Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pear of Anguish (2nd nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep; already moved back prior to this close. - Daniel.Bryant 10:18, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pear of Anguish

Pear of Anguish was nominated for deletion on 2006-09-12. The result of the prior discussion was "no consensus". For the prior discussion, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pear of Anguish.

This is not adequately sourced in my opinion, and the only reference for a "pear of anguish" comes from a website called "Occasional Hell" that also had this to say: it is not known whether the goatse.cx man has ever used this device. The closest thing we have to a reliable source, the Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, does not corroborate the bulk of the material presented, nor does it even refer to the item by the same title. Is there something to work with here, or are we grasping at straws? RFerreira 07:31, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• I can see that we are going to have to settle this. The various names for this subject are "choke-pear", "pear of anguish", and "poire d'angoisse". Here is what the sources say:

  John Ogilvie (1883). The Imperial Dictionary of the English Language. The Century co., 462.  

  "1. A kind of pear that has a rough astringent taste, and is swallowed with difficulty, of which contracts the parts of the mouth. Hence — 2. Anything that stops the mouth; an unanswerable argument; an aspersion or sarcasm by which a person is put to silence"

  George Morley Story and W. J. Kirwin (1990). Dictionary of Newfoundland English. University of Toronto Press, 96. ISBN 0802068197.  

  In the entry for "chuckley" this cites the entries in the OED and the DAE for various types of "astringent fruit": the "choke cherry" (1796–), the "choke plum" (1556), and the "choke pear" (1530–1672).

  William Dwight Whitney (1889). The Century Dictionary: An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language. The Century co..  

  A choke-pear is simply described as the opposite of a swallow-pear, i.e. a fruit that cannot be swallowed.

  John Bostock and Henry Thomas Riley (1855). The Natural History of Pliny By Pliny. H. G. Bohn.  

  The text discusses a variety of pear named "ampullaceum" in Latin, and footnote #8 points out that Dalechamps has identified this with the modern (at the time) variety of pear that is named "Poire d'Angoisse". A source cited by Jorge Stolfi on the article's talk page points out that Angoisse is a region in Dordogne, in the Arrondissement of Nontron, that produced a hard, bad-tasting, variety of pear in the Middle Ages that people found difficult to swallow.

  By S J. Honnorat (1847). Dictionnaire provençal-français; ou, Dictionnaire de la langue d'oc, ancienne et moderne, suivi 2. Repos, 851.  

  The entry for "pera" gives a long list of names of varieties of pear, including the "Pera Argonissa", which it states to be the "poire d'angoisse".

  Félicie d'. Ayzac (1860). Histoire de l'abbaye de saint-Denis, 341.  

  In a list of the menus for various feast days throughout the year, the "poire d'angoisse", a variety of pear, is listed several times.

  Leopold V. Delisle (1965). Etudes Sur LA Condition De LA Classe Agricole Et L'Etat De L'Agriculture En Normandie Au Moyen Age. Ayer Publishing, 501. ISBN 0833708201.  

  The text lists two varieties of pear that can be found "dans nos anciens textes", one of which is the "poire d'angoisse". In footnote #81 it cites several primary and secondary historical sources for this, pointing out that the variety is also known as "Bon-Chrétien d'hiver".

  John Webster (1996). in John Russell Brown: The White Devil. Manchester University Press, 86. ISBN 0719043557.  

  The annotation for line #234, where one character says "I'll give you a choke-pear." to another, says that a choke-pear is a "hard, unpalatable pear (often used figuratively for a severe rebuke or a setback)".

  William Hazlitt (2005-10-01). "My First Acquaintaince with Poets", in Duncan Wu: Romanticism: An Anthology. Blackwell Publishing, 776. ISBN 1405120851.  

  The footnote says that "A choke-pear was used by robbers: it was made of iron in the shape of a pear, and would be placed into the mouths of their victims. With the turn of a key, it would enlarge so that it could not be removed." This is a modern editorial explanation of the metaphorical use in the actual text. In the actual text, a work of scholarship is described as a "metaphysical choke-pear". As can be seen from Ogilvie and Brown above, there is a less colourful explanation of what a "metaphysical choke-pear" is. It's an argument that is unanswerable or unrefutable.

• There are quite a few books that describe a "choke-pear", or a "pear of anguish", or a "poire d'angoisse" as a iron tool used to gag. Most of these books are works of fiction. A lot of authors in the 19th and 20th century have picked up on the idea that such a device existed, and incorporated it into their stories as a device to terrify the protagonists with. See F. Marion Crawford (1901/2004). Marietta, a Maid of Venice. Kessinger Publishing, 427. ISBN 1417945214.  for example. Alexandre Dumas, père has one character mention a "poire d'angoisse" in chapter 22 of Twenty Years After (albeit that, unlike the authors of fiction who relish in giving gruesome descriptions of the thing, he doesn't specify what it actually is). Looking for non-fiction we come up rather short:

  Richard Head and Francis Kirkman (2002). The English Rogue. Routledge (UK), 627. ISBN 0415286778.  

  This describes the use of a "choke-pear" by robbers. It is supposedly factual, but as the subtitle says, it is "Described in the Life of Meriton Latroon, A Witty Extravagant". The volume is written as a first person autobiography of a fictional character. It's hardly a work of scholarship. It's sensationalism, pure and simple. It seems wholly unreliable as a source.

  Edgar Block Frank (1950). Old French Ironwork: The Craftsman and His Art. Harvard University Press, 211.  

  The description of figure #440 on plate #92 is that it is an object named a "poire d'angoisse, an appellation for which we have no English equivalent". The author deduces from the shape of the object's key that it was manufactured in the "early sixteenth century".

  m. fregier. Histoire de L'Administration de la Police de Paris, 83.  

  The author describes the "poire d'angoisse" as an "instrument à l'usage de certains voleurs".

  Benjamin P. Eldridge (1897/2004). Our Rival, the Rascal: A Faithful Portrayal of the Conflict Between the Criminals of This Age and The Police. Kessinger Publishing, 285–286. ISBN 1417959525.  

  This is a far more reliable source. It describes the "poire d'angoisse", invented by a robber named Palioly in the days of Henry of Navarre complete with spring-loaded spikes and special key, citing M. de Calvi's Histoire General Des Larrons written in the 17th century as its source. However, it then proceeds to cast doubt upon the entire idea, saying that "[f]ortunately for us this 'diabolical invention' appears to be one of the lost arts, if, indeed, it ever existed outside of de Calvi's head. There is no doubt, however, of the fashioning of a pear-shaped gag which has been largely used in former days by robbers in Europe, and may still be employed to some extent. This is also known as the 'choke-pear', though it is far less marvellous and dangerous than the pear of Palioly."

• I conclude from this that it is pretty much unequivocal that there is a variety of bad-tasting pear (grown in Angoisse in the Middle Ages) that is known in French as "poire d'Angoisse", and that in English a pear that is so sour that it is difficult to swallow has been known as a "choke pear" for a long time (alongside other sour fruits such as the "choke cherry", itself to be found documented in many sources as a species of cherry in North America whose fruit is exceedingly bitter, and "choke plum"), from which the metaphor of an argument that cannot be answered has sprung.

  As for the instrument of robbery: The sources that confirm the idea are either fiction or sensationalism. (As Securiger points out on the article's talk page, there's a lot of contamination of early 20th century scholarship by these fictions, too.) The sources that are actually reliable themselves cast doubt upon the whole idea. They confirm that an ordinary pear-shaped gag, without all of the acoutrements of springs, spikes, and keys, is known as a "poire d'angoisse" (and that's probably, from the context of the story, what Dumas was referring to).

  I have found no sources that confirm that this is an instrument of torture. Even the (reliable) sources from the 20th and 21st centuries that take devices from museums, of unknown provenance, and (like Frank above) hypothesize what they might be, don't hypothesize a torture device.

  Therefore: I think that there's enough from the above to make an article, especially given Eldridge's debuking of the idea and the abundance of sources that tell us that these are varieties of fruit. Keep, rename back to choke pear (per our Wikipedia:Naming conventions), and feel free to write an article. Uncle G 13:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

• Keep and move in accordance with Uncle G's comments. When the AfD discussion tells you even more than the article in chief does, this is an obvious suggestion that the article wants amendment rather than deletion. - Smerdis of Tlön 15:34, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep, move rewrite. Excellent work, Uncle G. Grutness...wha? 00:36, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
• Keep as a result of the amazing rewrite by Uncle G, I think it is safe to withdraw this nomination. RFerreira 06:56, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.