The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.0979  Monday, 30 April 2001

From:           Judith M. Craig <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Friday, 27 Apr 2001 13:54:28 -0400
Subject: 12.0949 Re: Black Rosalind
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.0949 Re: Black Rosalind

Karen Peterson-Kranz writes:

<Further, I think a number of us place "discovering <the author's
<purposes" rather low on the list.  First, because <differences in time
<and space make any conclusive "discovery" (in <the literal sense of
<"un-covering" something empirically verifiable) <unlikely, if not
<impossible.  Second, because there is certainly <more to the study of
<"Shakespeare" than those (unrecoverable?) <authorial purposes.

If differences in "time and place" make any discovery of the author's
purposes empirically impossible, then "anything goes."  There are
records of Shakespeare's life; there are communities of scholars who
agree in spite of personal differences of time and place on what
Shakespeare was like.  Now we are presented with a "cultural blob," a
figment of British national xenophobia, by scholars like you who seem to
want to do science based on personal predilection rather that
literature.

I assert that Shakespeare's general bent can be known and understood and
that you are all part of a great deconstructive army of ants bent on
destroying what gives you sustenance.  Why study the purposes of a blob
that one cannot know unless he reads Borges rather than the Bible, which
surely Shakespeare read.

I am not being mean spirited or unempirical; I am merely pointing out
that you do not have an argument that makes sense rhetorically,
rationally, or even "reasonably."

Judy Craig

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