Talk:Georges Danton

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, now in the public domain.
France Portal
Georges Danton is within the scope of WikiProject France, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to France on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please join the project and help with our open tasks.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale.
(If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments, explaining the ratings and/or suggest improvements.)
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.
Biography Portal
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
This article is supported by the Politics and government work group.

This is very old fashionned and not really NPOV. Who feels to rewrite ?

I made a cut at it, but there are references to last names whose full names I don't know. Any help? -- Zoe

I will try to look at this but not now it's getting very late. Ericd 02:01 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] Much more cleanup necessary

In places this article just reads like a ham-fisted mixture of a rewrite and a quoting of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Surely there are more and better sources around now than an encyclopedia from almost a century ago written, it should be remembered, by people with their own little political views. As someone who studied the French Revolution a decade back and has forgotten a lot of what he knew, I'd certainly appreciate something that isn't quite so amateurish.88.67.241.134 21:17, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Education?

I think it would help if someone posted a bit more about his education, at least what school or private tutors he was educated by. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.231.237.199 (talk) 02:04, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] kicked in the face?

Recently added anonymously with no citation: "As a child he was allegedly kicked in the face by a bull, which led to a slight disfigurement of his face." Does anyone know whether this is accurate or vandalism? If no one can provide a cite, and if it's not verified by someone active in Wikipedia, I'm inclined to revert: not terribly important, but bad to have here if false. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:19, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it's true; Danton did have a few accidents involving farm animals in his childhood. The wording could be changed though. --Montagnarde1794 06:21, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
I'll trust you on this, based on your other work. If you have a citation, it would be nice. - Jmabel | Talk 21:17, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
I thank you for your confidence; I'll give a citation as soon as I find my biography of Danton. --Montagnarde1794 05:19, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

It's true; he was also trampled by a herd of pigs and got scarred from Smallpox. The book I foudn this is was called something like "Paris in the Terror". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.56.212.155 (talk) 22:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Needed Cleanup

The article lacks internal organization (perhaps chrono order would work) and can be difficult to parse through. There are also NPOV issues relating to the politics of certain figures and groups, especially the Girondins . The article might also contain slightly too much info. Tagged for cleanup. SicilianMorpheus 21:33, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

I agree that this article needs a cleanup, but not to get rid of any information. One can never have too much. What if someone who was doing an essay for school/college work needed information but something they wanted was deleted? All this article needs are some more sub-headings to split it up a bit. —This unsigned comment was added by Crazy Eddy (talk • contribs) 26 March 2006.

Just a question bout how valid half this stuf is. It seems like its going into more detail about the Rovolution then in to the actual biography Imbored24 04:50, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

It would be pretty useless to talk about Danton outside of the context of the Revolution. - Jmabel | Talk 22:16, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I've done a major lot of cleanup. The article is now a bit more chronological; the more blatant POV phrases are now explicitly attributed, and many of the 1911 EB's opinions simply removed; I've modernised a lot of the prose while, I hope, not committing felonies against good writing. Given that, I've removed the cleanup tag; if anyone thinks that still more is needed, please restore the tag, but be specific about what issues you think remain. - Jmabel | Talk 02:10, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for "meta" material on Danton

This article in my opinion contains only part of what a (twenty-first century) encyclopedia article about such an important historical and political figure should contain. I came to this page looking for the answers to questions about Danton's relevance to today's world: 1) Who was Danton?; 2) Why did that Polish guy make a movie about him, and what cultural resonance does Danton have for Europeans in general and French people in particular that makes him worthy of such a movie?; 3) What does Danton's cultural resonance or whatever you want to call it have to do with a Polish guy making a movie about Danton in the 1980s?; 4) What do French people think of when Danton's name is mentioned -- is it something like what Americans think of when someone says "McCarthy" or "McCarthyism"?; and so forth. What I found here is a very factual biography of Danton with an emphasis on his role in the Revolution, the Gironde, the Mountain, and the Terror--but then he dies and the article stops. Has Danton no relevance to today? If he does, then could somebody who knows the answer to questions such as the ones I posed above write something about it, please? I think that would greatly help students of politics, history and culture. Merci en avance! Dveej 15:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

As for Wajda's film, that probably deserves an article of its own (as does Büchner's Danton's Death). I could imagine doing a broader article on Danton's legacy & cultural significance, and certainly we could start by "incubating" that as a section of this one. Does anyone want to take this on? - Jmabel | Talk 05:44, 9 June 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Toujours l'audace

"One of his fierce sayings has become a proverb. Against the Duke of Brunswick and the invaders, "il nous faut de l'audace, et encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace" - "we must dare, and again dare, and forever dare." " -- I've also seen this attributed to Carnot and Frederick the Great. Source, anyone? -- 201.78.233.162 13:39, 1 July 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Roussel

Hi. I just added the passage about Roussel's Locus Solus in the "fictionalized accounts" section. Unfortunately, I can't remember if I've gotten the details of the arrangement with the executioner exactly right, but the section in Locus Solus pertaining to Danton's head and Roussel's fictionalized back-story is too fantastical to leave out of the wiki, especially since there's already a "fictionalized accounts" section.

As a side-note, the wiki really is in serious need of some organization and "clean-up." There seems to be a wealth of information, but it's highly inaccessible. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.95.39.34 (talk • contribs) 27 July 2006.

[edit] Odd wording

Although this article touches on the main points of Danton's life it really comes nowhere near a proper understanding of his role in the Revolution and his significance as a politician. The prose, moreover, is flowery and subjective. Phrases like "But in Germinal feeling was not yet ripe" are either pseudo-poetic and highly overblown, or unintentionally funny. I am not really sure which. I would ask for justice for Danton as the greatest-and most human-of all the players in a great historical drama ( my own purple prose!) White Guard 22:57, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Most of this comes from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, which is rather more flowery than normal Wikipedia style. - Jmabel | Talk 05:09, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

How can he be the only person to have owned and operated a motor car, logic tells me that the inventor of said car owned and operated it. Do you mean in france? also what is this doing here? - "he was born to a respectable though not wealthy family, his family was very rich" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.3.232.97 (talk) 23:57, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


Robert K. Massie, author of Nicolas and Alexandra, An Intimate Account of the Last of the Romanovs and the Fall of Imperial Russia, 1967, p.82: "If Lenin was Robespierre, Alexander Kerensky was Russia's Danton." Massie's an Oxvard-educated Rhodes scholar from KY. I had no idea who Danton was, hence I came to this site. Guess I got a good enough idea...Thanks.

[edit] Rating

This is a good B article, but needs to be better sorted out and more sources brought in to upgrade this to GA status. ludahai 魯大海 13:35, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Involvement in storming of Bastille & removal of court

I don't have access to DISCovering World History at the moment, but the Encyclopedia of World History seems to contain nothing that would support 66.16.79.110's assertion. Unless the sources are quoted directly—or at least cited properly, with publication info and page numbers or article names—I see no reason that the article should suddenly contradict its previous, long-established text. Deor 19:08, 7 June 2007 (UTC)