The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0693 Tuesday, 16 October 2007
[1] From: Anthony Burton <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Friday, 12 Oct 2007 12:00:38 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0680 Authorial Intention
[2] From: Larry Weiss <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Friday, 12 Oct 2007 12:09:49 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0687 Authorial Intention
[3] From: Donald Bloom <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Friday, 12 Oct 2007 14:30:57 -0500
Subj: RE: SHK 18.0687 Authorial Intention
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Anthony Burton <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Friday, 12 Oct 2007 12:00:38 -0400
Subject: 18.0680 Authorial Intention
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0680 Authorial Intention
Even though I participated earlier in this thread, I confess to a weary
lack of interest in debating whether an authorial "intention" exists or
can be proven. Yet, I've been working for years on what may be an
illuminating first cousin to intention, in the topic of thematic
imagery. Since we all know Hamlet, let's take it as a starting point.
The play is full of images of predators and aggressors defeated by their
own devices: enginers hoist with their own petar, woodcocks caught in
their own springes, mouse-catchers caught in their own mousetraps,
archers having their own arrows blown back at them, canoneers whose
canons explode with fatal results, and of course a villain who dies by
drinking the poison and being stabbed by the sharpened and envenomed
sword point he intended for another. Elizabethans would have reveled in
the idea of the biter bit and trapper trapped; readers of Alciati's
emblem book would have recognized the same pattern and moral in the
emblem of "True Justice"; moderns might see it as an enactment of "what
goes around, comes around." I have had occasion to describe it as an
expression of the Golden Rule, not as a normative command but as a
cosmic law in operation on earth: "As you do unto others, so shall be
done unto you."
Now, there is almost no limit to the different productions, spins, and
interpretations that can be enacted without contradicting or rejecting
this view, or that there is a common thematic and moral foundation which
underlies everything that happens. Just as a ten-year old might think
the Golden Rule means something like "Kids should be allowed to stay up
as late as their parents (and choose whether or not to eat broccoli),"
while the Dalai Lama would probably say something different.
Post-colonialists, feminists, Marxists, Freudians, and others might each
have their particular take, while yet all desiring to affirm the Rule
itself.
If I am right, the underlying image -- expressed in the examples I
mention and many others -- was in some way Shakespeare's mental image;
it was in his mind and guided his pen. It was, along with the pure story
itself, what he desired to enact and present to his audience and also
what he added to the story we believe he drew upon. I'm satisfied to
describe that desire, combined with that guiding image, as a "meaning"
(not purpose) to attribute to the author and the play. It may not be the
most fundamental, although it is surely quite close being so. It is
surely not the only meaning the play can support, either in the study or
on stage. It is not precise and detailed nor even sufficient to explain
the play or describe it. Nor should it be; if it were, it would be
unrealistically reductive and simplistic. But it really is built into
the text and structure; it is not ahistorical or anachronistic, nor is
it tendentious, nor does it require one to ignore inconvenient details.
But more important, anyone, whatever his or her cultural or personal
biases, limitations and interests, can accept and gain personal insight
from acknowledging "meaning" of this sort. Each might well leave a
performance saying "I am Hamlet," and determined to do better.
Could these multiple examples of thematic coherence be accidental, or
the result of ongoing collaboration and amendment? I don't think so, but
I'll allow that an imaginative writer might make a case for it. Until
that happens and probably long after, I will continue to accept the idea
of "authorial meaning," in the sense described above as an indispensable
concept and an essential foundation for disciplined literary criticism.
Tony Burton
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Larry Weiss <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Friday, 12 Oct 2007 12:09:49 -0400
Subject: 18.0687 Authorial Intention
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0687 Authorial Intention
>Like a jury attempting to evaluate criminal intent ("premeditation") in a
>murder trial, the best we can do with regard to establishing authorial
intent
>is make what seem to us to be reasonable inferences from the data
available
>to us: <snip>. But we can never know for certain that "that's what
Shakespeare
>meant," any more than the jury who acquits or convicts can be positive
"beyond
>a shadow of a doubt" what the murderer's ultimate motives were.
(1) Premeditation and intent are different concepts; but that is a
lesson for another time.
(2) I never made a claim that we can know for certain, only that it is
reasonable to ask the question and, in most cases, to infer a likely
answer. (Please re-review my prior posts to confirm this.) The jury
analogy is imprecise, but helpful nonetheless: We do not ask juries to
be certain "beyond a shadow of a doubt," it is enough in a criminal case
that they can rule out every "reasonable" doubt and in a civil case (on
which immense consequences frequently depend) the result is determined
by a "mere preponderance" of the evidence. How silly is it to refuse to
even argue about an author's likely expectations, on which nothing
tangible depends, because we can't answer the question with metaphysical
certainty.
[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Donald Bloom <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Friday, 12 Oct 2007 14:30:57 -0500
Subject: 18.0687 Authorial Intention
Comment: RE: SHK 18.0687 Authorial Intention
Carol Barton writes "It has always seemed to me that Shakespeare wanted
(intended) for every reader/audience member to see his or her own
piggies in the clouds-a "mirror up to nature," whatever that
individual's nature might be. But I don't know that for fact, either."
Well, that really won't do. To mean anything is to mean nothing.
I think the problem-stated in many different ways in this recent
discussion and in many others-may arise from not differentiating between
"meaning nothing at all" and "meaning no one thing" on the one hand, and
between "meaning no one thing" and "meaning anything at all" on the other.
The two extremes are, I believe, essentially the same and have, as far
as I can tell, nothing to contribute. What remains are the meanings
which the reader or hearer of the given set of words finds in them. They
are neither absolute nor random, but exist that realm of uncertainty
called human reason.
Cheers,
don
PS: The "nature" that the mirror is held up to would be the way things
really are, not the way we might arbitrarily want them to be.
_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook,
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>
DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the
opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the
editor assumes no responsibility for them.
|
