The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0704 Thursday, 18 October 2007
[1] From: Carol Barton <
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Date: Wednesday, 17 Oct 2007 11:45:58 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0693 Authorial Intention
[2] From: Sally Drumm <
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Date: Wednesday, 17 Oct 2007 18:56:35 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0700 Authorial Intention
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Carol Barton <
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Date: Wednesday, 17 Oct 2007 11:45:58 -0400
Subject: 18.0693 Authorial Intention
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0693 Authorial Intention
For Anthony Burton, Larry Weiss, and Donald Bloom: yes.
I wasn't suggesting that Shakespeare's plays meant "no thing" or
"anything at all," as I'm sure you realized: nor do I think it's
impossible to discern a plausible meaning from the text, given the
context and what we know of word usage and character, etc. My point was
(solely) that, absent confirmation from the author, we can only
conjecture . . . make educated guesses . . . derive that meaning which
seems to us to be closest to what the author was trying to say.
My mirror to nature invocation was not meant to imply that we can
construct nature as we desire it to be, either--I meant only that each
of us construes things according to our nature. Case in point (a good
example, in this context, of the difference between reader
interpretation and "authorial intent," since the author himself was
available for comment). I taught Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" to
a number of undergraduates, and asked them what it was about. The males
in the class (almost to a man) said it was a dad's romp with his
kid--clumsy at points, but good fun for both of them. The females
(unanimously) said no--it was a poem about drunken child abuse, and that
though the father may not have intentionally have hurt his son, he was
too drunk to be "waltzing" with the child, and had in fact injured him.
I want to stress that *both* interpretations are equally valid, within
the context of the poem.
Roethke himself had done a reading of it, which was available online.
His intent was unmistakable from the grave, sad timbre of his tone: this
was in fact a poem about child abuse. The sole male who agreed with the
young women in the class had himself had an abusive father. The others
had fond memories of father-son rough-housing. "Nature" had interpreted
in each case what was most readily apprehendable from personal
experience--as reader-response theory might phrase it.
Many feminists read Kate as a sell-out; I see her by the end of the play
as having tamed two shrews, her husband, and her own wild and
self-absorbed nature, and believe she adopts a public persona of
subservience solely as an accommodation to the realities of Petruchio's
world, external to the marriage. I doubt--very much--that she goes on to
practice what she preaches in the literal sense at home--though both she
and her bridegroom have by that point learned a valuable lesson of which
both of them before that time had been sorely in need, that human
relationships require compromise. (He is no more her "lord and master"
than she is his.) That's what the data Shakespeare presents add up to,
to me. Does that make those who see the opposite wrong? No. I can't
"prove" my position, any more than they can "prove" theirs. Shylock
engenders the same polarities . . . and so do so many other
Shakespearean characters. (Is Cordelia the wronged innocent, or a
stubborn reflection of her stubborn old man?) In the absence of
authorial confirmation one way or the other, we (as someone said
earlier) "make meaning," too.
Best to all,
Carol Barton
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Sally Drumm <
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Date: Wednesday, 17 Oct 2007 18:56:35 -0400
Subject: 18.0700 Authorial Intention
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0700 Authorial Intention
>so it is very interesting that WS hit on the contrapasso idea
>for a play that (like the Comedy) gives us a vision of Purgatory.
Shakespeare read human nature; contrapasso is elemental to human
perception of justice as demonstrated even now - Al Gore, Nobel; George
Bush, well.....
Shakespeare understood human nature and so human themes appear well
wrought in his work - naturally. Now here stumbles the heart of our
inquiry into authorial intention: are themes and meaningfulness
intentionally authored; or, are themes and meaningfulness natural to the
living work as human creation/construct - are they sown or grown? This,
I believe, returns us to the question of the nature of genius.
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