April
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 7, No. 0324. Tuesday, 30 April 1996. (1) From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Apr 1996 11:52:55 GMT Subj: Re: SHK 7.0289 Questions (2) From: Leo Daugherty <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 27 Apr 1996 11:31:54 GMT Subj: Manfred Mickleson, FYI (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Terence Hawkes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Apr 1996 11:52:55 GMT Subject: 7.0289 Questions Comment: Re: SHK 7.0289 Questions For Eileen Flanagan: Who's Larry King? T. Hawkes (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Leo Daugherty <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 27 Apr 1996 11:31:54 GMT Subject: Manfred Mickleson, FYI Dear SHAKSPEReans: In what follows you will be introduced to Manfred Mickleson. The fact that he is a bit outside our period need not, as I am sure you will agree after reading his letter, disqualify him for serious consideration as chairperson of the SHAKSPER Advisory Board which Hardy is now proposing. It will also, I trust, not constitute a serious obstacle to his candidacy that his ontological status is not totalizingly unproblematic. Leo Daugherty The Evergreen State College ******************************************************************************* > Manfred Mickleson Applies for an 18th-Century Job > The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics > > >We have had numerous requests for an authentic copy of the famous letter >sent by Manfred Mickleson when seeking an appointment in 18th-century >literature. > >What makes Manfred amazing is that he is an imaginary candidate. He was >created in a moment of sheer giddiness by several members of a search >committee who had, collectively, just finished reading the dossiers of >over one hundred candidates for an actual 18th-century position. Manfred >is, therefore, more than a product of the ironic or satirical >imagination. He is a kind of "composite candidate" representing the newest >PhD's being produced by English graduate programs. > >The other thing that makes Manfred amazing is that a number of the >departments to whom he applied did not realize that he was an imaginary >candidate. He received over forty dossier requests, and six invitations >to be interviewed at the MLA convention. (We still have not learned >whether or not, despite being unable to show up in person for his MLA >interviews, Manfred received any actual offers.) > >=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= > >Dear Professor xxxxxxx: > > I am writing to apply for the position in Eighteenth-Century literature >announced in the October MLA Job List. After having taken an M.A. at Cornell. >University, I am in the process of completing my dissertation -- >"Commerce, Homosociality, and the Engendering of the Body in Defoe and >Wollstonecraft" -- under the direction of Terry Castle at Stanford >University. This year, I am a visiting assistant professor of >eighteenth-century literature at Wagenknecht University. I expect to >defend my dissertation in March. The manuscript is under contract to >Routledge. As my vita shows, I have given over forty papers at various >conferences on literature and cultural studies in the last three years, >and have articles under consideration at twelve scholarly >journals. (A portion of the first chapter, "The 'Eeek' of Literary >Sentimentalism: Does Eco Echo Eco?" will be published in PMLA this coming >spring. I also have several other book-length projects under contract to >Verso, Methuen, and Cambridge University Press. > > The argument of my dissertation, informed by current thinking in feminist >theory, queer theory, cultural materialism, eco-criticism, and postcolonial >studies, centers on the paradoxes of representation involving masculine >authority and feminine desire in eighteenth-century pirate literature, and >especially on sentimentalism as a response to the en(gender)ing of the >patriarchal body -- which I see as epistemologically equivalent to the "body >politic" in eighteenth-century political discourse -- in the figure of >the (male) sailor in British oceanic commerce during the first age of imperial >expansion. I argue that it is the absence of women from shipboard life >that permits Defoe, in his History of the Pirates, to depict seagoing >commerce terms of a normative homosociality -- the all-male society of the >quarterdeck and lower decks in both naval and commercial shipping -- such that >piracy then embodies the eruption of a transgressive (and, implicitly, >anti-imperialistic) sexuality demanding representation in altered or >displaced terms in the "literature of the shore," including such genres as >the periodical >essay, the mock-heroic poem, and the sentimental novel. It is in the >sentimental >novel, I argue, that this displacement achieves autonomous status as itself a >normative discourse, with a representation of emotions in terms of a "feminine" >sensitivity operating to compensate for the violated fantasy of all-male >sufficiency represented by the boarding or "penetration" of an East >India galley or naval three-decker by a depredatory piracy. > > Since the background of such scenes is the emergent society of >Anglo-Caribbean commerce -- slavery is a leitmotif in many of the pirate >narrative popular in Defoe's period -- I also see a proleptic >postcolonialism at work in the system of paradoxes evident in the attempt >to recuperate African-Americans -- then, of course, not yet Americans, as >"America" would not emerge as a cultural and political construction for a >number of years -- as normatively transgressive figures in the portrayal >both of Afro-Caribbean slave culture and as members of pirate crews. > > My most controversial point, I think, concerns the way literary >sentimentalism -- I have in mind not only such major writers as Charlotte >Lennox and Mrs. Inchbald, but such male writers as Henry Mackenzie and >Laurence Sterne >-- operates as a compensatory mechanism for the "violated" homosociality of >the shipboard crew assaulted by pirates. Far from representing an empowering >domesticity, as Nancy Armstrong and other leading eighteenth-century >scholars have argued, literary sentimentalism demands to be viewed as the >representational equivalent of "the lower deck in drag," striving >through a reassertion of "feminine" sensitivity to reassert the >equilibrium of an "onshore" heteroxexuality symbolically and practically >suspended when >the ship leaves shore with an all-male crew. > > The entire point of literary sentimentalism, from this perspective, is >to insulate the world of normative homosociality from the otherwise >disturbing effects of masculine desire represented by the pirate society that >boards the "normal" vessel with its cutlasses in its teeth, which on a higher >symbolic plane operates to protect the British military and the forces of >commercialism from destabilization or disruption. > > In this sense, works like Sterne's A Sentimental Journey were not only >complicit with, but actively agential in the development of, British >imperialism in the period following the Seven Years' War. By protecting the >material sentimentalism -- especially in the ideologically problematic >context of Afro-Caribbean cultural development, with the slave figuring as >neither "masculine" or "feminine" but as an always-potentially-disruptive >'Other' -- literature was simultaneously insulating the "body politic" of >the new post-Hanoverian commercial order from potentially dangerous forms >of accidental or unintended demystification. > > The description of my dissertation as I have given it covers only part >of its first chapter. The manuscript will culminate in a detailed discussion of >Mary Wollstonecraft's Pirates of Penzance as a feminist reappropriation of >the piracy motif, together with an account of the masculinist or patriarchal >suppression that would for many years result in this work's being >attributed to Gilbert and Sullivan -- and does not mention the use made in >subsequent portions of work by Foucault, Althusser, Lacan, Deleuze, Bourdieu, >Gayatri Spivak, Edward Said, Judith Butler, and others. To grasp its full >range, >one would have to see a sample from the actual dissertation, which I would be >very happy to send you. > > I would also be very happy to send you a copy of my curriculum vitae, >which contains full titles of my conference papers and articles under >submission, plus a dossier containing letters from Terry Castle, John Bender, >Jonathan Culler, Laura Brown, Felicity Nussbaum, Jonathan Arac, and Peter de >Bolla. > > I may perhaps add, without seeming too boastful, that in the short time >I have been teaching here at Wagenknecht University, I have won several Most >Exciting Teacher awards, including, most recently, a citation for my >creative use of eighteenth-century maps and engineering sketches in my >class on "Jolly >Roger on the Turnpike," a freshman seminar on the development of the English >road system and response to the figure of the pirate-turned-highwayman in >eighteenth-century criminal trials. (Basically, I argue that the figure >of the former pirate must be viewed in terms of a transgressive sexuality >absent from depictions of the shore-based highwayman who, having begun his >career on a horse and ended it in a halter, is able to function as an >unproblematic ideological support for a depredatory imperialist commerce >during the period of the East India monopoly. Several undergraduates have >told me that >this course changed their lives.) > > I will be attending the MLA convention in December, and would be >delighted to talk further with you there. > > Sincerely, > > Manfred J. Mickleson > > Visiting Assistant Professor > >--------------------------------------------- > >This page is not copyright, on the grounds that (1) our own copy came to >us on the 18th-century zamisdat, so we have no idea who has the rights, >and (2) Manfred in any case belongs not to an age but to all humankind. >Feel free to download, print, and circulate. > >Amy L. Cavender >Dept. of Government and International Studies >University of Notre Dame >Notre Dame, IN 46556 >Internet:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 7, No. 0323. Tuesday, 30 April 1996. (1) From: Jim Helfers <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 25 Apr 1996 13:28:26 -0700 (MST) Subj: Re: SHK 7.0301 Re: Funeral Elegy (2) From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 25 Apr 1996 20:52:02 -0500 (EST) Subj: As in FE (3) From: Peter L. Groves <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Apr 1996 15:01:56 GMT+1000 Subj: Re: SHK 7.0318 Re: Funeral Elegy (4) From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 27 Apr 1996 22:00:08 -0500 (EST) Subj: Harry Hill reading FE: A Soliloquy (5) From: Charles Boyle <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 30 Apr 1996 11:21:05 -0500 (EST) Subj: elegy (6) From: Richard Kennedy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 25 Apr 1996 20:30:23 -0700 Subj: Funeral Elegy (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jim Helfers <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 25 Apr 1996 13:28:26 -0700 (MST) Subject: 7.0301 Re: Funeral Elegy Comment: Re: SHK 7.0301 Re: Funeral Elegy RE: Funeral Elegy Sorry for the belated answer to Richard Kennedy's post of April 19th (SHAKSPER 7.0301, 21 April). Having had my name taken in vain, so to speak, I was struck with the irony of Mr. Kennedy's comments, since Donald Foster and David Kathman had initially pointed out the work of the Shakespeare Clinic to me. I sense wheels within wheels in the Kennedy/Foster exchanges, so, with some trepidation I enter this contested arena with some small scraps. First, I believe that Elliott's program and SHAXICON really do very different things. The Shakespeare Clinic program concentrates on what I (perhaps idio- syncratically) think of as "classical stylometry," the measurement of regular- ly occurring stylistic features common to all writers. As far as the Clinic's conclusions about the Funeral Elegy are concerned, they strike me as ambig- uous. Their tests essentially specify a statistical range within an author's style. If stylistic markers in a tested sample fall outside the range of a particular author, then the presumption is an alternate authorship. Foster's post on the tests and methods of the Clinic was, it seems to me, clear. He questioned the validity of applying some of the stylistic tests; with the questioned tests omitted, the FE falls statistically into the range of Shakespeare's samples. SHAXICON works in a different way. Admittedly, the conclusions to be drawn from manipulating this database rest on some assumptions: the main one is that the person who wrote the plays also acted some parts in them (or at least knew these parts better than the others, for whatever reason); another may be that the Shakespeare who is listed as a sharer and player in the company is the one who wrote the plays. Even if those assumptions are not granted, there's still the question of the statistically significant patterns of rare words revealed by the data. Notice that this is an entirely different tack from classical stylometry, which surveys universal stylistic aspects instead of rare words. On a further stylometric note: on April 4 of this year, I heard a lecture by Jonathan Hope of Middlesex University, entitled "'New' Works by Shakespeare? Non-Lunatic Approaches to Authorship." Initially, I was skeptical of his use of traditional statistics, but I soon found that he has an interesting spin on stylometry; he combines it with assumptions about patterns of historical linguistic change to pick his contrastive pairs of syntactic items. His sociolinguistic approach charts changes in syntactic usages. It so happens that a number of syntactic markers were undergoing rapid and significant changes during the period of Shakespeare's career. Such items as the use of forms of the word "do" as an auxiliary, along with other items (doth vs. does, Hath vs. has, ye vs. you) can be measured and charted on graphs of historical language change. Someone educated at a particular time would have the syntactic habits peculiar to his generation. (I'm not doing his analysis justice for several reasons: first, my notes on the talk are a bit sparse after three weeks; second, he's publishing on this soon, and I promised not to let out too much information). To be brief -- Hope tested Shakespeare's use of auxiliary "do" in his plays and verse, then checked the FE. The pattern of auxiliary "do" usage in FE falls within Shakespeare's range. Look for (I believe) an article-length publication from him soon on this. He has already written _The Authorship of Shakespeare's Plays: A Socio- Linguistic Study_. Cambridge U., 1994. Anyway, enough. It's back to some feverish finals-week grading. --Jim Helfers Grand Canyon University Phoenix, AZ (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 25 Apr 1996 20:52:02 -0500 (EST) Subject: As in FE Sometime ago Don Foster suggested that anyone who doubted Shakespeare's authorship of FE should look at W.S.'s use of "as." As far as I can remember, no one commented on that challenge on SHAKSPER. Well, I thought I'd poke around and see what I could find in my spare time. Acording to my count, FE the poem has 4577 words, 47 of which are ases. That's a relative frequency of 10.26 ases per thousand words. *The Tempest* has according to the Oxford *Textual Companion* 12,812 words and 109 ases, or a relative frequency 8.50 ases per thousand words. *Cymbeline* has 22,878 words and 257 ases, or a relative frequency of 11.23 ases per thousand words. The Sonnets contain 17, 520 words and 120 ases, or a relative frequency of 6.84 ases per thousand words. Marvin Spevack in *The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare* records a relative frequency of 6.88 ases per thousand words for the whole canon. (I counted the "ases" at several websites.) However, in terms of frequency, 10.26 seems a trifle high, but, taking *Cymbeline* into account, I don't think it's extraordinarily out of line. So I gather that Don was not talking about the relative frequency of ases in FE. Yours, Bill Godshalk (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Peter L. Groves <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Apr 1996 15:01:56 GMT+1000 Subject: 7.0318 Re: Funeral Elegy Comment: Re: SHK 7.0318 Re: Funeral Elegy Richard Kennedy writes of the Funeral Elegy: > If some sensible scholars with an ear for poetry > (this seems to be the dividing line) can uncover some other possible > writers of the Elegy, let them speak out. Yes: this really *does* seem to be the dividing line, and it suggests a connection between the Elegy discussion and the current controversy about the quality and provenance of the Bad Quarto of *Hamlet*. I suspect that a reader who is happy to attribute the tedious flatulence of the *Elegy* to Shakespeare might indeed not baulk at ascribing to him stuff like the following: To be, or not to be, I there's the point. To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all: No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes, For in that dreame of death, when wee awake, And borne before an euerlasting Iudge, From whence no passenger euer retur'nd, The vndiscouered country, at whose sight The happy smile, and the accursed damn'd. But for this, the ioyfull hope of this, Whol'd beare the scornes and flattery of the world, Scorned by the right rich, the rich curssed of the poore? (Q1 815-25) O imperious death! How many Princes Has thou at one draft bloudily shot to death? (Q1 2125-26) Content your selues, Ile shew to all, the ground, The first beginning of this Tragedy: Let there a scaffold be rearde vp in the market place, And let the State of the world be there: Where you shall heare such a sad story tolde, That neuer mortall man could more vnfolde. (Q1 2130-35) Presumably it is no co-incidence that these improbable ascriptions have become academically respectable at a time when the very idea of specifically *literary* value--the notion, for example, that in some objective sense 'Lycidas' is a better poem than FE--is widely regarded as a kind of ideological swindle, a covert attempt to foist bourgeois humanist values onto unsuspecting students. If all texts are now democratically equal, then there is indeed no reason why Shakespeare should not be held responsible for FE *and* the 1603 *Hamlet*, but as the Duke of Wellington said to a stranger who accosted him with "Mr Jones, I believe": "If you believe that, you'll believe anything". Peter Groves, Department of English, Monash University, (4)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Saturday, 27 Apr 1996 22:00:08 -0500 (EST) Subject: Harry Hill reading FE: A Soliloquy Yesterday I got the tape of Harry Hill reading *The Funeral Elegy*, and I am happily impressed. Harry does an excellent interpretation. I followed the text as he read, and it occurred to me that perhaps the poem is meant to be performed. Read as a dramatic meditation on death, the Elegy gains in power and meaning. Harry treats the poem as a kind of long soliloquy, moving from public to private voice. I was quite taken by the dramatic qualities of the poem as read by Harry, and if Shakespeare did write this poem, we might expect it to have dramatic qualities that are essential unrealized in the study. (I am, of course, not putting this comment forward as an argument for attributing the poem to Shakespeare.) In any case, I strongly recommend Harry Hill's reading. And after listening to it, I have a new respect for the Elegy. Yours, Bill (5)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Charles Boyle <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Tuesday, 30 Apr 1996 11:21:05 -0500 (EST) Subject: elegy The Funeral Elegy has invited discussion on the still vexed issue of authorship and that's always a healthy sign. In regard to the current problem, I find parts of the Elegy that actually flow like good writing. And the fact that the initials W.S. are attached to it may prove significant. An earlier post touched on the same thing I had noticed after reading it. There seem to be two voices. Sections, particularly towards the middle, read much better than, for instance, the turgid opening. Still I can't help finding the attempt to ascribe this verse, in its totality, to the author who was already capable of writing the Sonnets, odd in its insistence. So much work is still to be done. Has anyone yet compared this elegy with The Phoenix and Turtle? How is the vast difference between the two to be reconciled? How could the mature Shakespeare pass over the Elegy lines, even as an editor, without correction? It's too far a fall. Consider, however, that Thomas Thorpe published Shake-speares Sonnets (why can't he ever get the name right?) - and again apparently without the author's participation. Then the theoretical possibility that parts of this elegy might represent the work of a very young Shakespeare, other parts added by a second hand - John Ford? - for this occasion, becomes at least plausible. We have seen two hands before in Shakespeare. Perhaps Don Foster is on to something. Has Shaxicon examined the other published writings of W.S.? The letters of William Stanley? And when will it visit our old friend Edward De Vere? There are lines in the Funeral Elegy almost as good as his early poetry. Curiously, Charles Boyle (6)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Richard Kennedy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 25 Apr 1996 20:30:23 -0700 Subject: Funeral Elegy The Funeral Elegy isn't such a bad poem, as elegies go. I am getting over my first shock that it might be included with Shakespeare's works, and can look at it less passionately now. It's faults are the faults of youth, the sincerity and righteousness, the gathering of philosophy from books, and the cliches, simply show a young man learning his trade. He has not yet learned to frame his mind with words, but he shows promise. He has a flair, and courage, and like a brave subaltern ventures out on sentences from which he has little hope of returning from the lines unscarred. But that's youth, and he's all right. I guess you could say his heart is in the right place. What else might be known of W.S. is not a lot.. He was evidently a friend of William Peter. He was young (147-148), and of independent means (230-231), and he wrote "in disguise" (208), and had himself suffered slander. Much more can't be known. What can possibly be known of William Peter goes to this list: He evidently had degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge (301-302), and might have been a Catholic (320). He had a private fortune (305-308), and his father was dead (68). He was a "youth" (197) and a gentleman (430), and died where he was born (131). He was a writer (238), and you might suppose that he was famous (200-203; 227, 243, 429-430), but suffered scandal and malice in his days (much of this). Some of these items above might be debateable. Those who have read the Funeral Elegy will want to correct me, and I will be glad to know more of W.S. and William Peter insofar as we can puzzle some information out of the poem.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 7, No. 0322. Tuesday, 30 April 1996. (1) From: Luke A. Wilson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Apr 1996 14:03:22 -0400 (EDT) Subj: CALL FOR PAPERS (2) From: Megan Lloyd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Apr 1996 16:33:27 +500 Subj: Shakespeare at Kalamazoo, Call for Papers 1997 (3) From: Cynthia Dessen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Apr 1996 06:32:42 -0400 (EDT) Subj: ACTER openings 1996-97 (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Luke A. Wilson <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Apr 1996 14:03:22 -0400 (EDT) Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS CALL FOR PAPERS TEXTUAL PRACTICE AND THEATRICAL LABOR: SHAKESPEARE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 1997 Ohio Shakespeare Conference Department of English Ohio State University Columbus OH May 16-18, 1997 Featured Speakers: Stephen Orgel (Stanford University) Leah Marcus (University of Texas, Austin) Jeff Masten (Harvard University) Douglas Bruster (University of Texas, San Antonio) The 1997 Ohio Shakespeare Conference invites paper and session proposals on any aspect of the business of the theater in Shakespeare's lifetime, from reexaminations of textual and editing problems, to the material and economic conditions within which dramatic scripts, texts and performances were produced and consumed in the many transactions that occured among the interested parties: consumer, player, patron, printing house, playhouse, playwright. The conference seeks new research on, and new conceptualizations of, some of the oldest critical and historical questions concerning early modern theater: What economic, ideological, and phenomenological structures shaped and were shaped by the performance of dramatic and theatrical work? How do such structures affect textual and theatrical production and reproduction? What bearing do such concerns have on questions of topicality, influence, didacticism, patronage, or the evolution of dramatic tastes and genres? While Shakespeare will undoubtedly figure prominently, the conference aims at somewhat broader coverage. Work on Shakespeare's contemporaries in the theater, therefore, as well on Shakespeare's collaborative work, is encouraged. Suitable panel and paper topics include, but are not limited to: ** acting as labor * "playhouse interpolations" and the production of meaning * textual variants and the economics of revision * sites and scenes of dramatic composition * collaborative authorship * acting as action * text v. work * work v. labor * work and play * script as work product * the cultural work of the theater * performance as artifact * employment contracts * entrepreneurship * contractual and theatrical performances * promises * wagers * joint stock companies and corporate personality * professional competence and incompetence * expertise and training * divisions of labor in theatrical practice, and in dramatic representation * material phenomenologies of the theater * represented time and the time it takes to represent it * acting, identity and alienation * consumption (e.g., playgoing) as work * dramatic representations of economic relationships * pirates and "dramatic piracy" * acting and ownership * censorship and economics * economics and/of influence ** For more information, or to submit abstracts for 20-minute presentations, or proposals for sessions (deadline: December 20, 1996), contact: Luke Wilson or Chris Highley Department of English Ohio State University 164 W. 17th Ave Columbus OH 43210-1370 voice: 614-292-6065 fax: 614-292-7816 email:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ;This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Megan Lloyd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Apr 1996 16:33:27 +500 Subject: Shakespeare at Kalamazoo, Call for Papers 1997 SHAKESPEARE AT KALAMAZOO Thirty-second International Congress on Medieval Studies Kalamazoo, Michigan PROPOSED sessions for the Thirty-second Congress in 1997 are subject to approval by The Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University. SHAKESPEARE AT KALAMAZOO has organized programs at the International Congress since 1989. Session 1. Domesticity and the Unruly Woman: Marriage and Gender Issues in Shakespeare This panel session invites scholars from a variety of disciplines to discuss gender issues in the late medieval and early modern periods. Panelists will focus their discussion on how the diverse voices of Shakespeare's women, particularly the disruptive or otherwise "unruly" women, reflect, undermine, or transcend gender, class, and societal expectations and convey a feminist ideology that developed over the late medieval and early modern periods. Topics for this panel may include the family circle, domestic relations, class structure, marriage, kinships, domestic settings, and service. To enable greater participation in this session, panel presentations should be no longer than 10 minutes. Session 2. Mapping Shakespeare This session provides an interdisciplinary forum in which to explore aspects of social and political geography as well as various geographical places Shakespeare mentions in his works. Papers might discuss travel, maps, cityscapes, locales, the pastoral, the social landscape, among other topics that address a Renaissance sense of place emerging from the Medieval world view. This session invites scholars in all disciplines including art, history, music, folklore, and philosophy as well as literature. The Congress on Medieval Studies provides a unique milieu for an exchange of insights on Shakespeare's place in the continuum of culture. The following rules corresponding to those established by the Board of the Medieval Institute should be strictly adhered to if you intend to submit an abstract: 1. All Abstracts must include the following information at the top of the front page: title of paper; name of author; complete mailing address, including e-mail and fax if available; institutional affiliation, if any, of the author; confirmation of the 10- minute or 20-minute reading time length; statement of need (or no need) for audio-visual equipment. 2. Abstracts or papers must be typed, double-spaced, not more than 300 words long, and must clearly indicate the papers's thesis, methodology, and conclusions. Accepted abstracts will be submitted for publication to the Shakespeare Newsletter or other periodical. Publication of abstracts does not preclude publication of complete papers. 3. THREE HARD COPIES OF ABSTRACTS or, PREFERABLY, COMPLETED PAPERS MUST BE SUBMITTED BY SEPTEMBER 1. Abstracts or papers submitted after the deadline cannot be considered. Three members of the governing board of SHAKESPEARE AT KALAMAZOO will select the papers. E-mail submission is encouraged to facilitate transmission among the selection panel. 4. Submission of an abstract or papers will be considered agreement by the author to attend the Congress if the paper is accepted. 5. It is understood that papers submitted will be essentially new and have not been presented in public before. 6. Graduate students who wish to submit an abstract should consult their advisors about the suitability of their work and the regulations (if any) of their university. 7. Papers submitted may not require more than 10 MINUTES OF READING TIME for Session 1 or 20 MINUTES OF READING TIME for Session 2, including slides, films, or other audio-video support. Session leaders will hold papers strictly to this limit to facilitate discussion. 8. In order to allow as many scholars to participate in the program as possible, ONE ABSTRACT ONLY should be submitted to the Thirty-second Congress. Send inquiries, abstracts, and papers to Megan Lloyd, Department of English, University of Rio Grande, Rio Grande, Ohio 45674. Phone: (614) 245-7419 / Fax: 614-245-7432 / E-mail:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Cynthia Dessen <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Apr 1996 06:32:42 -0400 (EDT) Subject: ACTER openings 1996-97 ACTER has an opening Oct. 7-13, 1996 for a residency of *Much Ado About Nothing*. I am particularly interested in any schools in the area of Arkansas to Texas and could make a discount for this week. ACTER also has openings Feb. 17-23 and March 3-9, 1997 for *Romeo and Juliet* - please contact us if you are interested. Cynthia Dessen, Gen. Manager,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 7, No. 0321. Tuesday, 30 April 1996. (1) From: Andrew Murphy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 25 Apr 1996 18:12:05 +0100 (BST) Subj: Texts (2) From: Roger Gross <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Apr 1996 16:15:24 -0500 (CDT) Subj: Re: SHK 7.0317 Mount Sequoyah (3) From: David Evett <R0870%This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 28 April 1996 1:12pm ET Subj: SHK 7.0317 Funeral Practices (4) From: Stephanie Hughes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Apr 1996 07:33:21 -0400 (EDT) Subj: Re: SHK 7.0319 Re: LOOSE ENDS (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Andrew Murphy <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Thursday, 25 Apr 1996 18:12:05 +0100 (BST) Subject: Texts Though I cannot speak for the general editors of the Shakespearean Originals, as a contributor to the series I feel I must take respectful exception to Gabriel Egan's recent passing reference to the series' fetishization of the quartos. In fact, the series is _not_ limited to editions of quarto texts, but includes editions of F1 texts as well. The aim of the series is to provide affordable, lightly edited texts of the first printed textualisations of plays from the Shakespeare canon. Surely this is a modest and unexceptional aim, in the light of almost four centuries of the valorisation (fetishization, perhaps?) of heavily edited/conflated texts. Andrew Murphy (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Roger Gross <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Apr 1996 16:15:24 -0500 (CDT) Subject: 7.0317 Mount Sequoyah Comment: Re: SHK 7.0317 Mount Sequoyah Because Milla Riggio asks, I'll tell you a bit about the Mount Sequoyah New Play Retreat. Each year I select six writers from a pool of over two hundred applicants from all over the world. These are what we call "the best of the emerging professional playwrights." They come to Fayetteville, AR, to an idyllic haven known as the Mount Sequoyah Retreat Center. There, with myself and Kent Brown as dramaturg/directors and a professional company of 14 actors, we work all day and all night on the works-in-progress these writers brought with them. We have been fortunate in attracting very talented and very interesting writers. I always pick a diverse group of six and the interaction of these writers is a wonder to behold. They feed each other. The writers are always extraordinarily productive here. It's impossible not to write in this atmosphere where everything is designed to serve the writer. On the last three days (June 6, 7, and 8 this year), we go downtown to a great theatre complex called the Walton Arts Center (thank you Walmart) and we offer script-in-hand stagings of the six plays, two world premieres each night with talkbacks from the audience afterward. It's three weeks of heaven. Thanks for asking. Roger Gross U. of Arkansas Director, Mt. Sequoyah New Play Retreat (3)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Evett <R0870%This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Sunday, 28 April 1996 1:12pm ET Subject: Funeral Practices Comment: SHK 7.0317 Funeral Practices Early modern English graves were shallow or deep depending on circumstances. Because ground adjacent to the church was always limited in extent, graveyards tended to fill up; in order to make efficient use of the available ground bodies were put on top of other bodies, and bodies buried long enough in the past that their identity had been lost were often exhumed and the bones put in a special structure called a charnel house. Bodies were wrapped in a linen cloth, the shroud, and then placed in wooden coffins unless they were of great wealth and/or status, when a metal casket might be used; they were not embalmed, and the funeral normally took place within a day or two of death, though occasionally there was a delay, as in the case of Sir Philip Sidney, whose friends wanted to give him a really splendid funeral but required some weeks to raise the necessary funds. Important people were often buried not in the churchyard, of course, but inside the church, either under the floor or in tombs along the walls and aisles. For information of funeral customs in Europe generally there are several books by the French historian Philippe Aries that investigate various elements of the subject. Funereally, David Evett (4)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stephanie Hughes <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, 26 Apr 1996 07:33:21 -0400 (EDT) Subject: 7.0319 Re: LOOSE ENDS Comment: Re: SHK 7.0319 Re: LOOSE ENDS Regarding the lack of explanation for Hamlet's survival and numerous other loose ends in many of the plays: I believe that Shakespeare's best plays were revised a number of times over the years, such loose ends being one of the dangers that threaten the writer when revising. I also believe that the so-called memory versions are in most cases probably revisions for travelling companies or early and less polished versions. I think any of these explanations might serve for a given version, and that there is no one explanation that covers all of them. I realize that the sacrosanct chronology forced on commentators by Shakespeare of Stratford's biography will not allow for early versions, one more reason for a fresh and openminded examination by professionals of the authorship question. Stephanie Hughes
Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 7, No. 0320. Friday, 26 April 1996. From: Hardy M. Cook <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. > Date: Friday, April 26, 1996 Subject: SHAKSPER Advisory Board I have been slow in making any changes in the manner in which SHAKSPER operates, but circumstances are such that I now feel a change is in order. I have encouraged diversity and inclusiveness; nevertheless, SHAKSPER was founded as an "academic" conference and I still view it as such. Our current membership of 1250 includes many Shakespearean textual scholars and bibliographers, editors and critics, but it also includes professors and high school teachers, undergraduate and graduate students, actors, poets, playwrights, theatre professionals, librarians, computer scientists, and interested bystanders. The variety of SHAKSPEReans has led to wide-ranging discussion, but many have lamented the recent infrequency of the engaging scholarly exchange that SHAKSPER was intended to cultivate. I want SHAKSPER principally to be a forum for serious academic discussion (especially since electronic alternatives exist) and to that end I intend to establish a SHAKSPER Advisory Board. This board will be composed of from four to six Shakespearean scholars from within its membership. The purpose of the SHAKSPER Advisory Board will be to advise the editor 1) On matters of policy affecting the entire conference, 2) On resolving complaints, and 3) On determining the appropriateness of certain posting. A LISTSERV discussion group of its nature is different from a journal (electronic or traditional) and peer-reviewed posting is not possible or desirable; however, I do need advice from peers regarding issues that affect the conference and particular posting that are questionable. I will consider all responses to this posting as personal mail to me, and I will entertain suggestions for members of the Advisory Board. I will be going away for the weekend and NOT taking a computer with me. I hope to start making invitations for membership on the Advisory Board by the middle of next week.