The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.1063 Wednesday, 29 November 2006
From: Sid Lubow <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Tuesday, 28 Nov 2006 17:26:12 EST
Subject: Sonnet 146, posed by Peter Bridgman
Peter, you must learn never to ask "false questions".
Let me illustrate what I am striving to say, after one answers your
question in clear language, listen to those who know much more about
what the Bard was trying to teach you according to their finest scholars.
Paul de Man quote by Howard Felperin
"This rehabilitation of the residual subject, of the ghost in the
machine of language, is already implicit not only in the contextualist
poststructuralism of Foucault, but in textualist poststructurualism as
well. For like Foucault, Paul de Man is sceptical of the capacity of
structuralist and poststructuraist analysis of writing ever to do away
with the need for an authorial subject, and expresses this scepticism in
terms of the ancient-some would say anachronistic- concept of "voice"
But even if we free ourselves of all false questions of intent and
rightfully reduce the narrator to the status of a mere grammatical
pronoun, without which the narrative could not come into being, this
subject remains endowed with a function that is not grammatical but
rhetorical, in that it gives voice, so to speak, to a grammitical
syntagm. The term voice, even when used in a grammatical terminology as
when we speak of the passive or interrogative voice, is, of course, a
metaphor inferring by analogy the intent of the subject from the
structure of the predicate (Allogories of Reading)"
That should explain that what you are trying to learn about sonnet 146,
it is simply, a 'false question."
I hope that clears the matter up about your question about sonnet 146.
This probably should end this thread about sonnet 146. I am sure our
editor will agree. We know what we have to know.
Respectfully,
Sid Lubow
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