Wikipedia: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Entry for 755 AD/Talk

Just as I said in the talk on the Edgar Allen Poe page, I don't think that Wikipedia is a site for primary sources, whether literary or historical. This information should be integrated (and considerably boiled down) into various history pages and person pages, but not put on in extenso. --MichaelTinkler

I agree. I really don't see the point of putting this sort of thing in an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is not Project Gutenberg. --Zundark, 2001 Sep 27

In general I agree, but I think this is short enough to be quoted in its entirety. --Pinkunicorn

: well, this is only one year out of several hundred. It'll add up. Not to mention that, pace the English historians, the Anglo-Saxon chronicle is far from the most interesting or most complete chronicle from the middle ages.

This is all good secondary source material masquerading as primary source. Whilst interesting in its own right, it certainly needs putting in context in order to have any encyclopaedic value. What we need is an Anglo-Saxon historian on the block to do this sort of stuff. I will try and have a canvass around my acquaintances. Anyone else know anyone? sjc

: to do what? It doesn't need to be edited for wikipedia. Wikipedia needs an ENTRY on this chunk of history which would use materials like this, not reprint them. An entry on E.A.Poe should talk about the works, not copy them. This is, indeed, 2nd hand material, but the chronicles are all we've got in writing for big chunks of medieval history other than the testimony of archaeology. If you want a sourcebook for medieval history, please feel free to use [[Orb, the Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies]], but don't cut and paste into Wikipedia, please! --MichaelTinkler

: Put it into context and explain the inconsistencies, the fact that much is hearsay (or worse), etc. But I am expanding my brief both in time and geographically now, so I may well have a stab at it myself. Anglo-Saxons here we come...sjc

This chronicle entry was added because it was part of my entry on the short story. It's value as a piece of medieval history is secondary. Before it is removed, could other people evaluate it's use in relation to short story? thanks :)--trimalchio

Also, this was the first thing I posted, as part of short story, which is why it is named so poorly... sorry 'bout that. --T

this is an interesting, but idiosyncratic use of the Chronicles genre. Chronicles are a very important and heavily studied type of historical documentation rather than having been thought of as an act of creativity. I'm not sure how applicable they are to 'short story' --MichaelTinkler

The discussion arose in a cross discipline seminar I took during my masters work at the University of Michigan. Certainly the Chronicles have a whole meaning and importance for historians and I don't want to muslce in on that, but the position they hold in the history of Prose as art is unclear and frankly understudied. The whole study of the history of prose as art is understudied. We study History in academia, and we study Literature. If these two things come into contact, it is usually in one of two ways. Either we use a piece of literature to discuss an historic setting, as was done with Beowulf in the 19th century (and much malinged by Tolkien), and also as we frequently do now when we discuss the Sociological and Historic implications of literature, which is part of the Radicalizing of Literature; or, we use Historical context to better explore the characters and emotional context of a piece of writing. That is, in all ways, we only talk content. Either we talk factual content, or the possibilities of determining facts from content, or we talk about emotional/cultural content. We use the content of History to comment on the content of Literatur and vice versa. Rarely do we talk about form, and about craft and about technique, and almost never do we discuss the historical progression of craft or form or technique. This is why, in my opinion, there are few good definitions of the FORMS of writing. We never talk about WHY something is a novel or a play or a short story. We rarely wonder WHY Shakespeare wrote everything in Verse. We don't question the form of BEOWULF... or at least not too hard (well, I guess we DO discuss prosody with Poetry). So when you want to say anything encyclopedic about a Form as a Form, it's get kind of hard. So I took a stab with this. If you want a call to authority, I can say that in general both Dr. John Tanke and Dr. Thomas Toon of the University of Michigan agree that 755AD is more than just history, and potentially an aesthetic act. But you are correct. It is idiosyncratic and a bit non-standard. But after six years studying Fiction as form and art, I can say that very little has actually concretely been said about the forms and their history. So you have an entry on The Novel. And you have an entry on The Short Story, and i wonder what exactly CAN be said in them. I honestly wonder. Anyway, those are my thoughts. --trimalchio

Alright, given that project (which sounds interesting), I'd be tempted to categorize it as an essay based on its length and attempted facticity. Or not. You're right about the awful interesections of historians with art forms; I'm an art historian and put up with it every day - we sometimes call what historians do with art 'illustrated lectures' to distinguish them from any serious engagement with the art. --MichaelTinkler

: I beg of you another question then, Mr. Tinkler. If it is an essay, where should it go? As a subpage within the entry of short story? Or on the commentary page (which I think is a clunky system... though I am not sure what else should be there)? Or should it be NPOVd as an entry? And if it is moved off as an essay, what would be the entry for Short Story? Or, more generally, what is the entry for an art form supposed to look like. literature is a laughable page in my opinion, but I sympathtize with its author because I have no idea what to put in its place. We have a class that is dreaded by all teaching faculty here at UofM?: English 239 WHAT IS LITERATURE? I mean, the question defies you to not screw it up. I can list a whole bag full of cultural Wikipedia entries that bother me by their very existence... I have tried to weigh in on a lot of them and it has been more of an exercise in learning what can't work then in any substantive imporvement. But, anyway, just a question put to you, or Wikipedia in general. -trimalchio

I've already cast my vote. No primary sources except those quoted inside articles. Of course 'what' questions lead to overbroad answers, but without them how do you justify tenure? Or searching to replace that recently retired 'chair' of literature? --MichaelTinkler

I vote we get whatever primary sources we can (that do not have copyright hassles). This was not done much in traditional encyclopedias mostly for reasons of space, but there is no reason why we can't do it here, and it makes the encyclopedia much more useful. It is important that we make it clear what is primary source (and discourage editing primary sources except for fixing copying corrections), and give some indication of where it comes from. -- Geronimo Jones

You know, it's not hurting anyone that it's here. We should tolerate each other's research peccadillos, as long as they're contributing to Wikipedia, unless they're doing something actually harmful. In other words, I think it's fine to discourage people from adding primary sources, but if they really want to do so, fine.

See Wikipedia commentary/Project Sourceberg for more thoughts. --TheCunctator

I disagree - especially as it's NOT a primary source -- it's a primary source in translation, readily available elsewhere. I think it would be great for trimalchio et al. to write an article ABOUT the A/S Chronicle, dealing with both literary and historical interpretation. However, without contect, it's just a chunk of meaningless (although fun) information. This is especially true when we see it broken down into its yearly components. Some of us already have enough trouble trying to convince people that this type of source must be read critically... Additionally, since all such primary sources (whether in translation or not) are not equally available due to copyrights, I think that there is a very real possibility that the appearance of only a few might lead some readers to believe that those sources are somehow more valid than othersJHK