# Talk:Prise d'Orange

Not sure chanson de geste is super commonly understood and while the link is great, I'd recommend a gloss or similar for the lay reader
Short gloss is now the first graf of Background, lmk if more would be useful. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 20:19, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
I'd suggest clarifying that the poem is not based on real events in the lede-- my first reading left me thinking it was
Rephrased. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 02:14, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
The lead ends with the 12th century. Can you bring it to modern day?
The history is episodic but I've moved it forward to living memory (with one tidbit from last year). AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 02:25, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
I'm curious/a little confused about the greater background about the cycles. Could you establish some more background about what chansons de geste are or were. Other articles should do this, but from what I've seen they don't do a great job. OK, you do a good job establishing background in 'structure' and 'textual history'. Now I'd suggest consider what use the background section holds. Would it be better integrated in other sections? I was left with a lot of questions after reading it (See below)-- many of which I think are answered throughout the rest of the article.
For instance, we have La Geste de Garin de Monglane, which seems to be the overarching cycle? Could this be linked?
I originally had that linked and referred to the Geste de Garin de Monglane throughout. Then I removed it because the scholarship I looked at did not often refer to the cycle under that name. It's weird: you'd expect a poem cycle described as a "complete epic biography" of Guillaume/William to be called the Geste de Guillaume or something. So I don't know where Garin de Monglane comes in. I want to look into this more. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 20:21, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
Turns out Garin is Guillaume's great-grandfather: Special:Diff/1071289276. Everyone's name starts with G. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 21:14, 11 February 2022 (UTC)
suggest linking/glossing 'chanson' the first time it comes up in the body
Tbh I didn't really know what it was before looking into it. Special:Diff/1068518074 is a start. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 22:02, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
Do we know what number of the 24 this poem was?
I didn't, but I do now. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 22:02, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
Suggest prefacing "William of Orange" with "the fictional" or similar.
Yup, this was left over from a previous version of the text where I thought that Guillaume was a fictionalized version of William of Gellone and not a complex hybrid of many historical sources. Rephrased. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 15:42, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
"The Guillaume of the chansons," couldn't parse this sentence correctly on my first read. Maybe swap the order, revise slightly, and place it directly after "from youth to old age"?
Reworked Background for flow and clarity; think it should be easier to understand now. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 17:00, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
"They also centre" what does this sentence mean? Am I being particularly slow, or is there something missing?
Does Special:Diff/1068554698 help? AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 02:47, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
Kind of... What do you mean by "centre the relationship"? My brain wants it to be "centre on the relationship", which is admittedly a different meaning Eddie891  Talk Work  01:25, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Was just supposed to be "hey, reader, it's kinda wacky why boys hang out with their uncles instead of their fathers in these poems—as it turns out, this might be because children were considered as part of their mother's family only". The theory is developed in doi:10.7312/farn94492, but that book is very old and does not appear to have had much uptake besides the brief mention in Ferrante and a few other places. I removed it for now. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 05:44, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
Maybe consider moving the part about Guillaume's main historical counterpart to the third paragraph in this section?
Reorganized the section so the numbers of paragraphs are different—think the whole section makes better sense now. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 18:50, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
Yes, I like it a lot better too! Eddie891  Talk Work  01:25, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
"the historical Guillaume never reconquered the city from them" feels like an odd place to  have the reconquering mentioned first
Redid this. "Historical Guillaume" was left over from a time when I thought there was just one historical Guillaume, which there probably wasn't. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 16:17, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
Suggest going through the article reviewing links (I've noticed a few that are already linked in the lead but would benefit from one in the body too)
"reach the walled city of Orange" feels a little late to establish that Orange was walled
Moved further up. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 18:43, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
"Disguised as a Turk," perhaps "still disguised as a Turk" unless he has changed costumes?
Yup, tweaked that. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 06:46, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
"Nîmes for reinforcements" perhaps "to get" them? 'for' could be interpreted a few ways
Rephrased. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 16:11, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
"Of the approximately 3,700 hemistichs in Prise, about 1,500 are repeated" meaning that there are about 2200 distinct hemistichs or 5200?
The former. The phrasing was decidedly ambiguous. I changed it to a percentage (also given in the source), which I think gets the message across better? AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 07:26, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
Suggest where possible distinguishing people beyond just "scholar" where possible i.e. "scholar of medieval literature"
So this is a substantive Q. If I were writing anywhere other than WP, I would just use the person's name. It's implied in context (esp given that the citations are to journals about medieval lit or similar) that the people to whom analysis are attributed are scholars of medieval lit. But over time I've detected what looks like a tacit consensus that you're supposed to preface these attributions with "scholar of ...", à la WP:CONTEXTBIO. (See the sections on literature in J. K. Rowling, for example.) I think it's kinda silly and doesn't add much, and I want to just remove these descriptors entirely. Is there something in the MOS that says you have to? AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 16:22, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
It's just something I've been asked to add at FAC, though I don't personally feel strongly either way. I'd be ready to say something similar to this should you nominate the article Eddie891  Talk Work  01:26, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
"A similar planctus appears in The Song of Roland" suggest a brief bit showing why the 'Song of Roland' is a relevant connection
I got rid of that paragraph as it looked like trivia to me on a second read. I'll add it back with context if I see references to other literary motifs on a second look at the sources. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 18:50, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
"The first modern version" how are we defining modern here? Maybe link to a relevant article, if it exists?
So the source said "first publication", which must mean "first attested publication in a form like that of the contemporary book". The basic idea is, I think: first release in a non-oral, non-manuscript form. Relatively minor point overall; I could probably just say "first publication", but that reads weirdly to me too. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 05:44, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
I like the textual history, interpretation and reception sections a lot! Really interesting
Suggest adding some sort of date to Bedier's reading
Done. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 05:20, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
" inferior because " suggest "inferior to [something]..."
Reworked. Their main complaint is a lack of realism/verisimilitude, so that sentence now talks about that exclusively. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 01:46, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
This is from a readthrough. On the whole, I liked the article a lot. Very interesting stuff. Just some food for thought. Nothing major. Drmies might be interested in weighing in, if he hasn't yet. Cheers, Eddie891  Talk Work  01:07, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for pinging me--this is fascinating. BTW I think that it's a fine article, and that your comments, if incorporated, will make it even better. I would like a bit more for the "Textual history"; what I really want is a complete set of editions (is Régnier's the only one on the market?) and translations in English (is Ferrante's the only one?) and other languages. Drmies (talk) 01:34, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
Régnier reviews an earlier 1947 edition by Katz, the latter now considered superseded by Régnier's own 1966 edition according to at least one bibliography (Bennett ISBN 9781855661059 2004):Régnier, Claude (1951). "Blanche Katz, La prise d'Orange, according to ms. Ai Bibliothèque Nationale Française 774 including excerpts, published for the first time, from mss Bi, C, D, and E, and variants from mss A2, A3, A4 and B2 ; with Introduction, Table of Assonances, Glossary and Table of Proper Names ; 1947". Romania. 72 (287): 397–399.Uncle G (talk) 11:01, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
I just found one more (loose, prose) translation, which is in Price, Glanville, ed. (1975). William, Count of Orange: Four Old French Epics. Dent; Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0-87471-608-X. OCLC 1093681. That could be reffed as a primary in Textual history but I'm sure there are reviews of the book as well. There's also an entry in Gautier's old bibliography of the chansons which I added as further reading for now in Special:Diff/1068477682. Haven't looked over it in detail yet. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 16:47, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
Do not forget Lachet's translation.Heinemann, Edward A. (2011). "La Prise d'Orange. Chanson de geste (fin XIIe – début XIIIe siècle). Ed. and trans. Claude Lachet". Olifant. 26 (2): 247–265.Uncle G (talk) 17:03, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
I wish we had a link to "pité", the medieval kind, or some kind of target in Pity, where we can explain how pite renneth soone in gentil herte... Drmies (talk) 01:46, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
Added. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 14:03, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
User:AleatoryPonderings, can you read this? If so, please send me the PDF; if you can't, I'll ask at the exchange. It's a review of a 1947 edition, and has some bibliographical information. There's a Jonckbloet 1854 edition; if your sources (if you have those at hand still) allow you to provide a history of the publications/editions/translations, that would be a great addition. (I need to do that for Robert the Devil.) It also lists the nine editions--I don't know if Ferrante and Reignier list those and you chose not include their names (which is fine, as an editorial decision, but for an FA I'd certainly want that in there). There is a verse translation by Michael Newth (2014), according to this review--it must be a good book, since I can't afford it. Anyway, I'm kind of falling down a JSTOR rabbit hole, and I need to get to work--you've already done an excellent job here, but I'd love to see that information: manuscripts, editions, translations. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 16:03, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
Full text is available at Persée, hyperlinked above. Uncle G (talk) 16:38, 28 January 2022 (UTC)