Talk:James Thomson (poet, born 1834)

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
	This article is supported by the arts and entertainment work group (assessed as Low-importance).

Scotland Low‑importance

	Scotland portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Scotland, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Scotland and Scotland-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ScotlandWikipedia:WikiProject ScotlandTemplate:WikiProject ScotlandScotland articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

A Misreading of "City"

"The City of Dreadful Night" is many things (all of them dark) but it's hardly "an expression of bleak pessimism in a dehumanized, uncaring urban environment." -- That's boilerplate crit and untrue, as even the most cursory reading of "Night" will show. Thomson's epic poem has nothing to say about "dehumanization" or the modern city's "uncare" for people. The poem is about melancholy in its purest, most formless and existential sense -- Durer's Melancholia -- and in a brilliant imaginative stroke Thomson *builds* his city street by street to illustrate it. I mean it's such a basic point that one fears for the rest of the article, which I stopped reading but which maybe someone else can go over. -- Egomet Bonmot

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:James Thomson (poet) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 19:59, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:James Thomson (poet, born 1834)/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

The City of Dreadful Night is "an expression of bleak pessimism in a dehumanized, uncaring urban environment?" -- boilerplate and untrue imho. Thomson's epic poem doesn't even touch "dehumanization" or the modern city's "uncare" for people. The poem is about melancholy in its purest most existential sense -- Durer's Melancholia -- and in a brilliant imaginative stroke Thomson *builds* a city to illustrate the feeling. I mean it's such a basic point that one fears for the rest of the article, which I stopped reading but maybe someone else can check. -- Egomet Bonmot

Substituted at 21:46, 26 June 2016 (UTC)