The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0592 Friday, 23 June 2006
From: John Crowley <
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Date: Friday, 23 Jun 2006 07:36:41 -0400
Subject: The Small Question
Sam Small is unsatisfied that we have accounted for Shakespeare's moral
effect in the world that regards him as Top Writer. Shouldn't we,
having given out this award, be able to show that Shakespeare has done
more to improve the world than any other writer? Or at least that he
has had a demonstrable effect for the better on human life? Or at least
SOME good effect, and if not that, then no bad effect?
Well, if this is a competition, maybe Mr. Small could name a few others
who have had a good moral influence over the centuries, ones he perhaps
would consider for top places. I am trying myself, and wondering what
measure to use. There are a few witnesses to the good moral influence
of WS, but not nearly as many (I would think) as to the Gospel writers,
say, if they are even to get credit for those works. George Eliot
instructed a generation or two in right thinking, Victorian style;
Dickens can be credited for improving the conditions of prisons and
workhouses and possibly for the treatment of children, at least in
English-speaking countries. I think, though, that a list figured on
these principles would look a little odd, if restricted to the writers
of imaginative literatuire and excluding hortatory moralists (Plato,
Bacon, Confucius). Strange to have a list that would put -- say --
"All Quiet on the Western Front" or "The Man with the Golden Arm" or
Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" above -- say -- "Madame Bovary" and
"Ulysses" and the works of WS. Hard even to imagine where Marlowe and
Webster would fall, the bottom I guess, down with pornographers and
novels by Nazis, though Dante might rank high still. Something is,
however, very wrong here, and Mr. Small might look into "The Secular
Scripture" by Northrop Frye for a sophisticated account of what
imaginative literature is really about, and what it is not about, and
how much this has distressed readers who share Mr. Small's apparent view
of its worth or lack thereof.
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