This review is transcluded from Talk:A Political Romance/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: LEvalyn (talk · contribs) 06:37, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 16:37, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• The 2nd lead paragraph At this time ... now known. reads more like a Context section (could be start of your 'Background') than lead material; it doesn't seem to be a summary of anything in the article?
  • Good catch that it wasn't directly in the article -- I've added it to "Background". I wanted to include this context in the lead to explain why Fountayne is relevant to Sterne, and what the goal of the pamphlet was. I've revisited the organization of this information in both the lead and the "Background" section. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 17:51, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    • That's great. Why don't we have the Background before the Synopsis to get the reader into the context first?
• His highly successful comic novel, Tristram Shandy (1759–67), published its first volumes within the year. - the novel published its volumes?! Odd phrasing.
  • Sorted. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 17:51, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• I've done a very small amount of formatting.
  • Thank you! ~ L 🌸 (talk) 17:51, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• one shilling (much more than the six pence...) - Six pence is half a shilling, so "much more than" is "twice".
• An allegory: that would mean that there is a 1:1 mapping between each of multiple things on each side (so, an allegory of life would have allegorical elements for each of parents, embryo, baby, child, lovers, marriage, etc.). The first paragraph of 'Synopsis' makes it look as if there might be such a structure; it would be best to spell out the multi-element nature of the allegory with a table showing the correspondences. At the moment it's not obvious what Mark Slender and William Doe might correspond to, for instance, nor why the plush breeches have to be supplemented by pulpit-cloth and velvet cushion; nor why Trim is involved in three pitched battles... The 'Key to the characters' seems to go part of the way in this direction, without quite spelling out the parallels because none of the actions and objects are included. If you want a worked example, there's one I did at Morgoth#Satanic figure (as an image, but a table would have worked too).

• All the images are plainly relevant to the article. All are on Commons, and appear to be correctly licensed.

• All the cited works are plainly relevant to the article. All are literary works (fiction or criticism) and are of good quality.

• Spot-checks:
  • [2] ok;
  • [15] ok;
  • [20] mainly ok, but we can't tell it's "the first" from a primary source, we need a secondary source for that;
  • [30]: you say because he no longer agreed with the pamphlet's harsh criticisms but source says (1) "an undeserved Compliment to One [Fountayne], whom I have since, found to be a very corrupt man" and (2) "Sterne added that he was unhappy about having placed Topham 'in a ridiculous light'". (1) implies he would now switch the "harsh criticisms" to Fountayne, i.e. he was wrong about the target of the pamphlet, not quite what you say?

• This article is almost there. I'm not quite sure about your interpretation of one of the sources I checked, and I think the allegory needs to be spelt out, as such things are quite slippery and exact correspondence needs to be demonstrated (or at least, presented "fair and square" for the reader). Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:35, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thank you for your review! I have addressed your comments on the sources, and I appreciate your points about making the allegory clear. I particularly like your idea to put the background first, thank you for that. I think the allegory is better spelled out now -- I added the various posts to the key, and tried to make sure they were all appropriately 'foreshadowed' in the Background section. Do you think it is now sufficient? I found it a real challenge for this article to spell out the allegory without getting bogged down in irrelevant detail, so it's very valuable to have an outside perspective. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 20:35, 9 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]