A Final Blog

I know our last blog isn't due until Wednesday or something like that; but as we all know, this week is going to be one big blur so I wanted to just take a minute to post something so it doesn't look like I'm neglecting the blog.

Firstly, I want to say that I'm looking forward do reading through most of these final projects.  Unfortunately, I probably won't get through them all until well into May just because of the volume of work as well as the rest of the work I have to get done by the end of the semester.  I wish I had more time to interact with them before the semester is over, but it will all get done in due time.  I'm particularly excited to look through Sonja's comparison of Shakespeare and physics.  The analogy is something which, I'm sure, hasn't seen a lot of attention so I'm looking forward to seeing what she should do with that.  Having spent three semesters in the Cell Biology/Neuroscience department (and ultimately leaving because the scope of the studies was too narrow for my liking) I always get excited to see how science and literature coincide, besides the obvious, as Frederick Turner pointed out (and I realized a long time ago), that literature encompasses all forms of sciences all the way down to mathematics.  I like to see the way most sciences and scientists approach literature, and watch most of them fall short in their analyses.

I guess that was all I had on my mind!

Thanks for the great semester, Dr. Sexson.  See you in the Fall!

Final Paper

Shakespearian Rhetoric

            “Then rhetoric does not treat of all kinds of discourse?” (Plato 122).  The question seems simple enough; and when Gorgias responds with “no,” I think that most readers (especially rhetoricians) give a slight cringe.  In fact, it seems clear that rhetoric does cover all forms of discourse including literature.  I must, therefore, admit at finding myself quite at a loss when I first thought about the connection between literature and rhetoric.  This thought first occurred to me as I was reading through Harold Bloom’s The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life wherein he says, “Wit is too besieged in the [Shakespearian] Sonnets by a strict restraint of ethos and pathos; logos reigns almost unchallenged” (85).  While this statement contains only some of the most basic rhetorical terms, I found myself caught off-guard.  Thus inspired, I was determined to delve into the topic of rhetoric and literature using the Shakespearian Sonnets as my starting point.  Therefore, I must admit, once more, that I am writing this paper as much for my own benefit and as a type of journey during which I hope to discover, as much as my reader, the relationship between rhetoric and Shakespeare as well as the connection between rhetoric and literature.  In the research, I came across several points that drove me to consider the sonnets as forms of epideictic rhetoric, and expanding on that principle, I will explore several of the sonnets and their epideictic properties.  Within this analysis, I hope to explore what components of the sonnets most (if not all) readers connect to which helps to make these verses so timeless.  After this rhetorical analysis, I would like to look at these components of rhetoric in light of Ted Hughes’s phrase, “[In the sonnets] Shakespeare speaks for himself, and he is liable for what he says.” (54). By applying this concept with the rhetorical discussion, hopefully we can catch a glimpse, however brief, of the mysterious character known as William Shakespeare.  

            To begin this discussion, I must start by explaining some of the terms I will be using throughout the rest of this exploration of rhetoric.  The first three terms, mentioned above, are some of the most basic with regards to discussions of rhetoric.  Ethos describes the character of the speaker and the ability of the speaker to render him or herself worthy of credence; pathos describes the emotions portrayed and the ability of the speaker to manipulate the emotional disposition of the audience; and logos describes the logic of an argument in its structure.  This logical structure will generally help to demonstrate some point to the audience.  The next important facet of rhetoric that must be explained, are the three general types of rhetoric, as laid down by Aristotle.  The first is deliberative rhetoric.  In its simplest form, deliberative rhetoric deals with topics of deciding what is good and what is not good for a particular group or individual.  The second, judicial rhetoric, is used in various legal proceedings where a speaker tries to prove the guilt or innocence of another group or individual.  And the third, the case with which we will be working with in the sonnets, is epideictic rhetoric.  Epideictic rhetoric can be simply described as the rhetoric of praise or blame.  This form of rhetoric is, in my opinion, the rhetoric of art.  For better or for worse, art attempts to capture a single moment, a single feeling, however complex or simple that may be and to hold that moment in time.  From the moment the piece of art, be it a painting or poem etc., leaves the artist’s hand, the piece of art is on its own.  The artist must be content to allow his work to send whatever messages could be derived from it on its own, now, without the artist’s help.  Whether the artist is attempting to praise or blame the topic of the piece of art, may become irrelevant after the artwork has left the artist; all we are left with is what the artwork actually accomplishes.  We, hundreds of years in the future, as in the case of Shakespeare, are able to look at the pieces of art and analyze the rhetoric of the works themselves without the ties to the artist.  One last term I think needs explanation in this introduction to rhetoric is “enthymeme.”  An enthymeme is a complex rhetorical device which functions as a type of syllogism wherein the premises are given but the conclusion is often left incomplete.  This form leads the listener (or the reader in our case) to imply a conclusion for the syllogism his or herself.  This allows the speaker to maintain a certain distance from points which might seem to be a little forward or to be able to supply an audience with its own preconceived notions which might not necessarily be true.  This also allows a listener to fill in the blank conclusion with something relevant to his life which the speaker might not have been thinking, or even intending at the time the work was conceived.  While this brief paragraph cannot function as a proper introduction to the complex study of rhetoric, I hope that it at least provides a sufficient understanding to make the following discussion manageable.

While the realm of rhetoric is large enough as to create an entire book about the Shakespearian sonnets, I intend to focus on one facet of Aristotle’s three types of rhetoric, epideictic rhetoric.  While reading through the sonnets and the criticism surrounding them, I became aware of four broad focusses within the sonnets.  The first is the collection of sonnets about the fair youth whom, as Bloom suggests, is a fusion of the earls of Southampton and Pembroke (46).  The second is the dark lady; the third the rival poet, both the dark lady and the rival poet, Bloom suggests, are composites of multiple individuals; and the fourth, Shakespeare himself.   I will apply a rhetorical analysis to each of these (even though there is some cross over) in an attempt to demonstrate some of Shakespeare’s rhetorical uses and complexities.  For simplicity’s sake, I included copies of the sonnets that I will be discussing.  Each sonnet precedes its discussion so if this paper fails in all other regards, at least there will a few gems among the dirt.

Not marble nor the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn

The living record of your memory.

Gainst death and all oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room

Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world to the ending doom.

            So, till the judgement that yourself arise,

            You live in this, and swell in lovers’ eyes.

--55

            This poem, praising both the fair youth and the poet, starts by the poet praising himself.  “This powerful rhyme,” shows the poet’s confidence in himself and his works.  By starting the poem with this ethos, Shakespeare attempts to build trust with the youth, especially since the speaker, whom, for this kind of analysis, we must assume, as Turner postulates, is the same, or nearly the same, as the poet, addresses the subject directly as “you.”  This second-person address turns the poem (though many of the poems are structured in this way) into a direct address where there is a special relationship between the poet and the subject as well as between the poet and the reader.  Shakespeare makes another appeal to self-praise in lines 10-11, “your praise shall still find room/ even in the eyes of all posterity.”  By containing both the praise of the youth and the poem itself in the phrase “your praise,” Shakespeare makes the two inseparable, relying on his own ethos to pass the praise of this friend down to future generations.  Another rhetorical device that continues throughout the sonnet is Shakespeare’s use of the topic of fear.  By continually referring to death, war, burning, and the Apocalypse, Shakespeare uses fear as a way to drive the youth to find comfort in his verses.  This pathos almost forces to the reader to find shelter in the praise of the poet because that is the only thing the poem left on which to hold.  Finally, in the final line “you... swell in lovers’ eyes,” leads me to conclude that this phrase is to function as an enthymeme.  Because the youth is never referred to by anything other than the second person personal pronoun, the reader is able to insert whomever he or she wishes into the poem.  In fact, I believe that the sonnets as a whole would be entirely less successful if they were to address individuals more specifically.  The second person address leaves openings throughout the sonnets which allows for readers to feel included and to be able to move beyond the simple praising of one individual Shakespeare seems to have in mind and instead to substitute infinite combinations.

Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,

My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,

But now my gracious numbers are decayed

And my sick Muse doth give another place.

I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument

Deserves the travail of a worthier pen,

Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent

He robs thee of and pays it thee again.

He lends thee virtue and he stole that word

From thy behaviour, beauty doth he give

And found it in thy cheek: he can afford

No praise to thee but what in thee doth live.

            Then thank him not for which he doth say,

            Since what he owes thee thou thyself dost pay.

--79

            In this sonnet, one which addresses the rival poet, there are three distinct attitudes, one towards the rival poet, one towards the muse, and the last towards the poet himself.  Within the poem, we see the poet take both sides of an epideictic speech, both praise and blame.  Throughout the entire poem, he is consistently praising the muse.  Even when the muse abandons him, he cannot help but say that the muse in the right for looking for someone “worthier” than himself.  This leads us to the poet’s attitude regarding himself.  Much different than the preceding, and one of the later poems, the poet humbles himself compared to the muse.  This submission to, what can be interpreted as divine inspiration, or some unexplainable creative drive, appeals to the pathos of the audience in the form of pity.  A reader who sympathizes with the speaker will be more likely to take the poet’s side against the rival, especially with the description with which Shakespeare paints the rival poet.  Shakespeare moves towards the opposite end of the spectrum of epideictic rhetoric when describing the rival.  Most apparent is the pecuniary diction.  Starting from line 8 and continuing through the end, we see words such as “robs”, “pays”, “lends”, “stole”, “afford”, and “owes.”  This diction functions in two ways.  The first is that Shakespeare equates the rival poet with being a thief of the muse’s qualities and therefore anyone who supports him or reads his work is aiding and abetting in the theft.  Since no one wants to consider himself a thief, Shakespeare drives a wedge between this rival poet and his potential, or existing, audience.  Secondly, it introduces the topic of wealth.  It was first used against the rival poet, and now it functions to elevate the gifts of the muse.  The creativity that she can bestow upon the poets is something equivocal to money.  This is something with which more of the poet’s readership will be able to identify compared to trying to quantify creativity.  So by addressing the qualities of the muse, the rival poet, and Shakespeare himself, and then introducing monetary terms, the audience is going to want to support the ‘better’ person in this poetic contest.  In this case, the ‘better’ person is created through the rhetoric of the artist.  It could just as easily be written from the point of the rival poet in which case, the ‘hero’ of this poem becomes the villain.     

When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her, though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutored youth,

Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although she knows my days are past the best,

Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:

On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.

But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not that I am old?

O, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,

And age in love loves not to have years told.

            Therefore I lie with her and she with me,

            And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

 --138

            This sonnet about the dark lady is different from the other three sonnets because it addresses another individual without a form of a second -person personal pronoun.  In fact, there seems to be a great distance in this poem between the poet and the subject, even if the distance is only emotional.  But despite the seeming distance, the poet and subject are closer than they appear, as Bernard elucidates, “Shakespeare’s sonnets are heavily suffused with [a] neo-Petrachan strain” which “glorifies the poetic act itself” as a form of “self-flattery” (79).  Even in the love poems, “focus shifts from the lady to the poet” (79).  At no point in the process are the readers allowed to forget the poet, but instead, they are constantly reminded of the poet himself.  Through the poetic act, the poet forever binds himself to the Dark Lady; they are inseparable because it is only through him that she lives.   As the poet can narrate both sides of the poem, his and hers, “we are auditors of a dramatic performance;” this is more clear, here, than in the two previous sonnets (Fraser 418).   This structure allows for the reader to understand that neither side seems to be acting maliciously.  Instead, we see the appeal to “the pathos of the lovers’ plight” from both sides (Bernard 82).  Both the speaker and his love just want to be happy, and that is something with which an audience can sympathize.  Even in their shared delusion that the lies can lead to timeless happiness, they try to find happiness in the imperfections by convincing themselves that neither of them are lying.  It is a very human reaction to attempt to eke out happiness even in the most dire of circumstances. This leads to the topic of love and forces the reader to question under what conditions love can exist, and by proposing answers to the questions, the readers are enthymematically applying their own lives to the situation.  And finally in the couplet, we get the pun on the verb ‘to lie.’  This pairing leaves us, even at the very end facing the duality between the good and the bad, the reward and the sacrifice.  The poet seems willing to ask the questions but refuses to leave us with any answers. 

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye

And all my soul and all my every part,

And for this sin there is no remedy,

It is so grounded inward in my heart.

Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,

No shape so true, no truth of such account,

And for myself mine own worth do define,

As I all other in all worths surmount.

But when my glass shows me myself indeed,

Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity,

Mine own self-love quite contrary I read:

Self so self-loving were iniquity.

            ‘Tis thee, my self, that for myself I praise,

            Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

--62

            In the final sonnet of my selection, Shakespeare takes some more time to praise himself.  There is obviously very little in the sonnet besides that; but I think that this is an example of the poet exuding ethos.  When we couple this sonnet with his other works that rely on the confidence that his verses will withstand time, we see, in Shakespeare, some of that vanity that lives inside all of us.  This conclusion is seconded when you take into account that the poet realizes that this self-love is a sin, he recognizes that this is bad, yet, at the same time, he believes that only his verse will withstand time; he is therefore left with no other choice by to praise himself.  As Perelman describes, “To understand an orator [or poet], we must make the effort required to render his discourse coherent and meaningful.  This effort requires goodwill and respect for the person who speaks and for what he says” (1397).  It seems that Shakespeare is the process of creating this goodwill and respect for himself.  Through analyzing the praise in this sonnet, as well as treating of the speaker of the sonnets as the William Shakespeare, we have created a William Shakespeare though it may not be the Shakespeare.  We have effectively created a Shakespearian character whom happens to be named William Shakespeare.  I will continue this idea of the development of Shakespeare as character later; but for now, it must be sufficient to note that these speculations are just that: speculations.  I will continue this discussion later, but there is one more point that needs mentioning about this sonnet 62.  It may seem late in the discussion to be bringing up the topic of form, but in this poem, while content may seem to be less universally applicable than in the others of my selection, there is still a captivating quality to this sonnet and this is a quality which is derived from the form itself and it creates the certain music of the sonnets.  Shakespearian sonnets follow a particularly strict pattern of three rhyming quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet all the while maintaining iambic pentameter.  When reading the sonnets in series, not necessarily in order, but at least in groupings, the listener or reader begins to develop certain expectations about length, rhyme, flow, and sound.  These expectations and sounds create the music which can be pleasing to the ear even if a particular listener does not speak English.  It may seem like self-praise for its own sake, but in the beginning, Shakespeare didn’t have the worldwide reputation that he now possesses, so he was forces to create the “goodwill” and “respect” himself in the verses themselves.

           

            Earlier in the semester, Dr. Sexson mentioned, “If you are having trouble in your life, try writing sonnets.”  I happened to pass this advice on to one of my friends and the response I received was, “In that case, Shakespeare must have had a lot of problems.”  From the little it seems we truly know about Shakespeare, I think the assertion that he had a lot of problems isn’t far from the truth.  From my experience, it seems that being away from his family for a considerable amount of time, losing his son at age eleven, loving a woman whom wasn’t his wife, and stress of the plague, as well as being a bestselling artist just top the list of his problems.  As posited before, by Hughes and myself, it is fair to assume that the speaker of the sonnets is Shakespeare himself.  In these lines, we can hear the voice of The Bard.  What do we learn from these lines?  If I may be so bold as to offer a little bit of conjecture into the nature of, perhaps, the most famous writer of all time, I think it is fair to say that the first thing that caught my eye is Shakespeare’s confidence.  From the very beginning of this discussion we notice that Shakespeare is very confident that his verse will survive the test of time.  He understands that his genius will allow his words to be handed down generation after generation so that four hundred years later; even if we are not certain of the exact identity of the fair youth, we are still reading his ‘praise’ of the youth, and have seen it outlive many of the monuments of his time.  But while he maintains his confidence, I do not think he can be considered cocky.  Even when he acknowledges his great skill, he also acknowledges a higher power that he believes is responsible for his gift.  His ability does seem to be a gift, indeed.  He does not attribute his skill to his own hard work, though, doubtless, he had to work to attain this level of proficiency.  Shakespeare’s talent is largely the result of an innate gift which is the result of genetic fortune.  Shakespeare is not certain where his gift comes from and therefore acknowledges this higher power which he personifies as his own person muse, and given his affinity for Ovid, this choice is not surprising.  While these points might not be much more than conjecture, it is interesting to look at the words of Shakespeare and the rhetoric of his art to see the two come together to paint a picture of man whose identity has been blurred by the ages.  While I find myself as neither an expert rhetorician nor Shakespearean scholar, I have come to understand the relationship between Shakespeare/literature and rhetoric and I hope the readers of these words may have been as fortunate as to gain, if even in the slightest, a better understanding of this relationship. 

Perhaps, after this analysis, it is obvious that there is very little (if any) distance between the study of rhetoric and poetics.  However, I would suggest that poetics should be viewed as a branch of rhetoric rather than two comparable forces.  Rhetoric is obviously abundant in the Shakespearian sonnets, and perhaps if Shakespeare had been less of a rhetorician, he never would have been capable of writing anything worthy of being passed down for hundreds of years.  In fact, it could be argued that the tendency of Shakespeare’s work to be handed down and read so consistently is due to the fact that Shakespeare is one of the greatest rhetoricians that ever lived.  Whether he was aware of the formal application of his rhetoric or if it was just an inherent knowledge of language may never be known.  But despite the complications of being able to know the extent of Shakespeare’s genius, perhaps an in depth, book-length examination of Shakespearian rhetoric would be beneficial to academia’s understanding of rhetoric and Shakespeare as a whole.

Works Cited

Aristotle. On Rhetoric. Trans. George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. Print.

Baldwin, Charles S. Ancient Rhetoric and Poetic: Interpreted from Representative Works. Gloucester, Mass.: Macmillan, 1959. Print.

Bernard, John D. ""To Constancie Confin'de": The Poetics of Shakespeare's Sonnets." PMLA 94.1 (1979): 77-90. Print.

Bitzer, Lloyd F. "The Rhetorical Situation." Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968): 1-14. Print.

Bloom, Harold. The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2011. Print.

Fraser, Russell. "Shakespeare at Sonnets." The Sewanee Review 97.3 (1989): 408-27. Print.

Hughes, Ted. Essential Shakespeare. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Print.

Perelman, Chaim. "The New Rhetoric: A Theory of Practical Reasoning." Modern and Postmodern Rhetoric (1970): 1384-409. Print.

Plato. Essential Dialogues of Plato. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. New York: Barns & Noble Classics, 2005. Print.

Shakespeare, William. William Shakespeare: Complete Works. Ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. New York: Modern Library, 2007. Print.

Struever, Nancy S. "Shakespeare and Rhetoric." Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 6.2 (1988): 137-44. University of California Press. Web.

Precolonial Postcolonialism

On Wednesday, when we were talking about The Tempest as a postcolonial work, I couldn't help but to think about the fact that colonialism during Shakespeare's time was minimal at best.  This is the genius of Shakespeare.  The ability to realize an issue like colonial-native relations at a point where the British Empire was only beginning to stretch its arms around the globe.  I know this seems like a small comment, but just the simplicity of something like this amazes me.  

Some Thoughts about Frederick Turner & Life

       

First, something small that Turner talked about in his lecture on Friday was a small reference to "the God of Whitman" and this is just a little poem that I have been working on (for a couple months now(it's a slow process)) that is along these same lines.  It isn't quite finished yet, but who knows when it will be finally done?  I don't usually put something out there until I'm finished with it, but this is basically my 'rough draft.'

        The Language of the Mountains

I want to learn the language of the mountains

So I can hear their stories, and tell them mine

And share their wisdom with the world.

I want to understand the cascade of water

And of stones and the rustling of the trees.

This is the stage of the greatest stories.

I want to understand the fleeing animal,

The thinning air, and the ability to touch the clouds.

These crags could be my temporary home for days

Or even weeks, but still, all I hear is the hum.

The monotone hum of mountains chanting back and forth.

Years have passed and here I sit and listen

To the stories of the mountains.

I have become a stone; I have become a tree:

I can remain still for hours; the animals no longer flee;

I touch the clouds and breathe the thin air                               

And finally, I understand the language of the mountains.

They have told me their stories and I have told mine;

And now, I have become the mountains;

My roots have grown deep; their stories are my stories.

This leads me into the main thing about which I wanted to talk.  While Fred was talking, it seemed that no matter what the topic was, everything that was discussed was all related.  Even details as small as "Whitman's god" or "standing on the border of the known and unknown" relates directly to my final paper I am writing for Ben's French Lit class.  Turner does seem to be one of the few remaining Renaissance Men in the world today.  Being able to connect literature to the sciences seemed so simple as he stood there and talked, but it helped to demonstrate how interconnected this world is.  The fibers of every single thing seem to be intertwined with the fibers of everything else.  Literature is really the study of everything, and that is the very reason I find myself so much at home in the department.  Everything falls into the circle of the arts and humanities that was drawn on the board.

A Taste of My Final Project

For no better reason than "because I was working on it today," I figured I would take a second to copy and paste the first paragraph of my final paper.  I suspect it won't be the case, but given the chance that I am moving the absolutely wrong direction, I suspect that this will give me time to regroup.  If that is not the case, I hope you enjoy. 

Shakespearian Rhetoric

            “Then rhetoric does not treat of all kinds of discourse?” (Plato 122).  The question seems simple enough; and when Gorgias responds with “no,” I think that most readers (especially rhetoricians) give a slight cringe.  In fact, it seems clear that rhetoric does cover all forms of discourse including literature.  I must, therefore, admit at finding myself quite at a loss when I first thought about the connection between literature and rhetoric.  This thought first occurred to me as I was reading through Harold Bloom’s The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life wherein he says, “Wit is too besieged in the [Shakespearian] Sonnets by a strict restraint of ethos and pathos; logos reigns almost unchallenged” (85).  While this statement contains only some of the most basic rhetorical terms, I found myself caught off-guard.  Thus inspired, I was determined to delve into the topic of rhetoric and literature using the Shakespearian Sonnets as my starting point.  Therefore, I must admit, that I am writing this paper as much for my own benefit as a type of journey during which I hope to discover as much as my reader the relationship between rhetoric and Shakespeare as well as the connection between rhetoric and literature.  In the research, I came across several points that drove me to consider the sonnets as forms of epideictic rhetoric, and expanding on that principle, I will explore several of the sonnets and their epideictic properties.  Within this analysis, I hope to explore what components of the sonnets most (if not all) readers connect to which helps to make these verses so timeless.  After this rhetorical analysis, I would like to look at these components of rhetoric in light of Ted Hughes’s phrase, “The sonnets is where we really hear Shakespeare’s own voice” (??).  By applying this concept with the rhetorical discussion, hopefully we can catch a glimpse, however brief, of the mysterious character known as William Shakespeare.

Thoughts on the Film....

This is the first time I have seen this film, and even though we aren't watching it in its entirety, I must, once more, force myself to write some thoughts.  For some reason, I can't quite find anything particularly insightful to say about Lear, which is impressive given that I always have something to say.  Perhaps (or hopefully, rather) this is just a side-effect Lear.

My first superficial comment is that I struggle watching the film with the subtitles...  Shakespeare, as pointed out by Hughes, is known for his language.  I struggle to watch the action taking place because I can't take my eyes off the text.  The complexity of the language is at the point of requiring just enough of my attention to draw me away from the action. This is an interesting intersection of Shakespeare and technology.  Shakespeare's plays were initial written to be performed, not read.  Now we live in an age where almost all of the one's encounters with Shakespeare's 'plays' is in the form of text or film, neither of which are Shakespeare's intended medium.  I wish I had more answers than questions, but I'm just left wondering how else the technology of these past four hundred years have influenced not only productions of Shakespeare, but interpretations as well?  How does the world react to these new mediums of Shakespeare?

A Little Catching Up

It has been a while since I has posted anything so mostly out of guilt more than having anything particular to say about King Lear, I will take a few moments to make a few remarks.

Firstly, regarding my final paper:
Admittedly, and most Shakespeare scholars might call this sacrilege, I find myself more attracted to the sonnets than to the plays.  As such, I am going to try to gear my final paper towards the sonnets; more specifically, I want to look at the rhetoric of the sonnets, mostly from an  Aristotelian view of logic with perhaps a few more contemporary sources.  Then, hopefully I will be able to take Hugh's essay, and perhaps Turner's (though this one doesn't immediately come to mind with regards to language) and make some comments/connections with regards to the sonnets, rhetoric, and language.

Preliminary commentary on Lear:
"Nothing comes of nothing; mend your reply or mar your fortune."  (Maybe not exactly right; but again, working from memory)
I can't help but to jump right into to Turner's "School of Night": "A plague makes nothing matter..."  Cordelia is the the victim of nothing throughout Lear.  Her words seem to constitute "nothing" and everything at the same time.  "Nothing, my Lord."  We literally see nothing escape from her mouth and this is what initiates the conflict of the entire play.  I feel like this is exactly what Turner meant when he talks about nothing being able to balance a Globe on a scale.

This commentary seems superficial, but it is just what is on the top of my head, I'll certainly have to spend some of Easter Weekend reading over some critical thought on the play with regards to language.

Also, another thought that for some reason just came to mind was the setting of the play: England before the Aristocracy.  I just must ask: why this date? why not anywhere else? why not any other time?   

A Spring Break Story

So perhaps this isn't exactly the type of situation into which we were supposed to insert our memorized lines, but I feel like this is a Shakespearean story worth telling:

One of the first days into Spring Break, I was at my parents' house in Three Forks.  My sister (who is a Freshman here at MSU), myself, and my mother were talking about our semesters.  My sister was whining about how in one of her Freshman Seminar classes she had to memorize some lines from Shakespeare (she didn't mention which) and in response, I mention, "Oh, I can do that."  And from there I start to recite (or perform if you prefer) the first lines of Sonnet 116 and no more than three or four lines into it my sister stops me and says, "We get it, you're weird." And then they continued their conversation while ignoring me as I finished the sonnet.

I've got nothing to write about (I've got nothing about which to write)

I figured that since I just finished reading Northrop Frye's Fools of Time, I would take a few minutes in an attempt to engage especially when it comes to the topic of 'nothing.'  Near the end of his book, Frye says, "The word 'nothing' has two meanings: it is a grammatical negative meaning 'not anything,' and it is a positive noun meaning 'something called nothing.'"  When I read this passage, as I'm sure you're you've already assumed, I was drawn back to Frederick Turner's essay "The School of Night" wherein he explains that if a scale is properly constructed (which involves manipulation of the levers and fulcrum) it can balance The Globe and nothing.  This combination, which, as Frye does, can easily be tied back to a passage from Hamlet, "The king is a thing of nothing," but instead, I want to take it in a slightly different, perhaps, if not as analytically valuable, but certainly more creative avenue.  This positive nominal structure seemed, to me, to be exactly the type of thing Hamlet would use when describing his mental state, especially, if Horatio were to ask him in act five.  I imagine that it would take him little time to come to the conclusion that "nothing" was wrong with him, that "nothing" affected his brain.  While I'm no psychologist, I think it would be safe to say that dreams seem to be a physical manifestation of various "nothings" in the brains; they are made from some things so small and so fleeting, that they could be equivocated with nothing, and when those nothings are on one side of the scale, dreams are on the other.  It seems that what ails young Hamlet, at least part of the problem (for there are certainly other aspects at play), is the dreams that his mind has concocted.  He questions whether the ghost of his father is real and he finds himself trying to put on a mask of insanity (though whether the mask is necessary is debatable).  These dreams, the illusions, or delusions seem to get Hamlet's ball rolling down the hill of madness.  I also can't help but reach back to A Midsummer Night's Dream when Thesius says: "Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, far more than pure reason could ever comprehend." (Maybe slightly misquoted, but I'm working from memory here so give me a break.)  I believe that it can be argued that we see Hamlet as both a lover and a madman, but what happens when his madness interferes with his love life?  How seething is his brain now that he had driven his lover to suicide?  What drives the brains of lovers and madmen?  If you asked Hamlet, I think he would say with confidence: "Nothing."

A Note on Procrastination

As the title says, I am going to take this time to expound my thoughts, as well as some others', on procrastination.  First off, I know the deal was that we are supposed to provide a blog entry for every class period.  I haven't been avoiding that purposely, but I find that I will submit considerably more 'engaged' blogs is I postpone writing anything until the end of the week and then composing all my thoughts into coherent entries in which I can fully explain my thoughts instead of posting a handful of half-baked ramblings.
Secondly, I would like to harken back to our class discussion on "Hamlet and Procrastination."  In ending the discussion, it seemed that we ended on the conclusion that Hamlet procrastinates in order to allow for a space for the drama of the play to take place.  At the time, I didn't find too much of a problem with this conclusion because, frankly, I didn't have a better alternative.  But upon further rumination and research I came to see that if this were truly the case, Shakespeare, being as clever as he was, would have written the play in such a way to allow Hamlet the time he needed to be able to be as dramatic as was necessary.  So now, in lieu of this "Procrastination for Dramatic Space" theory, I would like to proffer another theory that I came across while reading  through Hamlet's Enemy, the book Dr. Sexson was nice enough to loan me.  Though I don't particularly care for psychoanalysis, particularly Freudian Psychoanalysis,  I couldn't help but find an important example of reason why Hamlet finds himself procrastinating within the play.  The Freud-Jones Interpretation of Hamlet's situation sheds an alternative light (although, I must admit, it is a shady-psychological light) on Hamlet's dilemma which ultimately leads to his procrastination.  I must take a second here to warn against potential pronoun confusion in the following explanation.  This play and this explanation create for difficult explanation.  The Freud-Jones Interpretation basically has its roots in Freud's Oedipal Complex.  The Oedipus complex, as I'm sure you all know, states that within every male child/adolescent there is an instinctual desire to kill one's father and therefore, with the father being out of the way, marry the mother.  This being the case, especially Hamlet's case, he finds that he has identifies with Claudius.  Instead of being able to quickly take the orders from his father's ghost and to take revenge upon his uncle, he finds himself at a moral crossroads seeing as Claudius has only done what Hamlet himself had wanted to do.  This more complication is further exacerbated by the fact Hamlet's father commands him not to take revenge on his mother.  Hamlet Sr. tells his son that his mother should be left to be judged by heaven.  This frustrates the son because his largest cause for upset is not directed towards his uncle as is most likely to be expected but instead towards his mother.  This is another component of Freud's theory.  After the father's death, the mother's attentions should be directed to the son, and the son should become the sole focus of these affections.  However, the mother overlooks the son and directs all of her attentions towards his uncle.  So because the son identifies with the uncle and resents his mother, he would prefer to take revenge upon the mother, but being directly advised against such action Hamlet finds himself morally frustrated and forced to postpone any immediate action against anyone; hence the procrastination as well as a large component of the conflict of the play.

Perhaps this seems as shady to you as it did to me.  Either way, it offers something new.

Also, one last note about the sonnet.  Below is a version of the point I am at with my sonnet.  It is not complete.  Some of the technical points need modified for it to conform to the specs of a proper sonnet, but here it is:

A field of daisies dance in the wind,
They bow and twist and writhe;
And as I wander slowly by,
I turn and one catches my eye.
It does not stand above the rest
But caught my eye by happenstance;
And all the closer I inspect,
The purest beauty she does reflect.
She smiles up at the sun
and my heart catches fire;
Every petal glistens with fresh dew,
At each one, I fall in love anew.
     My heart has been stolen like never before;
     I can look at another, never more.

"I talk'st of nothing"

True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.
      -- R&J Act1 Scene 4

I know this is a little late in the discussion of dreams, but I haven't been putting this off on purpose; instead I have been waiting for a dream to which I could do at least the slightest amount of justice.  We'll see what I can do, so here it goes:

My dream started by me finding myself in a class room in Wilson Hall, a nightmare even on the best of days.  I found myself in a Ling 238 (Formerly Eng 238) Structure and Function of Language class, a class I took last semester.  However, I was not enrolled in the class.  Instead, I had applied to teach the class and had just found out that I did not get the position so I had stopped by to see who did.  I did not recognize the person (who was also a student) who was teaching, but after a few short minutes of listening to this person speak, I began to realize that this person was going to do a bad job.  Obviously this upset me.  I preceded to make a scene in the back of the class and stormed out.  Upon leaving the class I realized that Dr. Sexson was the professor who recommended this person to teach the class so I was upset with him and then after leaving the class, I found myself going around in circles within the maze that is Wilson Hall.


I'm not even going to attempt to interpret this or even say anything else about it, but I'm just throwing it out there for everyone to read.

Coming Out of the Humanities Closet

More strange than true: I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

From the time I was a freshman in High School, I wanted to be a doctor.  Everyone in my life knew this was my dream, and the only thing that varied was what my specialty would be.  But then, it happened.  My senior year, I chose to take AP Lit (coming from a small school in Montana we didn’t have too many options for higher division classes) and from this point on, my life would never be the same.  During the first semester of the class, we read Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises and for the first time in my life I understood why someone might enjoy Literature.  In those pages written so many years ago, I saw vestiges of my life and I was hooked.  Finding the flames of my passion stoked but not yet combusted, I didn’t quite change my life plans.  When I enrolled at the university I was a double major, Cell Biology & Neuroscience and Literature, and was still planning on becoming a doctor.  But three semesters in, after taking several English/Lit/Writing courses, I saw the path of my future change.  Sitting in an Organic Chemistry Lecture, I realized that I could not spend the rest of my life looking through microscopes, that my thirst for knowledge was too great to be satiated by a field so narrow.  That very week, I dropped my Cell Bio/Neuroscience major and started looking at English Graduate Schools.  Now came the real challenge: telling my family.  I knew that I had a supportive family who would love me no matter what, but I also knew that none of them really understood what went on (perhaps I still don’t really know) in the English department.  My parents were the first to know and they were about as okay with it as I had suspected, but I figured my grandparents would be a slightly harder sell. In the end, everything worked out as well as could be expected, but I still see, in the eyes of both my parents and grandparents, the remnants of Theseus’s speech shown above.  Perhaps they think that I sit around with my “poet’s pen” and spend my days writing “antic fables.”  And maybe they are right, maybe that is exactly what we do, but there is a larger truth to the whole situation which can be seen in the narrative that I just presented.  If I found myself surprised at finding my life in the words of Hemmingway, imagine my surprise when I realized that Shakespeare also outlined my life in his words.  He described my feelings, Theseus’s words nearly to a tee, when I was in high school; and he described my family’s feelings now, but this just goes to show that the “airy nothings” which find their ways onto the page are more than the simply the words of madmen.  Oh, they are so much more.  These are the words which help to describe the human condition, to illuminate the darkness of both the past and the future, as well as give us insight into the innermost workings of the individual and the society to which he belongs.  In the end, doesn’t this all seem to be accomplishing the work of all the other “real” majors in the university system within itself?

A Midsummer Night's Video

Is this the video we've been discussing in class?  I don't know much about film (It might be appropriate to say I know nothing about film) but this looks about right.

10 Blogs and a Sunday Night

To pick 10 blogs, I just scrolled through the list and wherever the arrow ended up, I clicked.  I'm not exactly certain of the best way to proceed from here, but I will record a few comments from the blogs that I read and see if I can't come up with something of my own to add to the end of it all:

Honey:  I found the discussion about Dante's understanding of the 'depth' of human experience interesting especially when viewed in the structure of The Divine Comedy.  In the epic, we see Dante the pilgrim pass through the layers of human degradation quite literally.  From here, I am left wondering: is it possible to recognize this same physical motion, this same phenomenology, in Shakespeare?  One last thing: I really enjoyed the bit about 'what is the human condition?'  Not only does it ask what is the human condition, but it asks what is the human condition.

Zach:  "Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of someone who has lost his balance." J. Joyce

I can't help but to think of this every time I hear Joyce and Shakespeare mentioned together.  Back to the discussion at hand, I'm glad you brought up Shakespeare and realism.  I discussed Shakespeare and realism in one of my blogs, but I found myself a little more skeptical than Turner.  Perhaps I will have to look into the works you bring up for myself in hopes of developing a better view of Shakespeare's role in the development and implementation of realism.

Eli:  I'm glad you are feeling better.  And as feeble of an attempt as this might be, I must admit that it seems ridiculous how a strange gentleman writing 400 years ago could have written words that we still find applicable to our condition today!  Something like this was the reason I originally took a liking to literature.

Harvey:  For some reason, the simplicity of a picture and a short passage seems to say more than a couple paragraphs ever could.  And while I am here, I have been wondering whether 'puckish' is derived from this play or it went the other way around and it is where Shakespeare got the idea. *Consulting OED*  Semi-convoluted answer: Shakespeare did not seem to coin the term Puck, the noun form of the adj. 'puckish,' it seems to have been an archetypal character around the time and shortly before Shakespeare started writing.  It would seem that like Bottom, Puck would have functioned as a sort of tag-name with which the audience would have immediately identified.

Katie:  Let's write about love.  As you said, I think Shakespeare is irrevocably linked with the idea of love, especially in the mind of the modern American reader.  If I must proffer a guess, I would say this has something to do with the fact that this is one of the most common texts used throughout high school English courses.  I would actually like to see some kind of statistic that showed how many Americans know of any other works by Shakespeare besides R&J.  It's a sad comment on the lives of Americans.

Tristan:  Being someone who spent three semesters in the Cell Biology and Neuroscience department before switching to English Lit, I completely understand having to justify the reading of fiction, and sometimes even reading at all.  Not that there are not empiricists in the English Departments around the country, but I think most people forget that language is an art form.  I know it took me a long time to realize that, and I know most people don't believe it.  I wish more people could be like you and be willing to walk both sides of the line, and see how the line isn't so concrete.

Scott:  The relation between an Author and his (or her) work has always fascinated me.  Less so in the case that you bring up, but I am always curious about how individual psychology can cross textual borders, and how the text to influence the writer himself.  This is something which Harold Bloom calls the personal 'agon' of the writer, I believe. (Perhaps that's not correct, but I'm just working from memory here.)  The ability, or perhaps 'possibility' is a better word, of a writer to truly distance himself from his work or the extent to which this is possible is a question which may never be answered, but I would be interesting in reading some thoughts of psychologists and literary critics on the subject.  It might end up throwing a wrench into the inner workings of the Formalist's whole theory, huh?

Cassidy:  The power of music in story telling has the potential to create a great project.  I liked the sound of it anyways.  I can't help but to think about the play without music being played throughout.  Especially as the play takes place in a near dream-state, it seems strange that music wouldn't constantly flow throughout the piece, highlighting the characters and the actions.  Without proffering any answers, especially because I have none to give, I would like to know how Vico would view music in his scheme of things of which Dr. Sexson is so fond.

Sam O:  You asked me to name someone who has been more influential in the realm of literature than Shakespeare?  Alas, I cannot; and I believe that most great mind of the literary scene would agree with me.  Or perhaps it best be said that I agree with them.  With such a great influence, I cannot help but wonder to what extent can we trace the reach of Shakespeare's unparalleled arms and fingers into the modern day.  Frederick Turned obviously does it in his book about Shakespeare and Twenty-first century economics, but I suspect that there are most surprising influences than even that.

Emily:  Shakespeare has managed to reach a rage of audience that spans about 400 years, and the traditions continues to lengthen.  400 years, in nearly the exact same language and form, and we still get it.  I can't help but to say "Wow."  That is something of which most authors can only dream.

Oh, Shakespeare

During class today we discussed one of the points of Frederick Turner's book on Shakespeare and economics.  During this conversation, something came to mind which hadn't, until today, particularly concerned me.  In A Midsummer Night's Dream, at some point, the question of money arises and I noticed that even though the play is set in and around Athens, the characters still discuss the money in terms of the British monetary system.  I know I thought it strange when I first read it, but I just brushed it off as a minor detail; but upon further reflection, it shows something more.  I believe that this detail gives us an insight into realism and its progress in British literature.  During the process of literary development, realism came under question and I suppose one could say it peaked under the regime of the English novel.  This is the first time that I have noticed some detail like this entering into the details of realism even if this is a demonstration of a nonrealistic detail.  While this thought seems mostly undeveloped here, it is something which I will keep an eye on in the later readings, and perhaps my additional readings, and see if I can make any more notes or conclusions about Shakespeare and realism (or the lack thereof).

Turner and Hughes

It is my understanding that this blog is supposed to be a reconciliation of Shakespeare, Turner, and Hughes; and after leaving class on Friday, I ran (figuratively) over to the library and picked up a copy of Frederick Turner's book Shakespeare and the Nature of Time.  I will try to get explain the relationship between these three works as well as how we can use these works with relation to A Midsummer's Night Dream


Shakespeare and the Nature of Time:
The metaphysical space that takes place in a Midsummer Night's Dream that comes about due to the majority of the action taking place during the night.  During this time, the natural cycles that help to indicate time are interrupted and therefore, the actions of the play are capable of stepping to a realm that helps break away from a timeless reality.  This helps to bring in subjects that doesn't exist in this reality (like the fairies) into the real world and connect them with the mortal characters.

School of Night:
In School of Night, there is an interesting connection between the action in A Midsummer's Night Dream and the action of the literal School of Night.  During the night, in both cases, we see a series of fantastical events taking place.  The School of Night introduces the world to new developments in the sciences, mathematics, and philosophy.  These introductions can (at least in my opinion) be considered as 'magical' (and I'm certain the government and the church would agree) as the actions that take place during the night in the place.



Essential Shakespeare:
O! Ted Hughes! I'm not entirely certain how to connect this introduction to these other two works, at least not as I've connected the other two so I will just make a few notes about where I am with my Shakespeare memorization from the anthology (if that is what it is to be called).  Up to this point, I have managed to memorize Macbeth's "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.." as well as Sonnet 116.  I have started on the "As You Like It"'s "All the world's a stage..." speech.

Call Me Old Fashioned...

As I wrote this title, I found myself stuck trying to decided between "fashion" and "fashioned."  I went with my gut and settled on the one that seemed correct for no obvious reason.  When I wrote the title, I was going to express my distaste for technology (namely Kindles and their kin and blogs) but I was suddenly struck with a more relevant idea.  In the past twenty years, the surge of technology that has swept over the globe has exposed us to information in way that has never been seen before.  The constant bombardment of advertisements and 'entertainment' has left us swimming in a sea of words in such a way that I believe it may have created changes in the language itself. (i.e. if I were to have experienced this "fashion" "fashioned" dilemma in text, I would have had considerably less trouble when writing my title.)  In fact, language changes across, and sometimes even without, barriers is a subject that has recently interested me.  If we are to believe Harold Bloom in his book, The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life, Shakespeare has been the most influential writer in the world.  This could allow for a baseline reading per se to begin to evaluate language change on a global level. 
While this idea might seem quite undeveloped (and rightly so) I will certainly post any updates that I manage to make over the semester with research into language change and Shakespeare.