The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 24.0019  Thursday, 17 January 2013

 

[1] From:        Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         January 17, 2013 12:14:55 AM EST

     Subject:     Re: SHAKSPER: Pale Fire 

 

[2] From:        Bruce Young <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         January 17, 2013 9:08:09 AM EST

     Subject:     RE: SHAKSPER: Pale Fire 

 

[3] From:        David Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         January 17, 2013 12:55:48 PM EST

     Subject:     Re: SHAKSPER: Pale Fire 

 

 

[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Larry Weiss <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         January 17, 2013 12:14:55 AM EST

Subject:     Re: SHAKSPER: Pale Fire

 

>Oh dear. I had thought Charles Weinstein had gone into hiding, but 

>here he is again, again pissing on Simon Russell Beale. Has he ever 

>liked anything? He has, of course, a perfect right to dislike things, but 

>it’s unfortunate that he needs to dislike so intensely anything that 

>moves away from his conception of the boundaries of the text. I hope 

>this doesn’t herald a new silly season.

 

If Charles’s well-written review is even half accurate, this is a production most of us would dislike.

 

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Bruce Young <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         January 17, 2013 9:08:09 AM EST

Subject:     RE: SHAKSPER: Pale Fire

 

Not having seen this production of Timon, I’d be interested to read a detailed response to the actual content of Weinstein’s review. Whether or not it’s fair, the review certainly gives a vivid impression of the production and argues a case at some length that could be argued against—or for—with similar care.

 

Bruce Young

 

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------

From:        David Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         January 17, 2013 12:55:48 PM EST

Subject:     Re: SHAKSPER: Pale Fire

 

Peter Hyland objects to Charles Weinstein’s negativity, on the apparent ground that it is motivated by a dislike of anything that violates his personal—crankish—idea of “the boundaries of the text”. The usual academic these days is supposed to take a more unbounded—tolerant, pluralistic—view. Responding to Weinstein’s arguments is thus rendered unnecessary.

 

I take it that this sort of standard response is one reason we see Weinstein’s work so seldom these days. For me it’s a breath of fresh air in an increasingly stuffy room. Here’s an example of the kind of prose more often encountered in professional quarters, and on this list:

 

“In contrast with previous studies, often characterized by a positivistic-deterministic hermeneutics and, consequently, by a largely passive analysis of source material or literary topoi, the new critical perspective pursued in this volume will take into account a wider European intertextual dimension and, above all, an ideological interpretation of the ‘aesthetics’ or ‘politics’ of intertextuality which will allow the analysis of the presence of the Italian world in early modern England not as a traditional treasure trove of influence and imitation but as a potential cultural force, generating complex processes of appropriation, transformation, and ideological opposition throughout a continuous dialectical interchange of compliance and subversion.”

 

I believe that anyone who could write this way, or approve of this writing, should not be teaching Shakespeare. A rash attitude, perhaps, but mine own.

 

Best wishes,

David Bishop

 

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