Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Theory of Literature/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Ian Rose 03:07, 21 January 2013.

Theory of Literature

 * Nominator(s): — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:19, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured article because I think it is a solid look at an important book in literary theory. I wrote this soon after having to dissect the book in class, and over some two months I've expanded it into what is, for me, a behemoth. I have deliberately tried to keep the content summary as simplified as possible, considering we are targeting the general reader. I'd like to thank Garamond Lethe, who gave a GA review, and Nikkimaria, who gave some very helpful comments at the PR. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:19, 18 January 2013 (UTC)


 * comment

There appears to me something fundamentally wrong here. The article is about a book, and that same book is used as the major citation-source in the article (over fifty percent of the footnotes). Surely this level of primary-source reliance is unacceptable at FAC?

Also isn't the content section far too detailed? Would the Plot section of a 400-page novel (to make an analogy) be as large? Remember that this article is about a book on lit theory, not lit theory itself.

Further, in the spirit of wp:nor, even if it is large, shouldn't the content be sourced to a secondary source? Relevant bit of policy is in the "Primary, secondary and tertiary sources" section: "Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. ... Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them."122.172.14.75 (talk) 08:02, 18 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Regarding your first point, we're discussing the contents of a work. Naturally the work is what we cite. The same as a film article, or a novel article, or a stageplay article. Trying to base a contents section based only on what's in secondary sources is a folly.
 * As for the length of the contents section, it is not exactly parallel to a novel. In a novel there are unimportant scenes or subplots which we can easily skip over without losing anything important. This, however, makes numerous points in an extremely short space. If we had a featured article on an academic book, we could compare the two, but I don't think we do. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:08, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * compare with the FA The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The focus of that article is the book itself (the story of its writing, reception, legacy etc) and not the book's content (which is quickly summarised in a paragraph). That focus is detrimentally reversed here; after reading this article I end up learning more about the theory of literature and less about Theory of Literature.
 * summarising the Contents to 2/3/4 paras will fix this, and also address the potential No_original_research violations quoted above.122.172.14.75 (talk) 10:42, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I respectfully disagree here. Rather, the Malcom X article seems to have too short a summary. If it were a book on theory...
 * As for "NOR violations", I've already indicated to you that it is not as such.
 * I'll ping an FA delegate to see if they agree with your assessment. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:52, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Pinged delegate here... I'm glad to know people take seriously the guidelines re. OR and primary sources but I don't think that's applicable here. From a brief scan, all but a couple of citations to the subject work are in the content section, analogous to a plot section for a fictional work, where one expects the subject to be the main source. As for the length of the content section, this is an actionable comment since there may well be grounds to trim a section that takes up more space than the rest of the article put together, but given the FAC is only just under way I'd understand the nominator awaiting comments from additional reviewers before getting into that. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 04:18, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback Ian. I'll wait for a bit of feedback, naturally, before deciding what to do with the contents section. To quote the GA reviewer: "this is a hard book to summarize" — Crisco 1492 (talk) 04:52, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Support as GA reviewer. The article could be far shorter if the contents simply weren't discussed at all, but that would make the article far less useful to readers. However, each of the sections (and many of the chapters) are essentially stand-alone essays on various topics in literary theory. The current level of detail allows the reader to both understand what those topics are and the authors' opinion on those topics. Garamond Lethe 08:47, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the support and raising that point. I agree wholeheartedly, especially since the writing is quite dense (as I've mentioned above).
 * Another point, for IP122, the delegates, and all reviewers to consider, is that in essence, a detailed content section is necessary for understanding not only Theory of Literature as a work, but where Wellek and Warren stand on literary theory (especially since they didn't team up again afterwards, and thus this shared perspective would be out of place in their individual articles). Admittedly it can be summed up in a sentence: extrinsic is useless, but intrinsic is where one'll find meaning, but how they argue this should be conveyed. Thus, functionally this section also acts like the those on polyphony, the carnivalesque, and the grotesque at Mikhail Bakhtin, Field and Habitus at Pierre Bourdieu, or Contradiction and overdetermination at Louis Althusser. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:43, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Oppose. I agree with the objections raised by the IP. A JSTOR search of ""Theory of Literature" Wellek Warren" pulls up over a thousand hits, so it seems like there would be a sufficient number of secondary sources to use for this topic. I think Wellek and Warren's "stand on literary theory" would be better placed in the article literary theory (that article currently doesn't even mention this book). Sasata (talk) 20:10, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * That's an interesting point, but the secondary sources I saw didn't explain the arguments in ToL. Rather, the citations in those sources were just a pointer to where those arguments resided.  The reviews of the book were a little more helpful in this regard and I think all of the major ones are represented in the article.  Garamond Lethe  20:22, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * When judging how well a scholarly work is covered, one should not rely on raw numbers from Jstor. Google scholar shows almost 2,500 cites to the work. The vast majority of your Jstor hits are going to be cites too (like the majority of Google Books hits were as well)
 * Of course the vast majority will be citations or brief mentions. How many of them were more fully investigated (per "1c. well-researched: it is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature.")? Sasata (talk) 23:43, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The first four or five pages of Gbooks, as well as most of the academic reviews listed in the external links section. Do you have any in particular that you think are blatantly missing, or is this a "there must be sources!" oppose? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:52, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, you can consider this (in part) a "there must be sources oppose", because it's true. I'm no literary scholar (I prefer Archie comics), but it seems to me like this extremely unexhaustive list of sources all have something to say about the book: Sasata (talk) 02:09, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Winner TG, Kasik JP. (1977). "René Wellek's contribution to American Literary scholarship" Forum 2: 21–31.
 * Fietz L. (1978–79). "René Wellek's Literaturtheorie und der Prager Strukturalismus". Ahrens R, Wolff E. (eds.) In Englische und Amerikanische Literatur, Theorie und Geschichte Heidelberg.
 * Creed WG. (1983). "René Wellek and Karl Popper on the mode of existence of ideas in literature and science" Journal of the History of Ideas 44.4: 639–56.
 * Bucco M. (1981) René Wellek Boston: Twayne. (see here)
 * This will be particularly helpful. Thanks!  Garamond Lethe  06:22, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Graff G. (2007). Professing Literature: An Institutional History University of Chicago Press ISBN 978-0226305592
 * Draughton WE. (2003). "A Book Worth Reading". ISBN 978-0595656745
 * Flood J. (2003). ‪Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts‬ ISBN ‪9780805845181‬
 * Comas JN. (2006). Between Politics and Ethics: Toward a Vocative History of English Studies ISBN 978-0809326921
 * Tötösy de Zepetnek, S. and Mukherjee, T. eds. (2013). Companion to Comparative Literature, World Literatures, and Comparative Cultural Studies ISBN 9789382993667
 * Tötösy de Zepetnek, S. ed. (2003). Comparative Literature and Comparative Cultural Studies ISBN 9781557532909
 * McDonald H. (2003). "American Literary Theory and Philosophical Exceptionalism" Rhetoric Review 2(2): 138–53
 * Poovey M. (2001). "The Model System of Contemporary Literary Criticism" Critical Inquiry 27(3): 408–38
 * Poovey M. (1999). "Beyond the Current Impasse in Literary Studies" American Literary History 1(2): 354–77
 * Lawall S. (1988). "René Wellek and Modern Literary Criticism" Comparative Literature 40(2): 275–90.
 * Lawall S. (1984). "René Wellek: Phenomenological Literary Historian."  In Literary Theory and Criticism: Festschrift in Honour of René Wellek. Joseph Strelka J. (ed). ISBN 9780820401782
 * Betsky S. (1949). "The Theory of Literature". Scrutiny 16: 260. available here
 * Frohock WM. (1949). "René Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (Book Review)". Romanic Review 40:306–10.
 * Kern AC. (1951) "Theory of Literature" Modern Language Quarterly 12: 360–1. (see here
 * Pitcher SM. (1950). "Theory of Literature (Book Review)". Philological Quarterly 28: 520.
 * Thank you, that is a much more actionable oppose — Crisco 1492 (talk) 02:16, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
 * As for moving the extended content to literary theory, that is impossible. What is presented here is a certain outlook on literature, one which has (for the most part) been disavowed in the 64 years since the book was written. Their views are no longer entirely mainstream, and as such would not fit that article well. I could give a two or so paragraph summary at this article (I'll start preparing one), but then I'd have to question how comprehensive the article is: a article on a book about theory that doesn't talk about the theory? — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:24, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * A paragraph or two moved to literary theory sounds about right. As it stands, I am wondering instead how viable is an article, the majority of which is a summary of the subject, sourced to itself. Per WP:NOR: "Do not analyze, synthesize, interpret, or evaluate material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so." Of course, you already know this, I'm just explaining why I don't think this format can be acceptable at FAC. This is just my opinion though, and if the tide of consensus demonstrates that my interpretation is faulty, I'll accept that without criticism. Sasata (talk) 23:43, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Admittedly we do not have any FAs on literary theory or theorists... don't think we have any on philosophers either (the examples I gave above are decidedly lacking)... so we don't seem to have precedent to fall back on. Ian has expressed that he considers the content summary too long as well, so I've begun work on a much shorter version which, if I need to play the trained dog for a gold star, we can use. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:52, 19 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Withdraw - Looks like this was premature. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:57, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Looking forward to seeing it here again, hopefully sooner rather than later. Garamond Lethe  17:10, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Just to be clear, as a delegate I've not said that the content section is too long (I've not read it word for word, which I'd expect of a reviewer), rather that comments regarding its length are "actionable". It may be that the content section is reasonable at that length but the remainder of the article should be fleshed out with additonal secondary sources as mentioned by Sasata (another actionable objection). I reiterate my opinion that using the subject work as sourcing for the content section should be okay, so long as this is purely to report on the major points of the book, and not to editorialise. Given this clarification, if Crisco still wishes to withdraw, then obviously that will be respected and actioned. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:25, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Given the number of sources lacking above and time it may take to track them down, this is pretty much guaranteed to fail either way (especially since delegates do not expect an article to need "major changes" while at FAC). Rather than prolong everyone's suffering... — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:28, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Quite correct, just making sure. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 02:56, 21 January 2013 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.