Talk:The Parson's Tale/GA1

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Nominator: Asilvering (talk · contribs) 01:30, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer: BennyOnTheLoose (talk · contribs) 13:57, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.
2. Verifiable with no original research, as shown by a source spot-check:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).
	2c. it contains no original research.
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	Looked over the article history back to September 2020. No evidence of edit warring.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.
	7. Overall assessment.

Happy to discuss, or be challenged on, any of my review comments. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 13:57, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for taking this on! As you can see on the article talk page, I've got some other suggestions already. I've implemented a couple of them so far. -- asilvering (talk) 18:58, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Asilvering I hadn't seen the talk page before taking on the review, so thanks for highlighting it. I agree with the points made. Please could you ping me when those have been addressed? I can't see any major issues, and the sources seem fine, so my review is not going to lead to significant reworking. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 08:47, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

@BennyOnTheLoose I could continue tinkering with it, but I think I've now hit "broad enough for GA". I can't fix the lead issue because I can't spot it. If you think there's anything still missing or anything that needs further detail, please let me know. I know the topic well so it's easy to miss what might not be apparent to someone else. -- asilvering (talk) 18:08, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

• Copyvio check: I reviewed both matches over 2% found using Earwig's Copyvio Detector. No concerns. (Titles, and phrases that are OK per WP:LIMITED)
• Images: Both are PD. Relevant. Captions are fine. (Optionally, you could add the year of the Ellesmere Manuscript into the first caption.)

Framing narrative

• "on the way to Canterbury Cathedral" - maybe describe the journey as a pilgrimage? (Not a blocker to GA status)
• "only 24 full or partial tales survive. It is unclear whether Chaucer intended to write all 120," - do we know (approximately) how many, if any, have been lost?
• "died in c. 1400" consider either using the Template:Circa, or something like "around" instead
• Spot check on "it was intended to be the final tale: the competition's host, Harry Bailly, tells the Parson that he would be an ideal tale-teller to end the contest, and the Parson agrees to "knytte up al this feeste, and make an ende"" - no issues
• Spot check on "Thematically, it is linked to the Manciple's Tale, which directly precedes it in all major manuscripts."- no issues. (Reading the source made me wonder what the manuscripts of no significance are...)
• Spot check on "The Manciple's Tale warns against careless speech" - no issues. I think the use "careless speech", which appears in the source, is accpetable per WP:LIMITED
  • I've addressed the above; let me know if I created any new problems. Regarding the survival of the tales - I was worried it would imply that. I've changed the wording. What do you think of it now? We don't have any clear evidence that any tales have been lost, though in the very early days of Chaucer scholarship there used to be speculation about this. My professional opinion is that it's very unlikely that any completed tales have been lost, and I expect that's the majority opinion these days, especially since we keep nudging the dating for the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts earlier and earlier. (For this reason, I'll avoid giving a date for Ellesmere in the caption - a can of worms worth opening on the article on that MS but not here, imo.) -- asilvering (talk) 18:00, 5 September 2024 (UTC)
    • OK! BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 19:24, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

The Tale

• Spot check on "Unlike every other tale of Canterbury, the Parson's Tale is not a tale at all, but rather a treatise on penitence and the Seven Deadly Sins" - no issues
• Spot check on "He also incorporated elements from the Summa virtutum de remediis anime, a work on the remedial virtues"
• Spot check on "It is possible that the tale was originally written outside of the context of the Canterbury Tales, and only added to them at a later date."

Manuscript context

• Spot check on "The Parson's Tale is included in most manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales, but owing to its position as the final tale, damage to the manuscripts has often left it incomplete." - no issues.
• This is a short section with short paragraphs, but probably worth retaining as a section in its own right unless there is a logical way to combine it with another section.

Character of the Parson

• Consider adding something along the lines of "A parson is a type of priest who..." to the lead. Feels a bit late in the article to be explaining what a Parson is.
• Spot check on the material cited to Grennan was fine.
• "The Host suggests that the Parson might be a Lollard, a reformist religious movement that is now seen as "proto-Protestant"" - slight rewording would help to make it easier to read that Lollardy rather than the Parson is the movement.
• Optionally, reword "hews to orthodoxy" into more common language. (It's the "hews" that I'm thinking of.)
• "According to the General Prologue, the Parson is the brother of the Plowman, who does not himself have a tale" - suggest rewording, unless the General Prologue does state that the Plowman doesn't have a tale.

Addressed. -- asilvering (talk) 01:34, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Interpretation

• Optional: "In general, modern readers have struggled with this tale, seeing it as a repudiation of the rest of Chaucer's work" - fair comment, but coudn't this either just be "In general, modern readers have seen the tale as a repudiation of the rest of Chaucer's work"; or expand on any other aspects that modern readers find difficult?
• Consider introducing E. Talbot Donaldson in the text (optional, as readers may not recognise him as a a scholar of medieval English literature, but they would probably think that he's not a random selection)
• I think the view (assuming it is his view; I don't have access to that source) should be attributed in the yext.
• I couln't get hold f the Lawton article. Does that article support the " Other scholars have pointed out that," (i.e. more than one has); and where is the quote "after the sin comes its remedy." from? Feels like it needs an in-text attribution.
• I think the Strohm citation should include p176, which verifies the "rarely agreed on anything". (This phrase is in the source but I don;t think needs to be a quotation itself, per WP:LIMITED.

1. Regarding "struggled", I think this is more accurate than simply stating "seen it as a repudiation". The struggle here is that it looks like a repudiation of the rest of Chaucer's work, so, how then do we read it? Whereas if I change it to "have seen it as", that now appears to mean "have concluded that it is", rather than "saw it this way, and therefore struggled with it".
2. skipped this
3. Which view, can you clarify?
4. "after the sin comes its remedy" is Lawton p 40. Lawton here is one of the scholars, but I've also added a Cooper ref in here, since she lists several of them.
5. Fixed. -- asilvering (talk) 02:14, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

@BennyOnTheLoose, sorry for not pinging you earlier. I did get to these! -- asilvering (talk) 18:29, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Lead

• "The Canterbury Tales." - maybe add a date (or perhaps range) in parentheses after the title?
• "not a narrative at all," - do we need the "at all"? (Not a blocker to GA status)
• " "self-help" manual" - maybe "self-help" manual"? (If changed here, then change in the body as well) (Not a blocker to GA status)
• Would wikilinking "Middle Ages" be an overlink?
• I was wondering whether phrases like "modern" and "more recent scholarship" could be a bit more specific, but looking at the sources that I have, perhaps this wouldn't be easy enough when we're only looking at meeting the GA standards.

Addressed these in some way or another, except the "more recent scholarship" - what I mean there is simply at the sentence level: "more recent than the scholarship that questioned whether Chaucer intended it to be part of the Tales at all". -- asilvering (talk) 01:55, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

General comments

• As I didn't have access to all the sources, I've relied quite heavily on Cooper as my guide when considering whether the article is suitably in depth and broad for a GA. I'm satisfied that it is. *Similarly, I think there is adquate context/framing, without veering too far from the article's subject.
• There are a couple of inconsistencies in whether titles are in title case, but GA status doesn't require that consistency.
• Interesting article, although it didn't make me rush to read the Tale itself!

Thanks, Asilvering. I'm satisfied that the article meets the GA criteria, so I'm passing it. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 18:54, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.