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Ove Jørgensen

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Ove Jørgensen (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

As of 16 August 2024, 13:21 (UTC), this page is active and open for discussion. An FAC coordinator will be responsible for closing the nomination.
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Nominator(s): UndercoverClassicist T·C 11:45, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have an ill-disguised soft spot for Ove Jørgensen. He is (barely) remembered among Homeric scholars as the originator of Jørgensen's law, an early and astute observation about narration in the Odyssey which in many ways set the stage for the modern fascination with narratology in the Homeric poems. After throwing an almighty strop in response to being left out of an academic society, Jørgensen left classical academia with a single publication to his name, and spent the rest of his career as a cantankerous if apparently beloved Classics teacher, an acerbic commentator on ballet and an erudite editor of Dickens. From an article-writing perspective, working on Jørgensen was a rewarding opportunity to bring together a few different threads of scholarship -- he is known for the early part of his career among classicists, for the later part among ballet historians, and throughout by scholars of his lifelong friends Carl Nielsen and Anne Marie Carl-Nielsen, but I think this is probably the first biography to pull together all those different threads of interest in him into a single picture. UndercoverClassicist T·C 11:45, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

1896, in Baker's Art Gallery -- I've added the link to the Ur-source, at the NY Public Library, here to the Commons page. UndercoverClassicist T·C 20:58, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, that site credits Baker's as the photographer? Nikkimaria (talk) 21:01, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can’t see it as anything other than ‘this is where we got it from’ - at the very least, it surely means that Bakers exhibited it with the photographer unknown or uncredited? Alternatively, if we say that we don't have good evidence of its first publication (so, it's unpublished by anyone who would have the right to "publish" it in a copyright sense, which doesn't include the NYPL), it's pre 1904, so pd-US-unpublished would cover it anyway. The NYPL page states that they believe it to be PD in the US. UndercoverClassicist T·C 21:12, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, but exhibition doesn't typically meet the legal definition of "published", at least in the US. (Do we know if Baker's is American or something else?) Was there any other publication that we know of prior to the digitization by NYPL? Nikkimaria (talk) 22:15, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure that Baker's Gallery is this place, founded in Columbus in the 1860s. The NYPL's catalogue states that the photograph was published c. 1896 -- admittedly, the distinction between "produced" and "published" may well be a matter of the metadata that their system allows rather than of copyright law. Part of me wants to take a strict verifiability, not truth position and say that a reliable source (the NYPL) has said it was published in 1896, so that's enough for us -- otherwise, we could use PD-because and explain that the NYPL have identified the image as being in the public domain in the United States? UndercoverClassicist T·C 08:54, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Think that last option would be neatest. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:12, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK, done. UndercoverClassicist T·C 07:49, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The language field is inconsistently used for non-English sources. Would you like a photo of his grave site? --Guerillero Parlez Moi 17:10, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes please on the photograph — done on the sources,I think. UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:32, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

FM

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  • This is well outside my area of expertise, but it's short and it's about a countryman of mine, so I'll have a look once someone more, uh, classically trained has reviewed it. Don't hesitate to ask if you need someone to look over or translate something from potential Danish sources. FunkMonk (talk) 21:06, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi FM -- thank you for this, very much obliged. For now, could I ask two questions/favours? Firstly, I've included here just about everything I could find that mentions J. at any length: if you can do a cursory look and find anything else written in Danish, could you point me towards it? Secondly, if you know your way around IPA or pronunciation guides, I think one would be very helpful, but I don't really have the Danish expertise to make one. UndercoverClassicist T·C 16:26, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I did a search earlier, and the most comprehensive account I could find was in Den Store Danske Encyklopædi.[1] At a glance, the Wikipedia article already seems to cover most of the ground, but I'll give it a closer look when I read the article and see if there's anything that could be added. According to some results, the 2005 text "Den (over)levende tradition / The (Sur)viving Tradition" by Karen Vedel covers Jørgensen, but I can't find it. Don't know much about IPA, unfortunately, but I know how the name is pronounced, of course. FunkMonk (talk) 16:38, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks -- I used the Den Store Danske Encyklopædi heavily, and I think it's currently the only real biography, apart from this one, in print in any language. Could you give an English approximation of the pronunciation -- I can probably work it into close-enough IPA, or use it as a respell? UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:39, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I didn't realise it was the same source. That page lists some sources in its bibliography: "Peter P. Rohde i Information 10.11.1950", an article in the Danish paper Dagbladet Information, and "Thure Hastrup i O. J.: Udv. skr., 1971 7–19", which appears to maybe be the foreword to "Udvalgte Skrifter" which you have in the bibliography, and then the last source listed. "Papirer i Kgl. bibl." are papers in the Danish Royal Library. The two first texts should be findable, perhaps with the help of WP:RX? Googling a bit, this journal has some Danish articles by Jørgensen[2], this American article seems to mention him[3], and this Danish museum article[4] states that the period where Jørgensen and other significant figures associated with Carl Nielsen has been described as a "new golden age in Danish spiritual (or intellectual) life". As for pronunciation, when I just type in "Ove Jørgensen pronunciation Danish" in Google, an accurate sound clip is playable straight from the search engine. FunkMonk (talk) 19:06, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All wonderful -- thank you. Will work my way through it. UndercoverClassicist T·C 19:10, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK - got the "new golden age", the Udvalgte Skrifter forward is coming though the wonderful folks at RX (got a request there for the Dagbladet Information article too, but it requires a Danish or at least Scandinavian institutional login), and J's 1911 article is in there. The Calhoun article is used at length in Jørgensen's law (as C. was really the first to properly codify the "law" and outline its various caveats and exceptions): it might come back when I have a go at expanding the treatment of the law here. I've had a go at adding pronunciation -- please tweak if you can (I used this website to check that the IPA transcription sounded how I thought) UndercoverClassicist T·C 13:21, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

ThaesOfereode

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Feels like a topic I can throw my hat in on. Plus, a named law? Count me in. I hope the below is helpful, though it is a hair nitpicky, admittedly (maybe... this is my first FAR). Pretty much everything below can be challenged; I know the difficulty of trying to write about someone notable with glaring gaps in their life's story.

  • Thank you for the review -- I am hardly in a position to complain about nit-picking, and the more careful eyes that the article can have over it, the better. Replies below: all very wise and pertinent comments, though I think some of the infelicities you've identified are artefacts of the subject matter as much as of its presentation here. UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:37, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm glad I've been helpful so far. Below, I've responded to what I think needed comment or further revision (assume anything not addressed is good to go, addressed elsewhere, or awaiting other action). You'll note that I ask "Can we get a quote from XYZ?" quite a lot; don't feel like each instance needs to be fulfilled. I think just one or two from the suggestions will add something positive to the overall quality of the article, help to contextualize and/or explain critical elements of the piece. I might place slight primacy on contextualizing the Nielsen–Jørgensen relationship better with an appropriate quote from Nielsen's diary, but I will leave it up to you to decide if there is anything worth taking from it. Again, nothing in here is show stopping and if the below are not actionable, I'm still happy to support in its current condition. ThaesOfereode (talk) 01:20, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A few notes on prose to start.

  • and of Jørgensen's wife – Seems like a WP:POSA thing to add; if he had been born out of wedlock in 1870s Denmark, that would be worth mentioning. Still, if you think this should stand, I think his wife is better than simply "Jørgensen's wife".
    • Yes, I think you're right -- think it's now better formulated as his wife, Louise née Wellmann.
  • an accompanied them to Constantinople – Why? Were they doing something of note there? I'm not sure traveling with someone of note necessarily needs to make it into the details of his life.
    • Sightseeing, particularly ancient monuments -- one assumes J. acted as guide. I've added a link to N's diary on the latter point. I'm struggling to find the duration of the trip (from memory, it was about a month). I'd agree that it's not the most exciting detail, but I think it helps to establish J's relationship with the Carl Nielsens as developing quickly and as more than simple acquaintance (in the original of the infobox image, N. is sitting immediately to J's right). I think he went to Athens with him as well, but couldn't get enough of the diary to be sure (User:FunkMonk may have more luck?) See the point below too. UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:37, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • I agree that it's important to establish the origins of their relationship. Consider adding a crop of the image from the infobox with Nielsen; it might be nice to have a photo of them together given Nielsen's overall importance in the article. ThaesOfereode (talk) 01:20, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        • The image isn't (demonstrably) PD, unfortunately: we can use a crop from it as the infobox image, but per WP:NFCC that use needs to be "minimal", so including Nielsen there would be legally dubious (as well as potentially confusing), and using the image again as mere illustration would not really be compatible with the FUR. UndercoverClassicist T·C 09:34, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Carl Nielsen mentions him sixty-three times in his diary. – I think this needs more context. Is this a lot? How long were they in Constantinople? I would strongly consider the precise dates, if the information exists. If they were in Constantinople together for an appreciable amount of time, it makes sense that Nielsen would reference Jørgensen a lot. Sixty-three mentions on a week's trip is a lot, but sixty-three mentions in a year is hardly noteworthy.
    • It's throughout the whole diary: I don't have context as to how often he mentions other people, but the point is that they were more than passing acquaintances. See above -- Nielsen is really the only true constant across the two halves of J's life, and is indeed the relationship between N. and J. is a not insubstantial part of what makes J. "notable", in the sense of being of interest to scholars -- on a rough count, somewhere not far south of half of the sources that write about him do so as a friend and correspondent of Nielsen. UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:37, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      • Is there any chance that you (or FM) can add an excerpt from the diary? I know you've called it a pretty terse document, but something from Nielsen's diary that contextualizes Jørgensen's (certainly) vast knowledge about the area would be excellent. Equally as good – if not better – would be a quote that explains how they met, why/how they decided to take this trip in particular, etc., which would really help to set their relationship more comfortably in the article.
  • In this article, Jørgensen observed that Homeric characters typically use generic terms, particularly θεός (theos, 'a god'), δαίμων (a daimon) and Ζεύς (Zeus), to refer to the action of gods, whereas the narrator and the gods themselves always name the specific gods responsible.
    • to refer to the action of gods → to refer to the actions of the gods, right?
    • I'm not a classicist, but it's not clear at all why or how Zeus (a specific god) is used to refer to the actions of the gods in general. Is there a way Homer differentiates between the actions of "zeus" vs the actions of "Zeus"?
      • It's the characters, not the narrators -- the idea is that a character might say e.g. "Zeus gave me good fortune, and I won the fight", but mean that as a general idea that they had divine assistance, rather than specifically singling out Zeus as opposed to e.g. Athena, Hera, etc. There are one or two specific cases where this is broken (some discussed in the relevant article) -- in the Iliad, for example, Achilles sounds as though he's about to do it in Book 1, where he complains to his goddess mother Thetis that Zeus doesn't give him the respect that he deserves, but then goes on to make absolutely clear that he is talking specifically about the king of the gods (perhaps underlining his self-importance and perhaps arrogance?) In the Odyssey, Odysseus describes how Zeus sent a thunderbolt to sink his ship, after he angered the god of the sun -- again, here he's very obviously talking about Zeus specifically, but he does then explain himself by saying that he heard this account from the goddess Calypso later on. UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:37, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
        • Neat as hell. I think we might consider a way of conveying that to the audience. Can we splice in a quote from Jørgensen's work on it? Might add some nice detail into Jørgensen's writing style and his contemporary insight. ThaesOfereode (talk) 01:20, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
          If you have a look at the Jørgensen's law article, you'll see the best I could do on this -- unfortunately, it has to end up pretty chunky, as Jørgensen doesn't seem to have been interested in formulating it as a "law", rather than making observations on a specific part of the Odyssey. Honestly, I think that would be an undue use of space in this biographical article, though there might well be room to expand our coverage of the law in this one, and I think it has value where it is in the law's article. UndercoverClassicist T·C 09:32, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Although most members were qualified as doctors of philosophy, others, including Nielsen, were invited. – Comma bomb here. Consider Although most members were qualified as doctors of philosophy, others – including Nielsen – were invited.
  • In 1916, working alongside the chemist S. P. L. Sørensen, Jørgensen completed and published Sophus's unfinished manuscript of Development History of the Chemical Concept of Acid until 1830. – Did Jørgensen only work on the manuscript in 1916 or was it just published in 1916 but had been worked on in previous years?
  • Jørgensen became an authority on ballet – How? Did he have background? Did he just write a bunch of stuff that others liked?
    • It seems to have come out of nowhere! This is admittedly the biggest problem in writing this article -- with (exactly) one exception, all of the biographical accounts of J. are either by classicists, in which case they stop just before he gets into ballet, or by ballet scholars, in which case they start just afterwards -- nobody has really attempted to write the story of how he got into it. He seems to have been a generally cultured and erudite man, given his multiple expertise in classical poetry, English novels and ballet, but I don't think we have the sources to specifically say where his interest came from. He doesn't seem to have had a formal job, but did write a couple of articles in Tilskueren, which seems to have been a reasonably prominent magazine.
      • Bizarre! Do you have any dates for articles he wrote in that magazine? It would be worth noting that he was writing ballet articles while he was still a professor, for example. As with his law, it would be cool to get insight on his view of ballet in his own words if the articles are accessible. ThaesOfereode (talk) 01:20, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • He never was a professor (or "even" a PhD, which became a problem for him). His ballet articles, as far as I can tell, begin in 1905, the year he withdrew from academia (though he did write at least one review article of a classical work later, in 1911), but it would be WP:SYNTH to explicitly say that he only started his interest in ballet after/because of his falling-out with the classical establishment. It might be possible to pull a germane quote from one of those articles: I'll have a look. UndercoverClassicist T·C 09:31, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • He condemned the Art Nouveau– – Not sure what this endash is doing here.
  • calling it "quasi-philosophical experiments". → calling them "quasi-philosophical experiments"., right?
  • "standard analysis of ... the rules that govern human speech about the gods" – Probably non-actionable, but is there anything in the MOS about the use of [...] with the brackets vs. without?

A few notes on content.

  • I think, given that Jørgensen's main claim to fame is the eponymous law, I think maybe it deserves an expansion from its current (body) size of one short paragraph. In particular, I think it would be good to describe how Jørgensen originally formulated/supported his thesis and compare his work with modern scholarship (as in, Jørgensen's original formulation has stood the test of time or modern scholarship has departed from the original formulation in XYZ ways). Although, I suspect scholarship on how Jørgensen formulated the law may be scant.
    • It is -- I might come back to this. The basic thrust is that J. had the basic insight, but didn't really attempt to codify it into a solid "law" or to attempt to phrase it in rigorous terms, so later scholars have done that work and applied the "Jørgensen's law" label to it. UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:37, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Jørgensen's relationship with Carl Nielsen seems... out of place. I can tell that there is something that called you to repeatedly mention this friendship (and I imagine it is worth adding), but I find it difficult to connect it to the content. In "Later career" it's a little clear that Jørgensen had some impact on his marriage, but is there anything that says that they influenced each other's professional work? They traveled to Constantinople together; are there any episodes from that trip (or any other) that show a working relationship? Even a brief vignette would help to make the mention of the friendship feel more at home in the article.
  • A similar thing can be said about the jump from classicist to ballet expert, but I admit there have been weirder jumps with less in the way of information about how A got to B. If any information exists on the topic – acknowledging that that may be a big "if" – it would be undeniably helpful to the reader.

Overall, this is an article in good condition, with hardly any issues in the way of prose. My main concern now is that there are parts which feel disjointed and do not convey importance to the reader well, but I suspect they can be easily remedied or the scholarship is simply non-existent/inaccessible. I suspect Danish-language skill may be a reasonable bottleneck here, but hopefully FunkMonk can assist should you find anything. ThaesOfereode (talk) 00:25, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

SC

  • "of Jørgensen's wife, Louise Wellmann" jars a little bit. Maybe "of Louise (nee Wellmann)" would suffice?
  • "the philologist Anders Bjørn Drachmann": worth linking philologist, as it's an uncommon term?
  • "Carl Nielsen mentions him sixty-three times in his diary": This is a potentially useful fact, but with no frame of reference it's a bit lost. Is that a lot? Were the mentions positive? Over how long were these spread, etc. Maybe only half a sentence is all that's needed to give it a bit more relevance, but it just looks like a bit of trivia as it stands.
    • See ThaesOfereode's review above -- the point is well made, but we don't have the sources to do any of that, at least as far as I can find. I do think it's got some relevance, and it's not as if we're overloaded with biographical detail: when we've got comparatively little information about someone, I think we do need to drop our standards slightly and include things we might drop out of a fuller account of their life. UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:45, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Was his love of ballet a lifelong thing? It sort of appears part way through the Later career section with no indication of an origin
  • Was the Wanscher lecture connected to ballet at all? It doesn't seem to fit here, being sandwiched between two parts of Duncan

It's relatively short, but I guess if his notability is limited to the eponymous law and his writing on ballet, then that's to be expected, although I was surprised reading of his 1950 death and realising that he lived, presumably in Copenhagen, under Nazi occupation. Was 1930 (the publication of Dickens) the last notable thing about his life until his death? either way, this is, as always, beautifully written and something that made me genuinely interested in someone I've never heard of before, so thank you for that. Cheers – SchroCat (talk) 12:35, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thank you, as ever -- you have the nail on the head, and I'm sure there are some very interesting stories to tell about the last two decades of his life. Unfortunately, the sources are truly scanty indeed -- almost none of them are interested in him for his own sake, and only really discuss him in relation to his classical scholarship, his ballet writings or his relationship with the Carl Nielsens. It might be that we can come up with some more, but at the moment I've not been able to, and none of it features in the one real biography of him that I believe exists outside Wikipedia. UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:45, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. - SchroCat (talk) 19:12, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Generalissima Looks like you just need a source review.

  • I assume the "Search 'Ove Jørgensen' stuff refers to Google Books usage (since they have yet to perfect ctrl-f technology for physical books)? If so, might be good to provide the Google Books links in the bibliography.
  • Refs are generally laid out and formatted consistently. Good use of columns, and good job navigating a Danish-language source corpus.
  • Burke's Peerage is missing a location.
    Oh, fair point then. - G Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 17:50, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Locations are not needed for publishers who have the name of the location in their title (See WP:CS1); so you don't need them for Oxford UP, Leuven UP, or Stockholm University.
  • Only source that seemed potentially suspicious were Burke's Peerage and Weltzer, but they're used appropriately and sparingly.
  • Looking through academic databases for Ove Jørgensen seems to reveal the exact set of sources you used, so it's safe to say you've done your due dilligence squeezing out whatever you can here.

@UndercoverClassicist: Beyond the minor scruples on formatting, seems like we're pretty much good to go here. Let me know when you've fixed up that stuff. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 17:42, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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