Talk:Isle of the Cross

message: This article should be deleted, as it only consists of speculation. There is no evidence that Melville ever wrote a whole novel and destroyed the manuscript without having it published. And what it says about Bartleby is unconvincing as well.MackyBeth (talk) 16:14, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: this Google books search found 3800 hits for '"Isle of the Cross" Melville'. However, the article could use better referencing. RJFJR (talk) 17:25, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks for that Google link. If you take the trouble to just read the first five or so results, you will find out that its existence is controversial among scholars. Result nr. 3 is Elizabeth Schultz pointing out that there is "only tentative evidence" that it existed, and result nr. 4 is the signalling that scholar Robert Milder did not include The Isle of the Cross in his book.MackyBeth (talk) 17:49, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: As long as it is well sourced speculation, it might be ok for an article anyway. Hershel Parker (source for first sentence) seems to be a notable opinion on the subject, but I have no idea how accepted his view is. Is he the only one who thinks this? Are there scholars that argue against him? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:57, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

text: Herman Melville bibliography source Isle of the Cross to: Robert S. Levine, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville. Cambridge, England and New York City: Cambridge University Press (1998), xviii. . Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:05, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

text: And THAT source (thank you Google books) says that "Evidence suggests that he completes a book manuscript, The Isle of the Cross, which the Harpers choose not to publish." It seems WP is overstating its sources on this book. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:18, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Indeed the point is that there is no general acceptance among Melville scholars that the title refers to a book. Otherwise you would find plenty of references to the title that do not lead to the same scholar.MackyBeth (talk) 13:55, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

text: I inserted "purported" in the lead sentence, since I think it reflects the sources used there (one which I added). If you remove that word, you say something the sources don´t. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:34, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: You are right. My objection was that there were a whole bunch of judgmental words, but now "purported" is simply reporting. ch (talk) 19:24, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

text:  I feel that the recent amendments have improved the article. As for my reasons for requesting to delete it, the article as it originally stood was taking sides, because its mere existence would suggest that there was no question that The Isle of the Cross existed. I would still prefer to see this article gone and its contents integrated into the Herman Melville page, but then again, Melville's Bartleby would no doubt "prefer not to". But this fine for now. Let's move on, because there is still an enormous amount of hard facts about Melville and his works that should be added to articles on him and his works.MackyBeth (talk) 21:24, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

text: Nice, but do we know that Hershel was the first to suggest this? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:26, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes we do, see note 1 of the article (I mean the article this is the Talk page of). Parker's essay "The Isle of the Cross: A Survey and a Chronology" in American Literature for March 1990 is the first suggestion that it was a book. Note 9 is a protest against Parker's conclusions from the evidence, and an alternative interpretation of the evidence. The issue has not been debated much since, and other Melville scholars have been reluctant to accept the view that it was a book. And this is precisely what my point is: Wikipedia policy of objectivity requires that not the view of Parker be reflected, but said reluctance.MackyBeth (talk) 16:35, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

text: You have nothing to apologize, because this issue here precisely pertains to the heart of the Wikipedia policy, and I'm glad to see how serious contributors are to hold up the requirement of objectivity. That said, one small addition: Parker's biography of Melville is a 2,000 page work in two volumes, Vol. I (1996) ending with the publication of MD in the fall of 1851, and Vol. II (2002) covering the years 1851-1891. Since The Isle of the Cross is attached to 1853, it is Parker (2002) that is to be consulted. For the moment this is all for me, because I am adding to the Moby-Dick page and don't like to be distracted from that project now. Cheers!!MackyBeth (talk) 20:28, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

text: I reluctantly forgive you for keeping improving an article that caught my intrest ;-). I must ask: that Melville turned in a manuscript in 1853, that is accepted fact, and not just speculation? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 21:46, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, he turned in a manuscript but was "prevented" from publishing it at the time, as he wrote in a letter. But the meaning of prevented here is not exactly clear. If you type Google the three words Melville Delbanco Interview, you will find an interview on the Morning News website, where Andrew Delbanco says that for Henry James we have 12,000 letters, and for Melville just 300, of which many are perfunctory. That got me thinking that if you work on Melville all your life, you might get to the point where you squeeze information out of the sparse evidence until you get to the point where you draw conclusions that the evidence just can't carry. When a Melville scholar senses this tendency, he may do good to take some time studying James, then return to Melville with a fresh view and judgment of the sparse material.MackyBeth (talk) 21:59, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I did some reading about this some years ago, and it seems to me there's been easily enough discussion on this subject that it's worthy of an article. It's accepted that Melville submitted a manuscript that was "prevented" from being published at least for a time in 1853. Parker's suggestion that it was the Agatha story and that it was titled "Isle of the Cross" is not universally accepted but it has been widely discussed. In fact, I think it's pretty common for writers to call this manuscript "Isle of the Cross", at least conventionally, regardless of whether they think it was a lost version of the Agatha story. I think we could write a comprehensive article covering all the major points and debates.--Cúchullain t/c 23:41, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Weakness of this article

message: I added a sentence from Norsworthy and in note 11 that sentence is attributed to the link in note 10. So I don't get why the word [who?] is added to my sentence, for I thought the source is clear enough.MackyBeth (talk) 17:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I gave my two cents on the  question above, but can also comment on how to make the sourcing more clear. The format for multiple citations of the same source is given at WP:CITE#Inline citations, section 3.1.4. Cheers! ch (talk) 04:23, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I took the Stephen Scott Norsworthy bits out. He wrote a book , but just blogging on this subject doesn´t make him a WP:RS. For him to be used here, there need to be more than a blog-post. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:12, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Thanks for that Wiki-link on Citations, I indeed need to consult it. And as for the Norsworthy deletion, there is indeed so much scholarly material available for Melville that we seem not to need to rely on blogs for sources, but I must add that but a few scholars have gone into the Isle of the Cross.MackyBeth (talk) 14:55, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Citation from Norsworthy

message: Checked what Delbanco writes on this in his 2005 biography. The Index says page 206, but it is actually on 208. This is it:
"The result was a novel-length manuscript, now lost, submitted the following spring to Harpers under the title The Isle of the Cross and promptly rejected, possibly because the Harpers anticipated a legal dispute involving descendants of Agatha and her bigamous husband. Melville later made cryptic reference to having been 'prevented from printing' it." The prevented-quotation is keyed with an endnote to the letter of November 24, 1953. If this book is otherwise well-indexed, this quotation is all Delbanco says on the title.MackyBeth (talk) 15:24, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Delbanco on The Isle of the Cross