Talk:Miguel Ángel Asturias/Archive 1

Initial comment

Many years ago I read somewhere that Asturias was of (partly) Indian origin, presumably a Maya. When I made research for the short Danish article about him I was not able to verify this. I did find an article in Spanish that seemed to touch on the topic, but alas my Spanish was never good and it has not gone better by not being used. Does someone know: was he a Maya?

--Troels Nybo 08:51, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Will translate

If you post the link to the article in spanish I can read it and sumarize it for you.

Miguel Angel Asturias, Premio Nobel de Literatura, 1967 --Troels Nybo 16:09, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Books are so rich on Guatemalan culture

Miguel Angel Asturias books are so rich on Guatemalan culture. At the end of his books there is a glossario of meaning of so many words such as: atol, shuco, hueuecho. Some of these words are not in use anymore. Some of these words make sense just to Guatemalan people. Asturias books really touch me, they are so dip in feelings. He really was a genious who added to his work his sould and the soulds of spirits, believes and traditions of Guatemala.

Rating

I've just changed the rating for this article to "high." This seems only right since he's Central America's only Literature Nobel Prize Laureate. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 07:51, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Resources

I'm moving this list over from the article itself. The list isn't doing much there, but these could be resources as we look for further information in order to expand and improve the page...

English

• Assuming the light : the Parisian literary apprenticeship of Miguel Angel Asturias / Stephen Henighan., 1999
• Miguel Angel Asturias's archaeology of return / René Prieto., 1993
• Politics and the novel in Latin America : García Márquez and Asturias / Ivan Jaksic., 1980
• Essays on Miguel Angel Asturias / Gerard C Flynn., 1973
• Miguel Angel Asturias (Twayne World Authors Series) / Richard J Callan., 1970
• Asturias : a checklist of works and criticism / Richard E Moore., 1979
• Magical realism and the literary world of Miguel Ángel Asturias / Ray Angelo Verzasconi., 1967
• The narrative prose of Miguel Angel Asturias / Mary Ann Connolly., 1969

Spanish

• Cien años de magia : ensayos críticos sobre la obra de Miguel Ángel Asturias / Oralia Preble-Niemi., 2006
• La narrativa de Miguel Ángel Asturias : una revisión crítica / Saúl Hurtado Heras., 2006
• Una aproximación interpretativa a Miguel Angel Asturias / Oscar Rodolfo Benítez Porta., 2002
• El carácter de la literatura hispanoamericana y la novelística de Miguel Angel Asturias / Iber Verdugo., 1984
• De tiranos, heroes y brujos : estudios sobre la obra de M.A. Asturias / Giuseppe Bellini., 1982
• Miguel Angel Asturias / Carlos Meneses., 1975

--jbmurray (talk|contribs) 23:21, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

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A Source

In trying to find sources on The President, I came across this: The New American Idiom of Miguel Ángel Asturias René Prieto Hispanic Review, Vol. 56, No. 2. (Spring, 1988), pp. 191-208. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0018-2176%28198821%2956%3A2%3C191%3ATNAIOM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8

I don't know if it will help but it might be worth a look over. :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mfreud (talk • contribs) 00:26, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Status?

Can someone tell me how I can find the rating of this particular page? Do I need to submit it for review to find out the status of it? I am wondering if it is a B status. Thanks! --Reabell (talk) 19:12, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

These ratings are provided by individual WikiProjects like WP:MMM. They can usually be found at the top of article talk pages: for instance WikiProject Central America rates this article as Start class. I would say it is somewhere between Start and B, with some aspects being well developed, and others not. You need to cite your sources more often in the text. You also need to format the notes and references better. There are templates which help with this, such as {{cite web}} and {{citation}}. I've added a couple of examples of {{cite web}} to the article so you can see how it is used. Geometry guy 20:34, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I've added a todo list with some general comments at the top of this talk page. Other groups have found these helpful: feel free to add to or remove issues from the list. Geometry guy 20:47, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

References

The following references were sitting on the page, doing nothing in particular. I.e. none of them had been cited. So I'm copying them over here. They should be consulted and used, or deleted. NB the only reference that was being used was in fact an encyclopedia article, which is not a great source. As Researching with Wikipedia puts it: "an encyclopedia is intended to be a starting point for serious research, not an endpoint."

Anyhow, these are the references that need to be used or deleted:

• (in Spanish) Cardoza y Aragón "Miguel Angel Asturias, Casi Novela" (Miguel Angel Asturias, Almost a Novel). (1991) Ediciones Era.
• Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, (1969)
• "Miguel Angel Asturias." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2005-2006 Thomson Gale, Thomson Corporation
• "Lost in the Maize." Metroactive Books. August 14, 1997 Metro Publishing Inc.
• "Miguel Angel Asturias." UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography. CNET Networks, Inc. (2007).
• Auer-Ramanisa, Beby. "Miguel Angel Asturias et la Révolution Guatémaltèque : étude socio-politique de trois romans." Paris: Anthropos, 1981.
• Sierra Franco, Aurora. "Miguel Angel Asturias en la Literatura." Guatemala: Editorial Istmo, 1969.
• Priento, Rene. "Miguel Angel Asturias’s Archeology of Return." Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press,1993.
• Verdugo, Iber. " El Carácter de la Literatura Hispanoamericana y la Novelística de Miguel Angel Asturias." Guatemala: Guatemala Editorial Universitaria, 1968.
• Leon Hill, Eladia. "Miguel Angel Asturias; lo Ancestral en su Obra Literaria." New York: Eliseo Torres, 1972.

--jbmurray (talk|contribs) 03:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

And the same goes for the following references: they should be located in the library and cited and used; or deleted.

• Prieto, René, Miguel Angel Asturias's Archaeology of Return. – Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993
• Llarena, Alicia, Realismo mágico y lo real maravilloso : Una cuestión de verosimilitud. – Gaithersburg, MD : Hispamérica, 1997
• Marting, Diane E, The Sexual Woman in Latin American Literature : Dangerous Desires. – Gainesville, L : Univ. Press of Florida, 2001
• Welly, Carina, Literarische Begegnungen mit dem Fremden : Intranationale und internationale Vermittlung kultureller Alterität am Beispiel des Erzählwerks Miguel Ángel Asturias'. – Würzburg : Königshausen & Neumann, 2004

--jbmurray (talk|contribs) 04:43, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

And this was in the "external links" section:

• Perera, Victor. "Miguel Angel Asturias" Metro (August 14-20, 1997).

--jbmurray (talk|contribs) 23:45, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

More of the same...

• Verdugo, Iber (1968), El Carácter de la Literatura Hispanoamericana y la Novelística de Miguel Angel Asturias, Guatemala: Guatemala Editorial Universitaria.
• Callan, R.G. (1970). Miguel Angel Asturias. New York: Tawayne. p. 182. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

--jbmurray (talk|contribs) 00:32, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Better Sources!

The sources currently being used on this page are really not very good. This one, for instance, is simply a digest of other encyclopedia articles, which aren't great sources in the first place. Given the amount of suggested sources on this page (see above), there's no real excuse for not consulting them! Or look here. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 04:48, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree, and my formatting some of the references to websites should not be interpreted as any endorsement from me that these are the best sources. It is up to you guys to source the article well. I can help out with minor issues such as formatting. Geometry guy 22:18, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd go so far as to say that if at all possible all cites to Donaldson and McHenry should be replaced by more authoritative sources. Again, looking at the bibliography above, this shouldn't be hard. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 22:53, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Plagiarism alert What's more, far too much of the material taken from these three websites (the Britannica, the Donaldson compendium, and the "UXL Newsmakers" site) is in fact plagiarized: either not changed at all, or with only the occasional word changed. I've tried to fix some instances I've seen of this. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 23:41, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Sources

I'm trying to clean up my sources a bit and add more books to my references. A lot of my information comes from websites (see my footnotes) and I'm not quite sure how to properly cite them. Could someone give me a hand? --Reabell (talk) 22:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

The best thing is not to use websites as your main sources. But if they are needed, use the {{cite web}} template. Try to find out who the author is. Provide an accessdate, title, url, and publisher (the organisation behind the website). I'm trying to help out by providing good cites for some of your websources. I hope you will get the idea from this. Geometry guy 21:10, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I did some more formatting. In particular, I added dates to the footnotes, as suggested by WP:CITE. I also switched from the {{cite book}} to {{citation}} templates, which are more flexible and slightly better in my opinion. This also allows you to make links from footnotes to references using {{Harvnb}} if you like that (I've done it, so you can see how it is done). I made my edits in stages, with full edit summaries, so if you don't like any particular change, go to the edit history of the article and click on "undo". Geometry guy 22:16, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

I fixed a few spaces in {{Harvnb}}, which is, sadly, sensitive to spaces around the author name. I hope this didn't cause any edit conflicts. Also, all authors need to be listed when citing multi-author works.

The quality of the referencing is improving very rapidly now, which makes a huge difference to the article's prospects! Geometry guy 01:14, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Status Change

This article is now a B status, yay! Thank you wassupwestcoast... --Reabell (talk) 23:05, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Preliminary GA Review

1. Needs pictures.
2. "Education" section: First sentence is a nonsensical fragment.
3. wikilink the first instance of important terms: countries, organizations, leaders, etc. (I have improved the wlinks up until "Exile and rehabilitation".
4. Use logical quotation. Punctuation goes outside of the quote marks unless the meaning of the punctuation is included in the quoted fragment.
5. Copyedit, especially for commas (I have copyedited up until "Exile and rehabilitation").

Malachirality (talk) 00:35, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I've fixed the first sentence in Education section and have fixed all the quotation punctuation issues, I believe. I would like to point out that images are not required for GA (I've even seen articles pass FA without a single image). This article does have a photo of the subject, and as this is a biography, I believe that is appropriate and no more images are required. Karanacs (talk) 13:46, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

• Oops, my bad, pictures are a suggestion ("where possible and appropriate"), not a requirement. Having said that, a lot of the other author and novel pages have scans of manuscripts and galley proofs, or pictures of original covers, etc. You could find pictures for the various events and people described in the article (the dictators, the revolutions, the Sorbonne, Asturias's birthplace, etc.). Just a suggestion. However, I think an editor has misinterpreted the third bullet point above and wlinked every instance of a term. This constitutes overlinking. In an article of this size, most terms should only be linked once (maybe twice, again near the end, if a term appears very early on)

--Malachirality (talk) 17:25, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Issues with sources

There are a number of weak or doubtful sources used in this article:

1. The Donaldson webpage is not a good source, and should be replaced wherever possible with a better source.

2. Likewise the McHenry Encyclopedia article

3. Ditto the "Findarticles" piece by "UXL Encyclopedia"

4. I'm doubtful about the references to The Bejewelled Boy. Is what's being cited here actually written by Asturias himself, or is it (as seems most likely) publisher's blurb?

--jbmurray (talk|contribs) 08:31, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I have removed a lot of bad sources, for example the "findarticles" and the Donaldson page..... should I remove them from the reference section as well? --Reabell (talk) 00:03, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

If you've removed the sources completely from the inline citations (i.e. what's in the text), then you can remove them now from the References section. NB we need to make sure also that bad sources are replaced by good ones! --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 00:57, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

NB there are still a bunch of these poor sources there. They should be replaced. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 18:01, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

What the Professor said :-). To be explicit: the quotations by Donaldson needs to be sourced to the original articles and authors; the remaining two Liukkonen refs need better sources; the use of Encyclopedia Britannica (McHenry) as a source should be minimized or eliminated. I've copied over the bibliographic info to help with the first job. For the other two, the problem is that they are tertiary sources: it is okay to use them to supplement secondary sources, but they can't be used on their own to support significant facts. Geometry guy 18:17, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I have tried to eliminate the Liukkonen refs but the remaining two I am still trying to find other support for (I don't want to loose the information). Erica has the McHenry source so hopefully she can find what that encyclopedia cites..... --Reabell (talk) 02:24, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I also am working to find the quote in the Hispanic Review so we can get rid of Donaldson...--Reabell (talk) 02:33, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I can deal with the Liukkonen refs. The Hispanic Review you can access via the Library website: search for "Hispanic Review" under "print and electronic journals at UBC." Everything from 1933 is online via JSTOR. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 02:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

And for the I&L source... that's also at UBC, but not online. So hie thee to Koerner's, and you'll find it at PN51 .I18. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 03:20, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Excellent work so far! Also, if you happen to be somewhere near a 1968 issue of Comparative Literature Studies, we still need those specific Leal page numbers. Geometry guy 07:04, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

And you might find yourself near a 1968 issue of Comparative Literature Studies if you were to wander towards classmark PN851 .C62 in Koerner Library... --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 07:38, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I went to the library and found the page number for the Willis quote..... but the Leal source, in the Comparative Literature Studies, is not there. First Volume 5 was a 1953 release and second neither the Volume 5 or the 1968 books have the article. When I used the Leal source originally it was from an encyclopedia, should I try to track that down? I'm not quite sure what to do. --Reabell (talk) 19:45, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Well done on the Willis. About the Leal... Hmm. NB there are two journals called Comparative Literature Studies. The one at PN851 .C62 doesn't even start being published until 1964. I'd say try again, and ask a librarian if necessary. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 20:00, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

(←) Thanks for updating the Leal citations. In view of the above, please check that the bibliographical details are all correct. I now believe this article is entirely adequately sourced (if that makes sense), even if sourcing could be improved in some places. Yay! Geometry guy 23:18, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Further issues, tips

The article is making big progress! I've gone through and done a little bit of copyediting (more is required), and have some tips for you as you keep writing.

• don't wikilink single years (full dates or month-day combinations should be wikilinked though)
• A citation must occur at the end of each sentence that contains a quotation, even if that means that citations will be duplicated in successive sentences (WP:MOSQUOTE)
• It's okay to just wikilink a word once in the article (unless it is a really long article). There's no need to wikilink words like Paris, or the name of the university, multiple times.

These are issues that need to be addressed:

• Need to take care of the citation needed tags, and make sure all information is sourced to reliable sources.
• There are a lot of quoted passages in the article that should probably be paraphrased instead. Save quotes for important things he said, or descriptions of his work that need to be quoted to save the meaning or a particularly wonderful turn of phrase
• watch for passages that might not be a neutral point of view. For example, "viciously banned certain rituals" has a specific point of view (POV). The Central Americans think it was vicious; the Spanish didn't. To be NPOV, the description "viciously" would need to be removed.
• The article needs a good copyedit. There is a lot of repetition within paragraphs, as well as some beautiful, flowery language that is probably more appropriate in a magazine than an encyclopedia article.

You guys are off to a great start, though. Karanacs (talk) 13:49, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

I've gone through and done an unlinking pass; Guatemala was linked multiple times, for example, and so was Men of Maize. I think I found most of them. Mike Christie (talk) 03:08, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I've had a look through, and I think the biggest issue, apart from some missing reliable sources, is the related issue of inappropriate quotation mentioned by Karanacs above. Quotations should be used when it is important who is being quoted, but otherwise they should be paraphrased to eliminate the copyright violation, and cited but not quoted. I've eliminated a couple of quotations to illustrate, but there are many more of them. It should be easy to fix this. Geometry guy 18:48, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, though we should be careful that we don't lose the attribution. But the most important thing is replacing the unreliable sources.

Here's one little task: replace all instances of McHenry source with a decent scholarly reference. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 09:29, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Ditto Liukkonen. Also, specific page numbers for each of the the Leal and Franco (1989) citations would be appreciated. Geometry guy 12:43, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Liukkonen and McHenry are now only used to support basic facts which are unlikely to be challenged: these don't need citations at all for GA, but it is better to have tertiary sources for them than none at all. Geometry guy 23:15, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

GA Reviewer

Do either Geometry guy or Karanacs want to take over reviewing and closing this nom? --Malachirality (talk) 20:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Let me say that I have no problem with this in principle, but I wonder whether we might have another couple of days should someone else take over? Thanks. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 00:13, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I think there is consensus at GA that a "hold should be at least seven days, and extended at the discretion of the reviewer" - to quote one prolific and competent reviewer. I think you can get another couple of days. Cheers!Wassupwestcoast (talk) 01:32, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm too close to the article to do the GA review, but I hope my comments are helpful in reviewing the article. Geometry guy 14:04, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Page numbers for sources

The article would benefit from individual page references for the Franco citations. Thanks for adding the page references to the Leal citations, but it appears that these come from a compilation of journal papers. As far as I can tell from a quick web search, the original article is

Leal, Luis, “Myth and social realism in Miguel Angel Asturias”, Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 5, 1968, pp. 237–247.

If you can get hold of this, please cite it directly with page numbers in that range. If not, please give bibliographical details of the compilation you are using (where the page numbers you cite are 780 and 781). Geometry guy 21:51, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

What Geometry guy said. We do need page numbers for the (first) Franco work, as well as full details: what's the essay name? Meanwhile, I'd add that Comparative Literature Studies is available at Koerner library at PN851.C62. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 13:26, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

This is now all fixed, I believe. Geometry guy 23:12, 7 April 2008 (UTC)