User:Ottava Rima/To Autumn FAR

Large amounts of cited text were removed, uncited text was added, claims about Byron that are neither in the body of the text or in any major scholarly work were added to the lead, and other misleading things were added. Here are more specific problems:

misleading attribution to add a fringe item into the lead "...while barred clouds bloom the soft dying day". Despite the emphasis on long vowels, there is almost an absence of hiatus where two adjacent vowels occur without a separating consonant.[28]
 * 1.
 * 2. The statement about Byron is original research and not in the body of the text
 * 3. Removing a description of an image for the reason that the drawing isn't what his real hair color is, but the description is about the image and not reality.
 * 4. He removed the third party summary of the poems and turned it into a copy and paste of the poem, which is inappropriate
 * 5. ""To Autumn" is a poem of three stanzas, each of eleven lines. Like others of Keats's odes written in 1819, the structure is that of an odal hymn, having three clearly defined sections corresponding to the Classical divisions of strophe, antistrophe, and epode. [23" that is not found in the source. The source was only used to cite "Like many of Keats's 1819 odes, the structure of the poem is that of an odal hymn." which doesn't say anything about the amount of lines or how odal hymns are broken down and odal hymns do not have three sections, that is an -ode-.
 * 6. Flesch, William. Companion to British Poetry, 19th Century. Facts on File, 2009. ISBN 978-0816058969 is an unreliable source. Sparksnote is also an unreliable source.
 * 7. Keats characteristically uses monosyllabic words such as "...how to load and bless with fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run." The words are weighted by the emphasis of bilabial consonants (b, m, p), with lines like "...for Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells." There is also an emphasis on long vowels which control the flow of the poem, giving it a slow measured pace:
 * Those aren't examples given in the source and there are no examples of monosyllabic, making it OR. The example of the bilabials is not provided in the text, making it OR and the statement about the long vowels is wrong too. Those aren't long vowels as Keats's vowels are different from modern vowels and the expression is unique to Keats.


 * 8. There is not "almost an absence" but a 100% absence of hiatus, he changed it from saying that, thus making it not reflective of the source. Bate p. 183 - "hiatus is non-existent" image from page 183 verifying this quote.
 * 9. "Like the other odes, "To Autumn" is written in iambic pentameter with five stressed syllables to a line, each usually preceded by an unstressed syllable.[27" That is wrong, 13% of the poem is spondee, making it not qualified to be iambic pentameter. The percentage of spondee cited by Bate was removed and that above was added in its place, and it is cited to sparksnotes. Bate doesn't once say it was iambic and he literally wrote the book on the meter of Keats's.

The original version did no have these problems or paragraphs of uncited text. Ottava Rima (talk) 01:38, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

New statements
In response to the list here, I will cite the statement and respond:


 * 1. "The fact that it is in iambic pentameter"
 * This is incorrect. 14% of the poem is spondee, meaning that there are 1.5 spondees per line. Iambic pentameter is impossible with that high rate. There are also two initial inversions of beat in lines, which makes the poem even less able to be "iambic pentameter". As Jack Stillinger (major critic) on page 15 points out (regarding "To Autumn"): "of course the contrasts and interchanges originate spontaneously, according to ear rather than principle. The same is true of the rhythmial qualities of the lines. Departures from the metrical norm occur almost everywhere..." There is no "normal" when it comes to the poem, and removing of the percentages means that there is no honest discussion of the meter.


 * 2. "The fact that the major poetic tool used here is Personification. (It's the most famous and most cited example in English)"
 * It is not the most famous or the most cited example in English. It is actually obscure and most critics ignore it because the term adds nothing to discussion. If anything, "The Cloud" is a far more famous example just in the same time period, and that is still obscure.


 * 3. "The important reference to the similarity to the painted works of Keats' contemporary John Constable."
 * This is outright false. There is no relationship. The page now claims: "It has parallels in the rural landscapes of the English painter [[John Constable]". The source does not say that: "The poem was a result of having lived in the world, and a farewell to it; at the same time it was a world unto itself, inhabiting fully its autumnal canvas, richer than any Constable painting." The only one linking the two is an obscure critic in a Singapore review, and only saying that Keats is far better than Constable. This is also unique information put in the lead, violating MoS standards.


 * 4. "The comparison between the England-based description by Keats and the Grand Tour views of his contemporaries Byron and Shelley."
 * There is no relationship between them. No major critic tries to argue such. As you can see, I used every major critic on the poem. There is no comparison by critics of any of these poems because there is no match. "Ode to the West Wind" would be compared to "Ode to a Nightingale" if anything. Regardless, it is new information added to the lead that lacks a source.


 * 5. "The sorting out of the fact that the sense of "taste" referred to in the old intro does not exist anywhere in the poem and that was is referrenced is in fact the "tactile" sense."
 * Taste does exist in many of the images. The word "ripe" appeals to taste. "Sweet kernel" also appeals to taste. The word "referrenced" is inappropriate and no a real word. You meaned "referred to".


 * 6. "The pertinent reordering of statement about the form of the poem, giving examples of spondee and so on."
 * Form always comes before summary as is appropriate for critical works and literature article standards. The poem section also needs to have third party summaries or it is inappropriate. We do not just copy and paste from Wikisource. Furthermore, you cannot just -add- examples of your own of the use as that is original research. Many of your examples were -wrong-, like when it came to "long vowels" which has a specific definition under Keats and used a different pronunciation system that you probably don't know about because you need Bate's book to see the list.


 * 7. "The filling out of the description of the poem as a Classical Ode by showing the way in which it does resemble that poetic form"
 * It isn't a classical ode!!! It is a odal hymn. That means it is a hymn with aspects of ode, but not the three that you wish. The three parts mark beginning, middle, end, not call and response. A classical ode would by cyclical whereas this poem is purposefully linear.

- Ottava Rima (talk) 14:23, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

More responses
The individual responds here in "Cut and paste of Ottava Riva's comments". Here are responses:


 * 1. "Large amounts of cited text were not removed. They were rearranged more logically."
 * By removing summaries of the poem from Harold Bloom, the top literary critic in the world, he introduced summary into a themes section which does not deal with summaries. He also removed percentages and other figures which were essential to understanding the structure of the poem.


 * 2. "If this refers to the similarity of the poem to John Constable's rural landscapes, then it is not a "fringe item. It is significant context."
 * As pointed out above, the claim about Constable was a complete misreading nor is it pertinent to the poem. There is no real comparison between the two.


 * 3. ":The contrast with Byron is pertinent, and needs to be in the body of the text as well. Yes, it requires appropriate referencing. But noone who knows anything about Romantic poetry would consider a comparison between Byron and Keats as OR."
 * That is the very definition of original research. The third party sources do not link the two because they are -not- linked. Keats did not care about Byron at the time nor does it have anything to do with the European works.


 * 4. "How childish! The hair in the image is drawn with black lines. that doesn't make it "black hair"."
 * The description is given for blind people who need to know what the image -looks like-. Drawn with black lines by definition makes it an image of black hair.


 * 5. "It was a most inadequate summary."
 * It was a completely accurate summary of the statements by Harold Bloom, the top literary critic in the world. The arrogance of the statement is startling.


 * 6. "The link to odal hymn contains the information. Yes, the three parts need referencing. One will almost certainly be located."
 * It doesn't exist. I have on my shelf over 70 books devoted to Keats's poems by the top critics in the field. You are confusing things. Furthermore, the wiki link is not to "odal hymn" so it is not correct.


 * 7. "The Sparknotes ref has been replaced with a much better one."
 * Actually, the source says: "using iambic pentameter as the starting point", thus reaffirming what was quoted above about it having irregular meter that changes throughout the poem.


 * 8. "I am sure that the references must give some examples, but I don't have those references to hand."
 * Yet you constantly rewrote things to make them opposite of what the source says. You claimed above about


 * 9. "Is it really OR to state that this is an example of monosyllabic writing"
 * It doesn't need an example, it is rather obvious. And yes, by definition that is original research.


 * 10. "The bilabial consonants need to be stated, otherwise your reader has to page-hop to find out what a bi-labial consonant actually is."
 * Doesn't matter if they "page hop or not". Wikilinks are there so you don't clutter up everything. You complained that the page is "essayish" but using all of these examples turns it into an essayish page.


 * 11. "This statement by Ottava Rima is ridiculous and shows a lack of understanding as to what constitutes a "long vowel". Again, why was no example given from the referenced source?"
 * Keats has his own definition of Long Vowels. If you knew Keats you would have known this. You do not know Keats nor do you know early 19th century vowel pronounciation.
 * To quote from Bate 1962 p. 51: "(Benjamine Bailey to Lord Houghton) "One of Keats's favorite topics of discourse was the principle of melody in verse, upon which he had his own motives, particularly in the management of open & close vowels ... Keats's theory was that the vowels should be so managed as not to clash with one another..." then from Bate: "The precise meaning of 'open' and 'close' vowels, in this suggestive passage, is difficult to ascertain. Bailey's marking of the opening lines of Hyperion, moreoever, which he appends to his statements, is of little help. The only inference of reasonable certainty is that Bailey was not using the terms acording to strit phonetic usage of the present day. This inference is (p. 52) further borne out, it would seem, by the lack of any particular patterning of vowels in even the maturest verse of Keats when analyzed according to modern phonetic terms of 'open' and 'close.' Professor Cabell Greet, whose expert knowledge of phonetics has greatly helped me, informs me that the term 'open,' as loosely used by Bailey, was possibly equivalent to the diphthongs of 'day' [ei], 'go' [ou], 'fly' [ai], 'how' [au]... and to the historically 'long' vowels of 'see' [i:], 'father' [a:], 'saw' [e:], 'too' [u:], and 'bird' [e:].... If this conjecture is assumed, it is possible to detect a rather unusual and even frequent interplay of vowels int he verse which Keats wrote between the autumn of 1818 and the following May. Thus, allowing a to represent here and subsequent the diphthongs and historically 'long' vowels which Bailey possibly meant by 'open,' ...."
 * What that is explaining is that the vowels are not today's vowels but 200 years ago vowels, and if you knew anything about linguistics you would know that the Great Vowel Shift is constantly happening.


 * 12. "Check the poem. The poem uses "O'er", "whoever" and "winnowing". You could eliminate "O'er" and "...owing" as diphthongs, but that still leaves you with "who/ever", two clearly defined vowels with no consonant between them."
 * The source says NO HIATUS. That means that you cannot deviate from that and make your own original claim that shows no understanding of 19th-century British vowels. p. 183: "Rigorous structural care is once again apparent at every hand: hiatus is non-existent". Walter Jackson Bate was the top Keats scholar and won a Pulitzer for his biography on Keats. This work is -the- work on analyzing the language of Keats's poetry.


 * 13. "However, regardless of whether you have found a reference to iambic pentameter in Bate or not, the poem is in iambic pentameter"
 * Even your own better source says it is not - it merely started in it but quickly deteriorates.

Ottava Rima (talk) 16:13, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Personification
By the way, the user mentioned that the poem uses personification. No. Personification is to give inanimate objects human attributes. Instead, this uses anthropomorphization, which is to make non-human things -human-. Autumn is described as a female. That is an anthromorphized character. Ottava Rima (talk) 17:47, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia
SandyGeorgia wrote: "Which person opining to keep this article, co-nominated by an ItsLassieTime sock, has checked all of the sources for copyvio and plagirism? Arguing over the prose and which version to keep without checking sources is somewhat pointless. Doing it via proxy even more so."

ItsLassieTime did not provide any sources. Kathyrine/ItsLassieTime came to the artile during its Good Article Nomination as a reviewer. She spent quite a bit of time copyediting the writing and sourcing that I alone provided. She only reworked my content. There is no possible chance for her to have plagiarised.

Amandajm
Responses to this section.

1. "Lacked continuity ie. jumped from form to theme to context withing a single paragraph." Absurd claim - the context is all in background, the form is all in structure, and the themes were all in themes. This is based on standard structure of poetry articles. You cannot randomly remove that pattern, especially to an FA and without discussion.

2. "Clearly challengeable such as analysing percentages of times a form occurred." Walter Jackson Bate, Pulitzer Prize winner for his biography on Keats and the most famous Keats scholar, devoted a whole book to those percentages. They are 100% necessary to have full coverage of scholarship on the matter.

3. "NOTE: "tastes" is incorrect." This assumes that "ripeness" is no longer taste. The dictionary corrects Amandajm. The emphasis on food is taste.

4. "The second sentences here refers to "diction symbolism and literary devises" as if they occurred in the third stanza only. " Clear misreading. It does not imply that they are only in the third stanza, but that the third stanza is only about them.

5. ""Negative connotations" is not a good description. " It is talking about death. It isn't positive.

6. Additions "NOTE: 1. "rural landscape" should read "the works of rural landscape painters"." This is pure original research that shows that Amandajm does not read sources carefully and uses inadequate sources. Even Alan pointed out problems with this. They -wish- it were true so insist it is added to the lead, a place that forms only a summary.

7. "Personification. This is the major poetic tool used in this poem. "To Autumn" is the iconic example. It had been omitted from the FA entirely!!!"

Allegory does not require you to say either "metaphor" or "personification". An allegory is far more complex than such simplistic statements desired by Amandajm. Regardless, if you want to dumb down an audience by adding one word that has no real impact on a page, that does not justify the destruction of the page.

8. "Moved further down the page, after the Theme." Before you can describe a poem you must break down its form for the audience. Structure must always go before the plot summary or the plot summary doesn't make sense.

9. "The thematic divisions that were between the stanzas have been put into the Theme section and expanded." A major violation of standards. A. You cannot have just raw text, B. the section is for summary of the poem and the language is added in its entirety because of its brevity, and C. it was moved down in a very sloppy and inappropriate way.

10. "These progressions are joined with a shift from the tactile sense to that of sight and then of sound, creating a three part symmetry which is missing in Keats's other odes.[11]" She added a source to statements without having the source. The original version is in the second paragraph - it is more structured, unified, and intelligent. It is contrasting To Autumn with other odes and shows how the poem as a whole works.

11. "3. *Most importantly*, the Personification of Autumn is introduced into the discussion of theme and this continues into the subsequent descriptions of the stanzas." Adding something the sources do not constitutes as original research.

12. "NOTE: 1. the line in the FA version about "unlike the following which deal more with sensual observations" is out of place in describing the first Stanza. It would be more useful in describing the second stanze"

Harold Bloom thinks otherwise, as it was patterned off his paragraph discussion stanza one (not stanza two): "The first stanza is natural process; the remaining two stanzas are sensuous observations of the consequences of that process: first, sights of the harvest in its final stages; then, post-harvest sounds, heralding the coming-on of winter. The sequence of the three stanzas then is pre-harvest ripeness, late-harvest repletion, and post-harvest natural music." Bloom 1971 p. 432

13. "The second stanza presents the personification of Autumn as the harvester" - Personification is used inappropriately. Personification is to add human emotions and attributes, not occupations. Anthropomorphization or allegorization are the only appropriate terms. But listing any terms is intellectually inappropriate.

14. "1. I have not the faintest clue what the FA edtior meant by "The second stanza reverses the images of the first stanza". It isn't explained! "

Maybe if you read the complete sentence you would see: "The second stanza reverses the images of the first stanza and describes the process of harvesting." Harvest is the reversal of growth.

15. "The editted version picks up the themes of "Personification", the "advance of the season", the "advance of the day into afternoon", as well as including and further expounding the "stasis and motion" mentioned in the FA version."

All without having the sources, thus adding original research, contradicting what the sources say, and putting in things that are simplistic and make this more of an essay than a quality article.

16. "NOTE: 1. "Within the final moments of the poem, there is an introduction of the harvest and Autumn is manifested in the role of a harvester". This is plainly erroneous. The harvest and manifestation of Autumn as Harvester are not "within the final moments of the poem". They are the whole theme of the second stanza! "

Wrong. The 2nd stanza clearly said: "is not actually harvesting but exists in a stasis". Autumn doesn't harvest in stanza two. She is "sitting careless on a granary floor". The third stanza is the stanza of death - i.e. the reaping or the harvest aka DEATH: "the coming death of the year, and of course the familiar archetypal relevance of the association to our feelings of sequence in our lives" - Bate 1963 p. 583

17. Additions - "he last stanza contrasts Autumn's sounds with those of Spring. The sounds that are presented are not only those of Autumn but essentially the gentle sounds of the evening." and "The full-grown lambs, like the grapes, gourds and hazel nuts will be harvested for the winter. "

Original research. Bate never discusses a contrast with spring or the sounds being part of the evening. What he does suggest is that the images aren't necessarily autumnal except for two - "stubble plains" and the "full-grown lambs". He also doesn't say anything about them being harvested for winter!

18. "The references to Spring, the growing lambs and the migrating swallows remind the reader that the seasons are a cycle."

Original research and not cited. The implication would be that Keats was expecting a rebirth in his own life, which no critic since 1950 was willing to consider. If anything, this is a poem about his own artistic career and him trying to come to terms with his own life, and it was discussed in the theme section when saying a poet is parallel to the farmer.

19. "This section has been enlarged, and reoganised and has had examples drawn from the text added to it, illustrative of the forms and figures of speech described."

The previous version was to the point, informative, and didn't include original research.

20. " having three clearly defined sections corresponding to the Classical divisions of strophe, antistrophe, and epode."

Original research and wrong. Odal hymns do not have clearly defined strophes, antisrophes, and epodes. That is why they are odal hymns and not odes.

21. "2. Discussion of "Ubi sunt" device." A low quality source for something that is unnecessary.

22. "The editted paragraph orders the discussion of structure, defining first the Rhythm. The Rhythm is iambic pentameter, and this poem is cited in various sources as an example. It is the first thing that should be to be mentioned, after the number and length of stanzas. "

Except that this poem is the least iambic of his later works.

23. "if the FA editor, let alone the reader, fails to comprehend that the cited work means that there are 13.9% spondees within a poem that is otherwise composed of iambics, "

It isn't just "iambs" verse "spondees". There are many, many other variations of rhythm. The sheer amount of spondees is completely unique in English poetry.

24. "some reciters will emphasise them and others will treat all but the most obvious as iambics."

Probably why she thinks it is iambic when critics say no.

25. Original research. "The poem doesn't lack hiatus. There are at least three examples of it." Not according to Walter Jackson Bate, who won the Pulitzer on the matter.

26. "NOTE: 1. This is an expansion. " Translation Original research.