Talk:The Taking of Lungtungpen

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The "moral of the story" section tends to wander into commentary and NPOV. I am uncomfortable just cutting it out. I may try to reword it to show that Orwell found this distasteful without having the article itself espouse a POV. 75.140.251.185 (talk) 15:16, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Needs more expert attention than I can provide. 75.140.251.185 (talk) 15:33, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I have had trouble myself at times with wikipedia's approach to my subject. I am a student (and teacher) of English Literature. One of the glories of the subject is that it allows - even encourages - the engagement of the reader with the text in a creative fashion. No two readers will read the same text in precisely the same way. This makes Literature subjective in a way that the physical sciences - say - cannot, and should not be. This approach is recognized in many reference works in the subject, e. g. and : they try to give reasonably accurate summaries of a work under discussion, and in addition indicate some of the different ways in which that work may be (or indeed has been) read. This seems to me to be an eminently suitable method of informing students of literature. It is not detailed factual knowledge, of an undisputed and un-disputable sort that I want from literary reading, though at times I do want a quick sense of 'what happens', or a reminder of what a character's name may be; what I want is to expand my mind, or my students' minds, in a way appropriate to the art I teach, which includes my exorcising my own judgement (or they exercising their judgements) on the different theories, or readings, with which they may be confronted.

Wikipedia's style and policies seem to preclude this - dare I say? - mature approach to Literature. For example, I wanted, in working on Kipling, to create categories that would link stories of his that could be read together to cast light on his attitudes. I do not believe, for example, that a writer of fiction (particularly not one with as varied a set of experiences as Kipling) is consistent throughout his work, and I would certainly not presume to be able to give an accurate, comprehensive and comprehensible account of Kipling's attitudes throughout his life. I wouldn't try. I want to give other readers guidance to the sort of material that I have found helpful in formulating my views - bearing in mind that wikipedians can add their own material and suggestions to any article that appears on the site. So I proposed to create a set of categories that would allow the short stories to be grouped in ways that would cast some light on Kipling's beliefs, on for example the British in India; his own beliefs about Asians in India; his attitudes to women; to Empire; to war; the stories that deal with the supernatural; animals; children - and so on. This would, I think, provide an invaluable guide to the works of any writer, particularly those as prolific as Rudyard Kipling. Such articles, dea\ling a they do with the intangible shiftings in the mind of a creative writer, and the similarly creative mind of the reader, do not lend themselves to a 'neutral point of view'. One would not, in writing the, seek to be misleading. or non-neutral; but the best way to approach a text is humbly and tentatively, allowing room for dispute.

Alas, my categories were all deleted. And now I am being told that the article is not neutral. I think this is inappropriate. I trust that the wikipedia philosophy can allow us to engage with literature, even if it is not always dealt with in the same way as the discovery of penicillin, say. MacAuslan (talk) 22:50, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

References

File:Archibald Standish Hartrick - Rudyard Kipling - Soldier Tales 18 - The Taking of Lungtungpen 1.jpg and File:Archibald Standish Hartrick - Rudyard Kipling - Soldier Tales 19 - The Taking of Lungtungpen 2.jpg to appear as POTD

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Archibald Standish Hartrick - Rudyard Kipling - Soldier Tales 18 - The Taking of Lungtungpen 1.jpg and File:Archibald Standish Hartrick - Rudyard Kipling - Soldier Tales 19 - The Taking of Lungtungpen 2.jpg will be appearing as pictures of the day on August 8, 2015. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2015-08-08/1 and Template:POTD/2015-08-08/2. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks! — Chris Woodrich (talk) 01:15, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Picture of the day

"The Taking of Lungtungpen" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on April 11, 1887. It follows four British soldiers in Burma who capture a dacoit stronghold named Lungtungpen while in the nude.

In this illustration from the 1896 edition of Soldier Tales, Private Mulvaney commands his men to "Shtrip, bhoys. Shtrip to the buff, an' shwim in where glory waits!" as they prepare to capture Lungtungpen.

See another illustrationIllustration: Archibald Standish Hartrick; restoration: Adam Cuerden