The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0728  Tuesday, 30 October 2007

[1] 	From:	Dale Lyles <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
	Date:	Monday, 22 Oct 2007 10:06:45 -0400
	Subj:	Re: SHK 18.0719 Presentism

[2] 	From:	John Briggs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
	Date:	Monday, 22 Oct 2007 16:52:38 +0100
	Subj:	Re: SHK 18.0719 Presentism

[3] 	From:	Joseph Egert <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
	Date:	Monday, 22 Oct 2007 10:41:23 -0700 (PDT)
	Subj:	Re: SHK 18.0719 Presentism


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:		Dale Lyles <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:		Monday, 22 Oct 2007 10:06:45 -0400
Subject: 18.0719 Presentism
Comment:	Re: SHK 18.0719 Presentism

Presentism as truthiness? What?

Dale Lyles
Newnan, GA

[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:		John Briggs <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:		Monday, 22 Oct 2007 16:52:38 +0100
Subject: 18.0719 Presentism
Comment:	Re: SHK 18.0719 Presentism

Jan Hammerquist wrote:

 >During my one visit to London a few Februaries ago I had the chance to
 >stroll through St. James Park at night. At one place in the park there
 >is a small cottage overlooking a duckpond, and that night, when it
 >appeared to me in the foggy night it struck me as the very place the
 >Bard could have grown up.

I think that this is the point at which some literal-minded pedant 
(usually me) replies that the building in question is most likely Duck 
Island Cottage - a romantic "cottage orne" of 1840-1 by the architect 
J.B. Watson. Could I gently suggest that Jan Hammerquist's overheated 
imagination is perhaps insufficiently historicist?

John Briggs

[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:		Joseph Egert <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:		Monday, 22 Oct 2007 10:41:23 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 18.0719 Presentism
Comment:	Re: SHK 18.0719 Presentism

Jan Hammerquist writes,

 >"the quaint and mysterious [London] cottage in
 >the night was just as viable an option for my imagination to place
 >Shakespeare [being born] in as Stratford-upon-Avon.[...]
 >
 >"Rather, once we admit the impossibility of fully
 >integrating the past, we are free to let it signify it whatever ways it
 >may.[...]
 >
 >"Perhaps this is saying we are free do to with him as we please.[...]
 >
 >"what need do we have of the flesh-and-blood man if it his texts that 
he is re->membered by, his true tissue?[...]
 >
 >"In conclusion, one wonders: isn't the past itself more real through a
 >"present" iteration of it? Wouldn't it otherwise be truly nothing?"

Presentism is a knife aimed at the heart of scholarship as a cognitive 
enterprise. QED.

Joe Egert

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