Talk:Horace Lunt

Macedonian grammar

It could be made clearer that publishing the Macedonian grammar was inherently very political. There was a complicated clash of conflicting nationalistic narratives, and by publishing the grammar, he put the prestige of his Western scholarly reputation behind the official Yugoslavian government party line (and therefore necessarily against the other competing narratives). AnonMoos (talk) 18:21, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Disputed statement

Hello. I'm bringing this statement forth for discussion:

He has been criticized for espousing some Macedonist myths prominent in Macedonian historiography.

What's problematic with the current wording is:
1. Clarke does not use "Macedonist myths" in his criticism of Lunt. He refers to a "dialectical Macedonianism" at the end. Much less is there support in the source for "prominent in the Macedonian historiography".
2. The current wording weirdly omits Lunt's critic. I don't see any good reason why we should omit who's criticizing him.
3. It doesn't reflect what the source says.
So I'll give two proposals for how the statement should be worded:
"Lunt was criticized by American historian James F. Clarke for allegedly contributing to the Macedonian literary language concept myth."
"American historian James F. Clarke argued that Lunt contributed to the Macedonian literary language concept myth."
If anyone has any better proposal, they can freely suggest. StephenMacky1 (talk) 07:57, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

I've removed the passage in question, which was inserted by an anon editor last September [1]. Reasons: the criticism piece by Clarke cited there is a rather offhand, low-quality piece of polemics that was given WP:UNDUE weight here, as the only (positive or negative) piece of critical reception of his entire lifetime of work cited in the article. Also, the passage engaged in rather blatant tendentious editorializing by claiming that he "publicly admitted" to Yugoslav funding (as if that was somehow a bad thing to be ashamed of), and then even adding a tendentious link to "[[Funding of science#Influence on research|financial aid]]" to that, whose implication is of course purely WP:OR. This edit should never have been allowed to slip through like that. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:10, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Update: The text by Clarke turned out not even to be a bona fide academic work. It was originally a speech ([2]), delivered in 1982 to a meeting of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization (then a staunchly pro-Bulgarian, anti-Yugoslav political organization), hence an essentially political–polemic text, which explains the decidedly non-academic rambling tone and lack of a coherent scholarly topic and argument in the text. It was then posthumously included in a "critical edition" of mixed writings by Clarke [3] in 1988. Of course it doesn't help that our article was quoting it from an online mirror on a notorious Bulgarian propaganda website, which has long been the favorite go-to place for Bulgarian tendentious editors on Macedonian topics. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:12, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Lunt supported the alternative theory that Samuel was a Macedonian king, who ruled a separate state, populated with a distinct Slavic Macedonian population, and espoused a fringe view that the Bitola inscription was written during the Second Bulgarian Empire, i.e. ideas that are pro-Macedonist and pro-Yugoslav? Jingiby (talk) 10:28, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I am sure Lunt's scholarly life achievements can most appropriately be summed up by what he wrote about one or two favorite talking points and pet ideological obsessions of 21st-century Bulgarian nationalist internet trolls. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:39, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I think that in this case it is more about a poorly disguised lack of objectivity, and a bit of bias. Regards. Jingiby (talk) 10:48, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Future Perfect at Sunrise. Jingiby, I've checked reliable sources and there isn't one that attempts to discredit Lunt, or even puts labels like "pro-Yugoslav" or "pro-Macedonist" on him. Even Bulgarian historians (such as Roumen Daskalov and Chavdar Marinov) recognize his contributions. By the way, someone having minority views about a certain topic (but it also depends on the topic) does not always mean that they have an ideological agenda. StephenMacky1 (talk) 20:43, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

He was a distinguished scholar of Slavic languages, and by no means merely a propagandist -- but on the other hand, the very act of publishing a book with the title "A Grammar of the Macedonian Literary Language" in 1952 automatically meant that he was tacitly endorsing, or working within, the basic Yugoslav government narrative (as of 1952) -- a narrative which was vigorously disputed by some outside Yugoslavia (and more quietly by some inside Yugoslavia). See my comment in the preceding section above... AnonMoos (talk) 01:58, 9 September 2023 (UTC)