Talk:Peter Abelard
Tobin,
The way you have changed it makes the story worse.
The most interesting thing about Abelard isnt his work on the Scholastic Method. It's the fact he is half of one of the great all-time tragic love stories.
Sex, violence, forbidden love - thats the part of it that the audience is interested in. Thats what keeps em reading to the end.
Think of it this way ... bunch of drunk fighter-types around a campfire at Festival.
We both tell the story of Peter Abelard.
You start with his important contribution to the Scholastic method.
I start with how his dick got him into deep, deep trouble.
Which of us is goanna get the audience going 'Geez, these medieval philosophers were cool. I should read a copy of that History of My Calamaties book'.
I write think stuff because I love this stuff, and there are some great stories in there.
I dont want to write the sort of dry, bloodless history that I can read in any second-rate encyclopedia.
I cant stop you amending my work, but I can ask you to stop making it worse.
Anton
Anton,
Fair enough, I moved it because it seemed quite relevant an I thought it was lost down near the bottom. Perhaps something about his relationships near the top with most of the detail (including the text from his autobiography) further down the article would be best.
Tobin,
That would be why I wrote it the way I did, right ?
And the chunk of the autobiography, and the way my text pushed the reader into reading it was very deliberate ; by getting people to, like, read actual primary sources, they get less scared of them (same thing with the Scholastics page ; you can talk about how cool they are, but that teby Aquinas on just war talksa to today, as well as to Lochac, and says in a page what Grotius takes chapters to do).
Anton
Anton,
I don't think that that kind of large chuck of text should be put before some mention of the mans other achievements/doings. The way it was laid out would have meant that if someone else added other sections to the article the excerpt from the autobiography would have been listed before the table of contents.
Guys,
I dare someone to link to an article about 12th century pornographic literature and the movie Being John Malkovitch from here.
Anton's correct, though. Peter Abelard's dick getting him into trouble was much more interesting than his work, scholastic as it was and all.
Tobin,
Sorry to chime in again, but checking back in the article's history Anton's correct in every sense of the word. You mention Peter Abelard's life, Heloise, the story of his life (and his dick if you must) first, then you mention his works.
My vote goes for putting the article back in the same order it was in originally, with perhaps some appropriate links and headings poking out of it.
Ok, but it would be a good idea to leave the heading before the autobiography excerpt, IMO. So that it doesn't end up being listed before the TOC.
Works for me.
