Talk:Seeing with the Eyes of Love

Introduction

• The book discussed here is a commentary.

Therefore you are absolutely obliged to state with clarity the name and the author that the book is a commentary on.

To have the title of the original work wrongly linked in the first sentence is slack.

To leave the name of the author of the original work out of the first sentence is just plain rude.

• Thomas a Kempis, "traditional" author. He isn't a "traditional author". This is a misuse of the word "traditional". It implies that he is part of a line of author's that by an existent tradition, write a particular thing.

Neither can you say that he is "traditionally" believe to have authored the book. A traditional belief is one that is passed on through generations.

It isn't like that. Thomas a Kempis didn't sign his name to the work. but his contemporaries said he wrote it, and modern scholarly examination of other writings, attributed to him or in his name, indicate him as the author.

So the word you may e looking for is "attributed". But it isn't "traditionally attributed". It is a generally accepted attributed.

So wherever the words "traditional author" are used in this article.It needs to be fixed.

Amandajm (talk) 00:54, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Hello Amadajm, I like the edits you just did to the lede, I think it reads better. Whether or not it was rude to omit Thomas a Kempis from the lede before, it seems to flow nicely now, so let's keep it. With regard to the phrase "traditional author": I am not a scholar well-versed on these matters, but I do have the impression that contemporary scholarship has doubts about whether Thomas regarded himself as an author. Note the statement by Flinders (who has a doctorate in medieval literature), quoted in the article, that the Imitation "is not so much the work of a single man as it is of an entire spiritual movement." Elsewhere in her Afterword she states (p. 260):

Some remarkably vitriolic essays have been written on the probable authorship of this spiritual classic! Part of the problem is that the book is more a distillation than an original production. On every page one finds quotations or paraphrases from scripture, from the church fathers, and from writings of the first members of the Brothers of the Common Life. We have no manuscript copy, moreover, on which anybody has actually claimed authorship.... Fortunately for those of us who care, the scholarly world has reached accord on the question of authorship.... Thomas a Kempis is the recognized author, so long as we understand that the whole notion of authorship didn't mean in his time what it does today -- particularly where spiritual writings were concerned. When a man or woman was able to inspire others, by spoken as well as by written word, it wasn't thought to be through any special gift of their own. The Holy Spirit was working through them....

Given this ambiguity about authorship in our modern sense, this does not seem a large issue to me. To me the phrase "traditional author" still does the trick, although I acknowledge that there are many ways to interpret that phrase, most of which do not apply to the current situation. But if you have wordsmithing suggestions, feel free to propose them. I just hope that whatever emerges won't overly encumber the readability. Best regards, and thanks again for the nice edits you just did. -- Presearch (talk) 01:20, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Removal of the great big box

That box constitutes over-emphasis in the extreme.

Boxes which set something part are used for pithy quotes. They are used for shortish quotes which don't fit conveniently into the text. You might use a box in an article about an author to quote just one verse of a poem, or one short paragraph to give a feel for the author's style.

Boxes are not used for information that is part of the text of the article itself.

In this case, the content of the box is a list of the content of the book. Therefore it belongs within the text of the article, not in a box.

If you want a box, then pick just one significant thing that your author said, and put that in the box.

Position the box in the right place, and make it a narrow width that does not expand to take up three-quartes of the screen. Put it low enough down so that it cannot push other text sideways or clash with the position of the intro . It was badly positioned. i.e. it was going to look bad on almost all modern screens except very narrow vertical ones. Most screens are still horizontal, and that needs to be taken into account when formatting.

Amandajm (talk) 01:09, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I have restored the box per WP:BRD. Unfortunately I am out of time for discussion today, but I will have time tomorrow. I will only say that there were many other people who looked at the article before you did, and none of them felt the need to annihilate the box, so given that I have invoked WP:BRD, it is definitely appropriate to discuss this. Also, before I go, if I have an opportunity, I will try to move the box down 1 paragraph. Its layout had been working nicely for many browser widths. Making it a tiny bit lower could make it work better (and not pile up) for even wider browser widths, which perhaps is what you have. -- Presearch (talk) 01:25, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, lots of people have probably looked at it, but not actually thought critically about its content. That's the way it goes.

That which is contained in the box is part of the proper subject of the article. If you want to list the topics, chapter by chapter, then it should not be in a box but within the discussion of content.

Why the box? There needs to be some justification for sticking a list inside a box, other than the fact that no-one has criticised it up to now? Yes, turning the stuff into text will take time, but it needs to be done.

You positioning of the box is still messy! Why on earth put it immediately above a major section division, instead of below it?

The content of the box plainly links to the paragraph below the section division, not the one above it.

I haven't looked to see if there is an MOS recommendation about boxes, but, in practice, they are not used for lengthy wads of material that can be incorporated into the text. They are used only for quotations that stand apart from the text. You have a section called Topics covered. That is the section in which the information belongs.

Amandajm (talk) 01:51, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

In my opinion, the present structure is best -- let me explain: The table is where the reader is able to read a meaningful portion of the verses on which Easwaran is commenting, which is a valuable thing for the reader to know. Trying to integrate all that material into the text would not "work" (that is, it would be exceedingly cumbersome). The structure of the book is such that it is impossible to cover all of the different themes that are discussed in the text - it makes better sense to follow the present approach of providing a few examples to give the flavor of some of the themes (and also, as done in the table, giving a sense of the flavor of the Imitation verses, which change from chapter to chapter). And there are already about 650 words in the Contents (aka Topics covered) section, close to the maximum recommended length (700 for ordinary books). Greatly expanding the section (e.g., by integrating all the Imitation verses) would in my opinion turn it into something that would make more tiresome reading for the vast majority of people, and that fewer people would even want to read. Sometimes shorter is better. Given the structure of the book, my opinion is that the structure of the present approach is probably the best achievable balance. Regards -- Presearch (talk) 19:00, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Compromise

I have adjusted the layout in various ways so that this article looks better on a variety of computer screens, and so that the box no longer forms a massive distraction from the text of the article.

• Intro pic slightly reduced, because the box broke into the text below it to an extent that it displaced the "chapters" box.
• Reduced Chapters box to 33% instead of 45% to make it less intrusive.
• The Easwaran box was floated above the picture. This meant that the picture was forced right down the page to below the Easwaran box (which can go anywhere where there is room and doesn't need to be locked to part of the text). So I moved the Easwaran box downwards, allowing the text box to move up.
• The picture of Thomas a Kempis is almost certainly a late 19th/early 20th century encyclopedic illustration. It shouldn't be used when there is an existent portrait of the man himself dating from the 1460s, so I have replaced it.
• The picture of St Thomas has moved upward a little, so that it doesn't displace the major heading below it. This problem may not be apparent on your computer, but occurs on wide screens. Successful layouts need to take widescreens into account.

Amandajm (talk) 02:55, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

I think the layout looks good - thanks for your work! And thanks also for that new portrait of Thomas -- it does look much nicer, and the fact that it is contemporary makes it superb! -- Presearch (talk) 19:05, 25 October 2012 (UTC)