some of the available sources indicates that Dark Romanticism is largely a synonym for Gothic fiction, used to suggest a connection between Romanticism and the Gothic. See for example the Routledge Companion to Gothic, which indicates that it was fashionable after Thompson used it in 1974, but is now used with more reserve. This becomes more obvious where it is used for British writers normally classified as Gothic fiction. I suggest the best route is to make this a redirect to Gothic fiction, put the term as an alternative in the opening sentence and then explain how it was/maybe still is, used. Wikipedia doesn't usually have different articles for the same things, as indicated in third tip at WP:SAA.-- SabreBD  (talk)  21:01, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * So which is it? Keep or Redirect? It can't be both. But provided sources are cited to support the assertion that it's a synonym, a redirect seems sensible. Jimmy Pitt   talk  21:28, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment(s): It's important to look at search results carefully to see if they support the case you want to make.  Yes, googling the phrase "dark romanticism" does return a bunch of hits, showing it to be a phrase which authors have used for all kinds of purposes.  Just browsing the first few pages, you'll see it applied to everything from gothic literature to detective stories to Garcia Lorca to "1980s synth-wave's dark romanticism."  What you don't get is any clear-cut identification of a single literary sub-genre bearing that title (except, arguably, the Thompson book).  What we have to decide is not whether the phrase is used but whether it has been used by reliable sources to identify a unified topic suitable for a Wikipedia article.  As for the article being fixable, editors tried and failed three years ago - because solid sources aren't there.  I can live with a re-direct to Gothic fiction, if the Thompson book supports it.   (Incidentally, take out the material on transcendentalism and you have little more than a stub.)KD Tries Again (talk) 19:32, 7 December 2010 (UTC)KD Tries Again
 * Comment: Okay, the question seems to be: Is there any difference between "Dark Romanticism" and "Gothic romance/fiction"? I'm not a literary historian or theorist, but I found books specifically mentioning Dark Romanticism in the title (and all the sources seem to identify a unified topic). It seems that the term has its origins in The Romantic Agony (Oxford, 1951) by Mario Praz. The German article Schwarze Romantik (Schauerromantik) has two books on the topic:
 * Mario Praz: Liebe, Tod und Teufel. Die schwarze Romantik. München, 1963. ISBN 342304375X.
 * Karin Gollesch: Nachtseiten. Die "Schwarze Romantik" in der deutschsprachigen Prosaepik. Wien, Univ., Dipl.-Arb. 2004.
 * Furthermore, we have three titles in English:
 * GR Thompson: A Dark Romanticism: In Quest of a Gothic Monomyth, Washington State University Press, 1974.
 * The Gothic Imagination : Essays in Dark Romanticism, ed. by GR Thompson
 * Poe studies/dark romanticism : history, theory, interpretation (2003)


 * Unfortunately, I can't find the mentioned books/studies available online. It could serve us for better identification of the topic.

--Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 08:04, 8 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment: Again, examined closely there's not much here -
 * The Romantic Agony - I am very familiar with this book in English translation. It analyses the persistence of sado-masochistic and other sexual themes in Romantic and Gothic literature.  Far from the term originating with this book, I do not believe it uses the term at all, but since it's a densely footnoted five hundred pager we really need someone to provide a positive reference rather than have me go look for the term.  (Searching the version on Google books returns no hits.)
 * Liebe, Tod und Teufel. Die schwarze Romantik. This is the German translation of The Romantic Agony, or La carne, la muerte y el diablo en la literatura romántica. I can't find that subtitle anywhere in association with the original Italian version and don't recall it in the English.  And at the risk of OR, I'd point out that "liebe" is just a wrong translation of "carne" - "fleisch" is the obvious German word.  A subtitle apparently added by a publisher does not amount to a reliable source.
 * Gollesch looks like an unpublished thesis, as does the other cite at German Wiki. Which brings us back to Thompson.
 * Sorry to be long-winded, but critical examination of sources if important. Look, we're supposedly dealing here not with obscure authors but with Poe, Melville, Shelley, Byron - it sends up danger signals that we're reduced to dubious subtitles and unpublished dissertations to establish even the existence of this topic, let alone its content.KD Tries Again (talk) 17:44, 9 December 2010 (UTC)KD Tries Again
 * Thanks for your opinion. As I said previously, I'm not a literary historian or theorist - I'm one of the very few people who bother to ask here for an explanation. People could search for the term or its definition. The main purpose of this discussion is judging all the possibilities and finding the best solution. Vejvančický (talk | contribs) 07:26, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I hope I am offering verifiable responses rather than opinions. I don't want to turn this into the article's discussion page; simply to point out that we still have nothing more (as said above) supportable by reliable sources than "dark romanticism was a term used by G.R. Thompson in two books." Surely not enough for an article, which is why I recommend deleting or re-directing. KD Tries Again (talk) 15:49, 10 December 2010 (UTC)KD Tries Again


 * Keep/merge/move This encyclopedia identifies the concept with the German genre of Schauer-Romantik which is a notable branch of the Gothic style. There seems to be good potential to develop this topic further in accordance with our editing policy and deletion would disrupt this. Colonel Warden (talk) 09:28, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, not quite sure of what is being said here Colonel Warden. Is your argument that Schauer-Romantik is the Dark Romanticism in this article (of Poe etc)? Reading the entry in the encyclopedia, it doesn't seem to suggest that it is the same thing, but that this fed into English and later American Gothic and the three major authors in this article as it stands are not mentioned. To me it seems that this should be in the Gothic Fiction article as an important influence and form, rather than in this one, but perhaps that is what is being proposed.-- SabreBD  (talk)  14:39, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
 * There seem to be numerous terms for this genre. Determining exactly how this would all be best presented seems beyond the scope of AFD.  All we need establish here is that the delete function should not be used as ordinary editing will suffice. Colonel Warden (talk) 14:49, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Redirect: It looks like dark romanticism as a sub-genre encompassing Melville, Hawthorne and Poe is just OR.  The encyclopedia source is at least sound, even if it's tertiary. It's enough to persuade me that we need a redirect to Gothic fiction and that the term and its German cognates need to be mentioned there.KD Tries Again (talk) 19:19, 12 December 2010 (UTC)KD Tries Again
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.