Talk:Ormulum

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Contents 1 NPOV 2 Queries 3 Orm the Ready? 4 Yuck, the Yoghs! 5 Sources

[edit] NPOV

Come now, this is Wikipedia - we can't describe something as "wholly devoid of literary merit" here. Besides, Orm does quite well on the drowsiness test. I can attest to once having read the first 50 lines of his magnum opus before I started nodding. That's 40 lines more than Finnegans Wake can claim, and I see people over there claiming they're writing about a masterpiece! Haeleth 15:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, I had planned to substantiate it a bit by pointing out that

1. It's derivative, lock-step, from Bede and Glossia Ordinaris
2. Its meter is bone-jarring
3. When it's not rattling your bones, the meter is dulling your brain
4. The allegory and typology are lacking in any references to actual life at all, so even the sermons don't give us a glimpse of anyone living
5. It's repetititititititive.

So I had kind of wanted to make the case that it was NPOV without any literary merit at all. It has a great deal of importance, but not as a work of literature. Oh, and if you think Orm's bad, try reading Cursor Mundi. I still have nightmares about having to speed read that before class because it had bored me to a coma the night before.

BTW, if you have more info on Orm, I'm going to try to work this sucka into Featured Article shape in the next few weeks. Your input would be a great help. (Reading 50 lines of Ormulum is rarer than even claiming to understand Finnegans Wake.)

Obviously, I don't have any problem with the NPOV version of the "no literary merit" claim, but I do think that saying that it has no merit is more or less incontrovertible. Geogre 16:42, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I found a source that says that the work is without literary merit! (tee-hee) (No, I won't put it in, but I will cite it when making my own disparaging comments.) (Oh, and it's not JAWs Bennett.) Geogre 22:20, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I should note for posterity that my tongue was firmly in my cheek above. I did once try to devil's-advocate Orm in a tutorial, but I must admit my argument was not wholly convincing. ^_^

Getting this featured article status sounds like a great idea. I'll see if there's anything I can add. Haeleth 23:05, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Do, please. I'm going to tinker with the lead a bit for a while, but I've finished researching it to the degree that I can. There are other things to say, but they're of the dreadfully dull variety (cataloging the ON doublets, picking some danged morphology and talking about how it shows up here then there then nowhere over X years, getting into a tangent about illiterate clergy in 1175, going on a tangent about vernacular masses in 1175, speculating on whether hand B is Walter or Orm still or none of the above, speculating on Hand C being Walter or Orm or the little boy who lives down the lane), and none of them would help make this story exciting. With a fair lead, I think the article would pass FAC, once the prose has been smoothed with rough hands. What I'm most concerned with, though, is whole angles that I've missed, as I'm sure I have. (E.g. I don't talk about patristic exegesis at all (and I don't think WP has an article on it), so explaining Augustine and Bede analyzing everything on a fourfold path is not here. It would only be here to explain how really bizarrely unhelpful Ormulum can be to moderns trying to understand the 12th c. church.) Any input welcome. (And yes, I saw the bulging cheek.) Geogre 01:37, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Hey, Haeleth? I was thinking. Perhaps this article needs a new template, one that says, "Kids, don't try (to read) this at home!" Figure folks are getting the message that reading this book is sort of like an autolobotomy? Geogre 02:05, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Including a few more quotations should have the same effect, don't you think? ;)

The dedication, for example, being the most famous (or do I mean notorious?) passage - I can't imagine why B&S didn't include it; I have it in Treharne, but a diplomatic edition would be even better. Haeleth 14:11, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I've only got B&S and no access to a full ed., although some Projector or other may have put it on the web (and then the authority has to be established). Not much point in putting in Orm's explanation of his spelling system, as it would do no one much good. Hmmm. I'm not afraid of translating myself, but I'll need some text that's worth the effort. Again, any from your quarter would be most welcome. Geogre 18:29, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Queries

Order of C17th ownership: currently the article states "it was purchased first by Franz Junius and then Jan van Vliet, both Dutch antiquarians. It came to the Bodleian library as part of the Junius donation". I don't have anything that discusses the MS history ATM, but that looks odd to me. IIRC Junius acquired it from van Vliet's library after the latter's death - had he owned it previously too? Haeleth 22:06, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Your version makes more sense, but I did get the information from a source (that Medieval Encyclopedia, I believe), and its sentence structure said that Junius and van Vliet owned it successively. That, of course, is one of those sentences that people write when they don't want to give the specifics, and it's fully possible (likely, even) that the author there got it wrong. We all know what fudging looks like, but, when I was making my notes, I didn't have reason to look closely. However, how it came to be the "Junius donation" when it wasn't Junius's has been bothering me some. We can fudge, too, or just put it right. Feel free. (You were also right about the thorn/eth.) Geogre 22:57, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Orm the Ready?

It looks ready to me. Barring objection, I'll nominate it for FA tomorrow. Or, if you'd prefer to nominate it, Haeleth, I'll gladly give place. The point is, this is now a very, very good looking article on a very ugly book. Geogre 18:57, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

And now it is done. We wish ourselves good luck, I'm sure, and intelligent readers. Geogre 02:52, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Yuck, the Yoghs!

-or- Yoghi bare!

Umm, the yoghs still aren't displaying properly for me, with Firefox. I'm not sure what the solution to this is, as I'd need to study some to get up to naif level with screen fonts. Geogre 03:13, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Working fine for me, also with Firefox. Do they work at Yogh? I copied the solution from there (Template:Unicode). So long as you have a font installed that actually contains the proper character, they should be fine. Code2000 has it, although it's a hideous font. — Haeleth Talk 13:42, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, no, now that you mention it, they don't work at yogh for me. So long as it's the fault of my old browser, I have no problem with it. You've coded it in keeping with Wikipedia standards. Beyond that, there is little that anyone can do except use pictures, and those, of course, don't work for text samples from Ormulum. Geogre 13:47, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, what is needed is a font which the reader of the article has installed. In this connection, the writer is relatively unimportant. Though it is not the answer of a purist, would it not be better provisionally, to use something like "ζ", together with an explanation of the diffuculty? While not ideal, it is better than the burst of machine speak, which I get now. (RJP 19:38, 23 October 2005 (UTC))

A better replacement would be ʒ... it's still not universal, but it's present in more fonts than yogh, and it's closer to the right character, too. Is it visible for you here: "þeʒʒre"?

Failing that, there's a hacky alternative: "þe33re".

It seems to work here (Firefox, IE, and Opera all display it "acceptably"), and it has the added advantage (?) of being legible even for Lynx users. Plus anyone who ever transcribed Middle English with a typewriter will surely love being reminded of this venerable technique. ;)

— Haeleth Talk 20:31, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Using Internet Explorer, these work for me on the formal discussion page but not on the edit or difference presentations of it. (RJP 22:16, 23 October 2005 (UTC))

"Turn platen one half line, type 3, backspace, type 3 again, turn platen back up half a line." Oh, yeah. Fortunately, I wasn't dealing with yoghs when I was dealing with typewriters (still thinking, at that time, that Modern literature was the coolest). All of the above work, but we really are at a difficult pass. To some degree, we can only do what we can do. Short of having articles in .pdf, we're always going to be limited to the expanded font packages. While the solutions above work for we three, we can't really tell what's going to happen to people with entirely different character sets (French, Swedish, Dutch) or those who use font translation programs (any oriental language). I'm content with things as they are, but an changing to another, more accepted, way is, of course, good. Geogre 02:11, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

I think we do need to do something - a featured article, by its very nature, needs to be accessible to those unfamiliar with the field, and while you can obviously say "aha, missing character, must be yogh", a visitor to Wikipedia would say "dear me, looks like this site is buggy". I'm rather suprised nobody's brought this up on the FAC page. They probably all have Unicode fonts installed... :/

I've managed to rule out using ezh, since my Win98 testbed (with deliberately limited range of fonts) didn't manage to display that. The <3> hack is neat, but not nice, and I don't know if Wikipedians really approve of that sort of thing.

There are two alternative approaches. The first would be to take editorial liberties: I note that Orm doesn't appear to use <y> (at least, not in the quoted passages)... might it be reasonable to substitute that, with an appropriate note? We've already followed the editors we quote in silently replacing wynn with <w>, after all, and it's the traditional thing to do for Layamon.

The other approach would be to substitute an equally "representative" passage that doesn't use any yoghs.

Comments? — Haeleth Talk 13:44, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

There's always one guy who'll say, "Meh, close enough." I suppose I'm him, here, but, at the same time, you're absolutely correct. The Ayenbite that has been requested is another such instance. (I think with Layamon the argument is sometimes that it the consonant became /y/ in his case, so modern editors feel like they're helping readers by making him more obviously Lawyerman. All such things are excuses, though.) Given that we are always already out of compliance with some browser or OS (e.g. does anyone know how far "Windows MediaCenter" or "Longhorn" are going to shove the old fonts out of whack), the kludge-y but best solution might well be to use an unusable typographical symbol (*, ^, #) and have a "Key" that indicates that that symbol was used for the yogh. That would be the most honest way to do it, but it won't give the uninitiated any way to understand it. They won't attempt to read it in their heads (assuming they can read thorn, eth, and ash now). I just don't see how we can chase down the horizon with the reverse Procrustean effort of fitting everyone's bed at once. Geogre 18:17, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Excuse my naïvety but is it not possible to ask for another character in the list at the foot of the editing page? Can they not be constructed from pixels? (RJP 22:03, 24 October 2005 (UTC))

You can't be more naive than I am when it comes to fonts, but I think that won't work. I think that what we're dealing with is less finding a way to insert a character as finding a way to ensure that everyone looking at the page can display it. Any browser can display them, if the browser's owner has updated his or her font package, but some do and some don't come with the various solutions already in the default set. Maybe I'm wrong, though. I don't even know what a unicode is (except a thing used by the unibomb). Geogre 00:10, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

It might be technically possible to insert characters as bitmaps; I believe that's the Wikipedia standard way of dealing with Egyptian hieroglyphs. It would also have been possible to include a little infobox like they have on articles about Indic languages, explaining that you might need to install a special font to see all the text perfectly.

Reading through the excerpt in B&S again, though, I was fortunate enough to come across a little passage that seems to be just as representative of Orm's delightful style, and doesn't use any yoghs. This struck me as the ideal solution - filled with accessibility and scholarly integrity. And it uses the word middellærd, so the article will now automatically appeal to Tolkien fans too. What could be better? ^_^ — Haeleth Talk 19:48, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, hilarious! "The learned scribe Orm did battle against the grimlic foe of sloppy pronunciation and speedy publication. 'Publish or perish,' cried the foe. 'Both,' replied the stout Dragonman." (And the article has made it to FA. So congrats and thanks to all.) Geogre 21:12, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I just read the passage. What a stinker! Let someone question the lack of literary champion after reading that passage. :-) (We kid because we love.) Geogre 01:23, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

I can't believe this article is featured, as it is almost completely without references to credible sources, therefore I added a reference tag. Also, it has many subjective wording which should be altered. Some examples:

"While some scholars have held that the likely origin is Elsham Priory in north Lincolnshire, recently it has been widely accepted that Orm wrote in the Arrouaisian Bourne Abbey" - which scholars? widely accepted by whom? sources please!

"The date of composition is impossible to pinpoint." - again, references to sources please. Is this the author's opinion, or established fact?

"The parchment used in the manuscript is of the lowest quality, and the text itself is written untidily" - NPOV, anyone?

Also, who is this J.A.W. Bennett guy? He's the mentioned various times as authoritive, but there's no Wikipedia page on him.

Jalwikip 09:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

• Your ignorance is absolutely astounding! First: cited to Parke (who counters the argument and presents it). Second: no one proves a negative, so, when you find someone who pinpoints the composition, please do let the world know; until then, you can accept what every historian has said, and, of course, you could try to read the damned sentence which explains why no one knows exactly when. Fourth: cited. Fifth: you have got to be kidding. Did you even try a Google search on Bennett? Have you ever studied anything in Middle English? Have you ever studied Anglo-Saxon? Have you ever studied Medieval English history? If you have ever done any of these, you will have encountered Bennett. He owns the map. Now, if you put that tag on again, I'll speak to some folks about your behavior. You've had an admin who knows the field remove it, and now you've had me respond and remove it. If you put it back again, you'll simply show obdurance. Utgard Loki 12:38, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

It's not my ignorance that is astounding: clearly you do not know the rules of Wikipedia. I cited a list of weasel words and NPOV violations present in the article, that are without clear reference. You just dismiss those. And no, I do not want to Google for anything when I'm reading Wikipedia, the knowledge should be right here. And no, I did not study Middle English, Anglo Saxon or whatever, as you clearly did - do you mean to say I should in order to understand the merrits of your prose? This article was at the time I wrote my comment (I haven't checked it since), of very bad quality, using the weasel words and NPOV wording I spelled out, and void of any clear in-line references. If you think otherwise, it's you who is blatently ignorant (not on the subject, no doubt, but of Wikipedia guidelines in general). Jalwikip (talk) 14:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Here is some help for the befuddled. Bennett had a very, very long career of masterful and careful scholarship. In addition to multiple surveys of ME lit, he put together the standard OUP anthology of Early Middle English Poetry and Prose. Anyone studying eME, which is what the Ormulum is, has to hit him, if one is studying the general shape of the language and literature. It would have been mighty nice if, instead of throwing tags around without discussion, one took the time to read carefully and do even perfunctory searches. As for whether Bennett needs a Wikipedia article or not, I should expect that he was not the sort of man vain enough to wish for nor the kind of lightweight scholar who would need an article on him. He served nobly in a neglected field. Geogre 21:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

What I said above also stands here: I do not need to do 'perfunctory searches' if reading a Wikipedia article. My ignorance on J.A.W. Benett may be befuddling for those knowing him and having studied him, but I bet that 99.99999% of Wikipedia visitors do not know him. So at the very least, a short introductory remark the first time he is introduced between parentheses would be nice. And of course I did not 'throw around' a tag because if the Benett guy, but because of the many weasel words and lack of in-line references. Jalwikip (talk) 14:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah, that's why Bentley has an article and Bennett doesn't. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.255.154.111 (talk) 21:58, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

In defense of that anyway, one can argue that Bentley was discussed and battled against, so we need an article on him. Without knowledge of him, a fair number of jokes from 18th c. lit. fall flat, and several publishing trends get harder to understand, and the "Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns" has a hole in it. Because JAW Bennett is not raising ire, gall, or eyebrows, one supposes that there is less need for an article on him. When he becomes a figure of fun in a Martin Amiss novel, we'll have need. Geogre 10:19, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Gordon Bennett! :-) J. A. W. Bennett has existed since 20 June 2007. Carcharoth 23:37, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

It's even more mysterious, then. I wonder if our user up there is doing WP:POINT or just a parody? Geogre 10:19, 19 October 2007 (UTC)