Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Literature of England

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus‎. Good points made by all participants, but no consensus whether to keep or merge. Since outright deletion is off the table, this discussion is better suited for a proposed merger on the Talk page. Owen× ☎ 14:17, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Literature of England[edit]

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This page is nearly entirely covered by the article British literature. Quoting from the lead of that article, "Anglo-Saxon (Old English) literature is included, [in this article] and there is some discussion of Latin and Anglo-Norman literature". The parts not talked about there are under the other articles listed in the main topic hatnotes of each of the proposed article's sections. The only one not mentioned here in British lit is Hebrew literature from England, which as well has its own separate article. Your average reader, when typing "literature of England", is likely looking for the literature of England (covered in the British lit article) that is in English. Based off this, I propose to blank and redirect and merge this article into the aforementioned British literature article. This is done with many other literature country articles, seen in literature of France, which redirects to French literature, and literature of Germany, Spain, etc. Flemmish Nietzsche (talk) 01:40, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Literature, United Kingdom, and England. Flemmish Nietzsche (talk) 01:40, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Unsure - briefly my problem with almost all pages of the "literature of x place" is that the subject is impossibly broad and therefore inclusion/exclusion decisions are at the whim of editors. That said there clearly are academics writing about it such as 1 - which itself has a more interesting lede para than the WP page - so by the WP:GNG it appears to have the level of independent scholarly RS for inclusion. I'd like to hear other thoughts to help clarify in my own mind whether (or how) this page could/should be kept. JMWt (talk) 08:07, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep in mind that this is not a deletion (or redirect) proposal for English literature, which entirely covers any content from the article literature of England that may be about literature from England in English. I'm aware plenty of sources exist for English literature in English, as this is why we have the former article, but the proposed article is about literature in England mostly not in English, which, as said above, is covered by either British literature or the other main articles. A possible remedy to this is maybe changing the potential new redirect target of this page from British literature to English literature, although the latter is not exclusive to England itself and is about literature written in English as a whole. Flemmish Nietzsche (talk) 12:06, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if it is you that are confused or me. As far as I'm concerned
English literature refers to literature in the English language

Literature of England refers to literature produced in England in any language.
I do not understand why you keep implying that the Literature of England must necessarily be in the English language nor why we should take your word for that. JMWt (talk) 15:56, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not trying to imply that, more so that in an article about English literature (meaning any literature written in England) — literature of England — the only content in the article is about literature that is not in English. By saying this I'm not implying that the article should only be about English literature in English, rather that the English literature in English is already fully covered in the articles of English literature and British literature, and as the latter is particular to the British Isles and the former is not as you said, the content from Literature of England (the proposed article) should be either redirected or incorporated into British lit. The British lit article does not have to be about just literature from GB in English, as is already said in the lead of the article. Another alternative would be to make Literature of England a disambig page to show the different articles of various languages of literature from England, although for now I'm staying with my original argument. Flemmish Nietzsche (talk) 17:13, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Merge, not delete to either British literature or English literature, as appropriate. My understanding is that "English literature" is the literature of England, irrespective of what language it's written in; I presume the same is true of "British literature". Merger is the correct procedure if there's potentially useful material here, even if the contribution is minimal, or it turns out that everything is already included; in that case the article would still become a redirect to one of the relevant articles, but readers checking the article history would see that any relevant content here was reviewed and included in the target article before this became a redirect. The difference between merger and deletion is sometimes subtle, but still important. P Aculeius (talk 13:41, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The original proposal was never to delete the article, as I said in the wording above, it is to blank and redirect the article. There is nothing to merge, and thus blanking and redirecting, (per WP:BLAR and WP:ATD-R) is an acceptable means of dealing with sitations such as this, and again per those policies, it is advised that controversial blanks and redirects are discussed on AFD, as I did here, even if the goal is not deletion.

Also, remember that it is best practice to sign your talk page comments by adding four tildes at the end of a message. Flemmish Nietzsche (talk) 13:52, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Blanking and redirecting is pretty much deletion—and this is "Articles for deletion", not "Articles for discussion". A merge doesn't necessarily involve moving things to other articles, but it ensures that editors know that the whole contents of an article—or anything useful in it—has been covered at the target article. Whether there's useful content isn't determined by whether it's duplicative of something better elsewhere. As I said, the distinction between merger and deletion is sometimes a subtle one, but important: if you just "blank and redirect" without indicating that the article was merged, editors might reasonably infer that no effort was made to ensure that the topic was fully covered at the target article or other appropriate places. And really no significant effort is required on anybody's part to do a merge in an instance where the contents are fully covered, so what's the objection?

Also, remember that any editor likely to comment on procedure probably knows how to sign a comment, and doesn't need an explanation of how to do it. It's easy enough to forget to type four tildes when editing one's own comments. P Aculeius (talk) 15:50, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, I see your point and I mostly agree, though it doesn't really seem right to call it a "merge" when no content is being merged into the new article, and incorporating parts of an existing article into a different one and then redirecting/deleting it is different than simply not incorporating any content and simply blanking and redirecting. We do seem to basically be on the same page though and I'll change the wording for not wanting to argue. Flemmish Nietzsche (talk) 16:06, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are American literature and Scottish literature articles, not sure why England would be an exception. There is overlap with British literature but the solution could be to move some of the content from there to English literature rather than have a British article primarily about England. Peter James (talk) 16:30, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Relisting as consensus right now is unclear. If this AFD is closed as a Merge, editors can merge the article's contents to more than one article. But we use XFDcloser to close AFDs and it can only handle listing one target article. So, if that was the closure, would it be to British literature? Also remember that we are only talking about how to close this discussion, if this closure was for a Merge, editors undertaking that merge could chose to use all, some or none of the article content in a merger. It's up to whomever editor volunteers to handle a merger.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 03:34, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

::There seems to be consensus to merge the article into the mentioned British literature article, although in practice I don't see what would actually need to be moved since the article Literature of England is only really about literature from England not in the English language — it consists solely of summaries of the articles Anglo-Latin literature, Anglo-Norman literature, and Early English Jewish literature. Either way, yes, the merge would be to British literature, and as you said, the actual content can be moved to any article. Flemmish Nietzsche (talk) 04:52, 27 May 2024 (UTC) Retracting for now, see below comment. Flemmish Nietzsche (talk) 11:08, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. Well I don't agree with that (and to make it clearer I'm now !voting !keep) and at least one other !voter doesn't so I don't think as the nom you should be instructing the closer as to what is or isn't consensus. The fact that the page is unfinished is not a reason to merge or redirect. To reiterate what I said previously, the topic of this page is not the same as for British literature. JMWt (talk) 10:55, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It might, however, be the same as "English Literature", if we include all literature written in England or by English writers, irrespective of the language they wrote in. That's my understanding of the term, since it certainly includes Old English and Middle English writing, and at least in the academic sense does not include English-language literature written elsewhere in the world, or at least not all English-language literature, American Literature being considered a distinct and mostly non-overlapping topic. I note, however, that our article on English Literature expressly states otherwise—there seems to be a debate on the talk page about its scope, but that doesn't concern the issue of non-English literature of England. Actually I'm a little confused about why there aren't more discussions there, seeing as I don't see any archived talk pages...

You're correct in that an article shouldn't be deleted or merged because it's incomplete. The fact that the topic hasn't been significantly changed or expanded since 2016, and remains a brief four paragraphs long, doesn't prove that it has no potential for expansion. However, it does mean that if the subject is or could conveniently be covered as fully as it is here, as part of "English Literature" or another, more comprehensive article, then there is little need for this article to duplicate that coverage, unless and until the topic becomes unwieldy as part of another article, at which time it could be split off and recreated under this or another appropriate title.

The argument for merger isn't an argument that this article has no value or that its subject is invalid: it's that the best way to treat the topic is as part of a broader or more comprehensive treatment that already exists, and the merger process is designed to ensure that nothing useful is lost. The merging editor or editors would be obliged to ensure that the usable contents here are fully covered in other articles before this title becomes a redirect to one of them, and that if necessary hatnotes direct readers from one target to another. P Aculeius (talk) 00:21, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Relisting comment: Still no consensus on what should happen or even on a Merge target article if this is closed as Merge.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 04:48, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.