a/the young Abraham Lincoln

[VicNicSor]

A title:
A Young Abraham Lincoln Was Basically Superman
A Young Abraham Lincoln Was Basically Superman - Oddee

That sounds odd to me because as I know, in such contexts "the" is usualy used. What do you think?
Thanks.

 

[The Newt]

"The" would probably be better. "A" is sometimes used when the person being referred to is an incidental part of the story, rather than the main subject:

Poe spent many nights drinking in the company of various bohemians, among them a young Charles Baudelaire. (Not true, sadly.)

 

[se16teddy]

Isn't the "A" a jocular reference to this part of the text?
Many years later, also in a political campaign autobiography, Lincoln commented that his stepmother “proved a good and kind mother to A,” the “A” Lincoln’s shorthand way of referring to himself.

 

[VicNicSor]

Thank you both.

Isn't the "A" a jocular reference to this part of the text?

Could it? "A" just stands for "Abraham"; I wouldn't think it implied "Abraham Young Abraham Lincoln".

 

[kentix]

I think A should be The and the explanation is as simple as that.

 

[JulianStuart]

I think I prefer it with neither article

 

[VicNicSor]

Interesting, but Google gives much more hits for "a Young Abraham Lincoln was " than for "the Young Abraham Lincoln was"...

 

[Linkway]

But there were MANY young Abraham Lincolns, and this was was just one of them - ie he was first a baby, then a toddler, then a youngster, then a teenager, then a young man, and so on - the text refers to a specific stage in Lincoln's life - as a young man able to help chop down trees, etc.

 

[VicNicSor]

But there were MANY young Abraham Lincolns, and this was was just one of them

Do you mean — in one person, as the future president, not just different people having the same name, right?

 

[Linkway]

Yes, it was really one person, but perhaps the writer just wanted to emphasise a particular stage in Lincoln's life.

I'm only floating a possibility here - I really don't know why a write of that headline would choose a/the/neither.

 

[VicNicSor]

Thank you for the replies.

 

[kentix]

There's a place for "a".

A young Abraham Lincoln once walked ten miles to return a borrowed ax. [A fictional anecdote.]

It took place at a specific moment in time with the Abraham Lincoln who existed at that moment, one of many over the course of his youth.

(The) Young Abraham Lincoln Was Basically Superman

In this case, it's not localized to one moment in time, it's a summary of his entire youth. He only had one of those, in that sense. He was young, in the middle and then old. This refers to the young version.

As Julian says, you could leave out the article entirely. Then it's not really a comparison, as in the version with "the". It's more of just a description/statement of fact.