The most ridiculous interpretations of a novel/play/poem you've heard/read?

[kelby_lake]

Sometimes there can be some amusingly bad ones. :)

[IJustMadeThatUp]

Do share! :)

Personally, I can't think of any off the top of my head. Although, I do remember rolling my eyes a lot during English classes at the absurd things would come up with trying to impress the teacher. Everyone knew they were talking crap!

[mal4mac]

Tolstoy's attack on Shakespeare's plays has to be the funniest, especially his attack on King Lear, given that he turned into King Lear...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lear,_Tolstoy_and_the_Fool

Some quotes from Tolstoy's criticism of Shakespeare: "complete absence of aesthetic feeling", and his words "have nothing whatever in common with art and poetry".

He suggested that the universal admiration of Shakespeare by the whole of civilisation was due to mass hypnosis :)

Orwell has a wonderful essay on Tolstoy's criticism of Shakespeare:

http://www.george-orwell.org/Lear,_Tolstoy_and_the_Fool/0.html

"In reality there is no kind of evidence or argument by which one can show that Shakespeare, or any other writer, is "good"... Ultimately there is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion. Artistic theories such as Tolstoy's are quite worthless, because they not only start out with arbitrary assumptions, but depend on vague terms ("sincere", "important" and so forth) which can
be interpreted in any way one chooses. Properly speaking one cannot ANSWER Tolstoy's attack. The interesting question is: why did he make it?"

"Tolstoy is not simply trying to rob others of a pleasure he does not share. He is doing that, but his quarrel with Shakespeare goes further. It is the quarrel between the religious and the humanist attitudes towards life."

"the most impressive event in Tolstoy's life, as in Lear's, was a huge and
gratuitous act of renunciation. In his old age, he renounced his estate,
his title and his copyrights, and made an attempt--a sincere attempt,
though it was not successful--to escape from his privileged position and
live the life of a peasant. But the deeper resemblance lies in the fact
that Tolstoy, like Lear, acted on mistaken motives and failed to get the
results he had hoped for. According to Tolstoy, the aim of every human
being is happiness, and happiness can only be attained by doing the will
of God. But doing the will of God means casting off all earthly pleasures
and ambitions, and living only for others. Ultimately, therefore, Tolstoy
renounced the world under the expectation that this would make him
happier. But if there is one thing certain about his later years, it is
that he was NOT happy. On the contrary he was driven almost to the edge
of madness by the behaviour of the people about him, who persecuted him
precisely BECAUSE of his renunciation. Like Lear, Tolstoy was not humble
and not a good judge of character. He was inclined at moments to revert
to the attitudes of an aristocrat."

"Shakespeare starts by assuming that to make yourself powerless is to
invite an attack. This does not mean that EVERYONE will turn against you
(Kent and the Fool stand by Lear from first to last), but in all
probability SOMEONE will. If you throw away your weapons, some less
scrupulous person will pick them up. If you turn the other cheek, you
will get a harder blow on it than you got on the first one."

"Give away your lands if you want to, but don't expect to gain happiness by doing so. Probably you won't gain happiness. If you live for others, you must live FOR OTHERS,
and not as a roundabout way of getting an advantage for yourself."

"Obviously neither of these conclusions could have been pleasing to
Tolstoy. The first of them expresses the ordinary, belly-to-earth
selfishness from which he was genuinely trying to escape. The other
conflicts with his desire to eat his cake and have it--that is, to
destroy his own egoism and by so doing to gain eternal life. Of course,
LEAR is not a sermon in favour of altruism. It merely points out the
results of practising self-denial for selfish reasons. Shakespeare had a
considerable streak of worldliness in him, and if he had been forced to
take sides in his own play, his sympathies would probably have lain with
the Fool. But at least he could see the whole issue and treat it at the
level of tragedy. Vice is punished, but virtue is not rewarded. The
morality of Shakespeare's later tragedies is not religious in the
ordinary sense, and certainly is not Christian."

"All [Shakespeare's] tragedies start out with the humanist assumption that life,
although full of sorrow, is worth living, and that Man is a noble animal
--a belief which Tolstoy in his old age did not share."

"If only, Tolstoy says in effect, we would stop breeding, fighting, struggling and enjoying, if we could get rid not only of our sins but of everything else that binds us
to the surface of the earth--including love, then the whole painful
process would be over and the Kingdom of Heaven would arrive. But a
normal human being does not want the Kingdom of Heaven: he wants life on
earth to continue. This is not solely because he is "weak", "sinful" and
anxious for a "good time". Most people get a fair amount of fun out of
their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or
the very foolish imagine otherwise. Ultimately it is the Christian
attitude which is self-interested and hedonistic, since the aim is
always to get away from the painful struggle of earthly life and find
eternal peace in some kind of Heaven or Nirvana. The humanist attitude is
that the struggle must continue and that death is the price of life. "Men
must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is
all"--which is an un-Christian sentiment. Often there is a seeming truce
between the humanist and the religious believer, but in fact their
attitudes cannot be reconciled: one must choose between this world and
the next. And the enormous majority of human beings, if they understood
the issue, would choose this world."

"The more pleasure people took in Shakespeare, the less they
would listen to Tolstoy. Therefore nobody must be ALLOWED to enjoy
Shakespeare, just as nobody must be allowed to drink alcohol or smoke
tobacco. True, Tolstoy would not prevent them by force. He is not
demanding that the police shall impound every copy of Shakespeare's
works. But he will do dirt on Shakespeare, if he can. He will try to get
inside the mind of every lover of Shakespeare and kill his enjoyment by
every trick he can think of..."

"Tolstoy was perhaps the most admired literary man of his age, and he
was certainly not its least able pamphleteer. He turned all his powers of
denunciation against Shakespeare, like all the guns of a battleship
roaring simultaneously. And with what result? Forty years later
Shakespeare is still there completely unaffected, and of the attempt to
demolish him nothing remains except the yellowing pages of a pamphlet
which hardly anyone has read, and which would be forgotten altogether if
Tolstoy had not also been the author of WAR AND PEACE and ANNA KARENINA."

[PeterL]

That's interesting. Did Tolstoy read English, or was he suffering with a translation? That would make a huge difference, but some of Shakespeare's plays are difficult to get through, especially the history plays.

[stlukesguild]

The language wouldn't have mattered. Tolstoy disliked Shakespeare on moral grounds. Shakespeare does not present a moral Christian view of the world. Good does nor always win out in the end. Of course one suspects... as with Plato's rejection of Homer on similar grounds... that there was a level of envy... a recognition that he would never supplant Shakespeare on artistic terms any more than Plato would supplant Homer.

[kiki1982]

That's interesting. Did Tolstoy read English, or was he suffering with a translation? That would make a huge difference, but some of Shakespeare's plays are difficult to get through, especially the history plays.

That I was thinking as well. Russian is ( have learned in the meantime) quite a direct language and I think it would be difficult to translate Skakespeare into that. Not soundwise though, because potentially, I think Russian is a very lyrical language, but one that best works in its own spirit.

But I suppose if you have a moral motive that anything is good to criticise...

[PeterL]

The language wouldn't have mattered. Tolstoy disliked Shakespeare on moral grounds. Shakespeare does not present a moral Christian view of the world. Good does nor always win out in the end. Of course one suspects... as with Plato's rejection of Homer on similar grounds... that there was a level of envy... a recognition that he would never supplant Shakespeare on artistic terms any more than Plato would supplant Homer.

Yes, a poor translation could have given someone that impression. While Shakespeare wasn't a dogmatic Christian, he was a Christian, and he expounded a sense of judgment that was sometimes rather subtle. For what I have read of Tolstoy, he was more interested in justice than in strict Christian morals.

[Night_Lamp]

When the last Narniamovie came out, there was a very serious toned article in a major newspaper that expressed the revelation that the lion was Jesus. Duh....

[Katy North]

When the last Narnia movie came out, there was a very serious toned article in a major newspaper that expressed the revelation that the lion was Jesus. Duh....

Surprisingly enough, not every person realizes this at first. Especially if they have a very "humancentric" view of Christianity.

This reminds me of a story of a mother who wrote to CS Lewis saying her son was worried because he was afraid he loved Aslan more than Jesus. CS Lewis wrote back telling the boy that he had nothing to worry about because the two were one and the same. I always thought that was very sweet.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes I've heard of the Tolstoy criticisms before, quite embarrassing.

One of the most annoying modern criticisms I've read of Wilde's early work, his collection of poems and his two plays, Vera and The Duchess of Padua, was that they are poor because Wilde had not yet had an homosexual encounter. When he did have his work became much better. Nonsense.

I can see the development of the argument leading to repression and all of that, but it is still nonsense. I'm not arguing that these works aren't weak, they are, but not for the reason presented. You can trace Wilde's development as a writer and thinker right the way through his life, from his childhood letters through to De Profundis, and it has very little to do with his sexuality upon this point.

[Paulclem]

Tolstoy's attack on Shakespeare's plays has to be the funniest, especially his attack on King Lear, given that he turned into King Lear...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lear,_Tolstoy_and_the_Fool

Some quotes from Tolstoy's criticism of Shakespeare: "complete absence of aesthetic feeling", and his words "have nothing whatever in common with art and poetry".

He suggested that the universal admiration of Shakespeare by the whole of civilisation was due to mass hypnosis :)

Orwell has a wonderful essay on Tolstoy's criticism of Shakespeare:

http://www.george-orwell.org/Lear,_Tolstoy_and_the_Fool/0.html

"In reality there is no kind of evidence or argument by which one can show that Shakespeare, or any other writer, is "good"... Ultimately there is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion. Artistic theories such as Tolstoy's are quite worthless, because they not only start out with arbitrary assumptions, but depend on vague terms ("sincere", "important" and so forth) which can
be interpreted in any way one chooses. Properly speaking one cannot ANSWER Tolstoy's attack. The interesting question is: why did he make it?"

"Tolstoy is not simply trying to rob others of a pleasure he does not share. He is doing that, but his quarrel with Shakespeare goes further. It is the quarrel between the religious and the humanist attitudes towards life."

"the most impressive event in Tolstoy's life, as in Lear's, was a huge and
gratuitous act of renunciation. In his old age, he renounced his estate,
his title and his copyrights, and made an attempt--a sincere attempt,
though it was not successful--to escape from his privileged position and
live the life of a peasant. But the deeper resemblance lies in the fact
that Tolstoy, like Lear, acted on mistaken motives and failed to get the
results he had hoped for. According to Tolstoy, the aim of every human
being is happiness, and happiness can only be attained by doing the will
of God. But doing the will of God means casting off all earthly pleasures
and ambitions, and living only for others. Ultimately, therefore, Tolstoy
renounced the world under the expectation that this would make him
happier. But if there is one thing certain about his later years, it is
that he was NOT happy. On the contrary he was driven almost to the edge
of madness by the behaviour of the people about him, who persecuted him
precisely BECAUSE of his renunciation. Like Lear, Tolstoy was not humble
and not a good judge of character. He was inclined at moments to revert
to the attitudes of an aristocrat."

"Shakespeare starts by assuming that to make yourself powerless is to
invite an attack. This does not mean that EVERYONE will turn against you
(Kent and the Fool stand by Lear from first to last), but in all
probability SOMEONE will. If you throw away your weapons, some less
scrupulous person will pick them up. If you turn the other cheek, you
will get a harder blow on it than you got on the first one."

"Give away your lands if you want to, but don't expect to gain happiness by doing so. Probably you won't gain happiness. If you live for others, you must live FOR OTHERS,
and not as a roundabout way of getting an advantage for yourself."

"Obviously neither of these conclusions could have been pleasing to
Tolstoy. The first of them expresses the ordinary, belly-to-earth
selfishness from which he was genuinely trying to escape. The other
conflicts with his desire to eat his cake and have it--that is, to
destroy his own egoism and by so doing to gain eternal life. Of course,
LEAR is not a sermon in favour of altruism. It merely points out the
results of practising self-denial for selfish reasons. Shakespeare had a
considerable streak of worldliness in him, and if he had been forced to
take sides in his own play, his sympathies would probably have lain with
the Fool. But at least he could see the whole issue and treat it at the
level of tragedy. Vice is punished, but virtue is not rewarded. The
morality of Shakespeare's later tragedies is not religious in the
ordinary sense, and certainly is not Christian."

"All [Shakespeare's] tragedies start out with the humanist assumption that life,
although full of sorrow, is worth living, and that Man is a noble animal
--a belief which Tolstoy in his old age did not share."

"If only, Tolstoy says in effect, we would stop breeding, fighting, struggling and enjoying, if we could get rid not only of our sins but of everything else that binds us
to the surface of the earth--including love, then the whole painful
process would be over and the Kingdom of Heaven would arrive. But a
normal human being does not want the Kingdom of Heaven: he wants life on
earth to continue. This is not solely because he is "weak", "sinful" and
anxious for a "good time". Most people get a fair amount of fun out of
their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or
the very foolish imagine otherwise. Ultimately it is the Christian
attitude which is self-interested and hedonistic, since the aim is
always to get away from the painful struggle of earthly life and find
eternal peace in some kind of Heaven or Nirvana. The humanist attitude is
that the struggle must continue and that death is the price of life. "Men
must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is
all"--which is an un-Christian sentiment. Often there is a seeming truce
between the humanist and the religious believer, but in fact their
attitudes cannot be reconciled: one must choose between this world and
the next. And the enormous majority of human beings, if they understood
the issue, would choose this world."

"The more pleasure people took in Shakespeare, the less they
would listen to Tolstoy. Therefore nobody must be ALLOWED to enjoy
Shakespeare, just as nobody must be allowed to drink alcohol or smoke
tobacco. True, Tolstoy would not prevent them by force. He is not
demanding that the police shall impound every copy of Shakespeare's
works. But he will do dirt on Shakespeare, if he can. He will try to get
inside the mind of every lover of Shakespeare and kill his enjoyment by
every trick he can think of..."

"Tolstoy was perhaps the most admired literary man of his age, and he
was certainly not its least able pamphleteer. He turned all his powers of
denunciation against Shakespeare, like all the guns of a battleship
roaring simultaneously. And with what result? Forty years later
Shakespeare is still there completely unaffected, and of the attempt to
demolish him nothing remains except the yellowing pages of a pamphlet
which hardly anyone has read, and which would be forgotten altogether if
Tolstoy had not also been the author of WAR AND PEACE and ANNA KARENINA."

Great post mal4mac. :thumbs_up

Well worth the read.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I read something about Yeats's "The Second Coming" (I can't remember who, I was just doing research) where the author argued that the "beast" is really a literal person carrying a literal baby. He explained it and backed it up with explanations from the text, but the whole idea struck me as completely stupid.

[mal4mac]

Yes, a poor translation could have given someone that impression. While Shakespeare wasn't a dogmatic Christian, he was a Christian, and he expounded a sense of judgment that was sometimes rather subtle. For what I have read of Tolstoy, he was more interested in justice than in strict Christian morals.

From the several volumes of criticism I've read, as well as the 1800 pages of the complete works I've read in the last year, I see no good evidence for Shakespeare being Christian! He might be, but it doesn't seem likely to me. Bloom has said he is "post Christian", which seems about right. Heavily influenced by Christianity, but far beyond it. Which puts him far beyond the late Tolstoy, hence Tolstoy's descent into malicious envy and self destruction.

[mal4mac]

That's interesting. Did Tolstoy read English, or was he suffering with a translation?


The Orwell essay says Tolstoy read Shakespeare several times, in three languages (including English). But he also suggests he might not have known English well enough to "get" the beauty of the poetry. But he also points out that this should not matter, there is so much else in Shakespeare that Tolstoy should have seen his greatness, on an unbiased reading! Look at all the people who have admired Shakespeare in translation. Anyway, I suggest you read Orwell's essay, it's a marvel.

[LitNetIsGreat]

From the several volumes of criticism I've read, as well as the 1800 pages of the complete works I've read in the last year, I see no good evidence for Shakespeare being Christian! He might be, but it doesn't seem likely to me. Bloom has said he is "post Christian", which seems about right. Heavily influenced by Christianity, but far beyond it. Which puts him far beyond the late Tolstoy, hence Tolstoy's descent into malicious envy and self destruction.

I think that it is all but fruitless to try to find Shakespeare within his plays, as he seemed to have had the perfect ability to separate himself from his art. Whether this is searching for his religious beliefs in his work, damning him for anti-Semitism in Merchant of Venice or trying to prove his sexuality based on the sonnets – it just seems so reductive. Speculation is all well and good but without the biographical evidence, which none of us has (thankfully I think sometimes) it becomes just that, speculation. You might as well speculate that he was mad because he wrote Lear!

In terms of his religious beliefs it would seem almost inconceivable if Shakespeare were not religious in some way, based upon the context of 17th century life. Despite what is often thought, the religious beliefs of this period are a quite complex issue, ranging from devout allegiance to the Catholic or Protestant faith to personal belief in providence or signs of God’s words or actions found in everyday life. If you look at the church attendance for this period it is quite shockingly low, but drawing conclusions for a lack of faith based upon this is a big mistake. Personal interpretations of God’s word through the Bible and through daily action, was so fundamentally part of 17th century life that to think that Shakespeare was in severed from this, or above it in some way, seems unlikely to me.

[kiki1982]

Possibly the thing with Shakespeare's time was that the Church of England had only been well established 30 years prior to his birth. So, where the doctrine of the Catholic Church was adamant before, all of a sudden, anything goes in religion. One does not have to attend church, but can read the bible and can make his own doctrine if one wants. As such, Shakespeare can wel have known most things in that thing, but interpreted it his own way, with his own views on humanity as well, of course. So, in that, he does not always have the good win and evil punished, because that is not life's way. However, his tragedies like Lear could well have to do with an extreme interpretation of the Free Will.

Tolstoy was probably thinking too doctrinal: 'surely God punishes evil and rewards good'. He at least thought that he was going to be happy being pacifist and giving his riches away. As if... A+B does not make C in this case.

Shakespeare was thinking more deeply: Lear chooses his path based on bad ideas, so does Edmund, and where does it bring them? Cordelia wasn't forced to go and save her father. They all choose their path, but that has consequences and so has the free will. In a world where God has truly left man to his own will and He renounces to intervene, dangerous situations come into existance, because man does not seem to be capble in certain cases to judge properly and always choose the good path (as has been suggested in the bible itself wit the serpent and Eve). What happens if God lets man choose the bad one?

[wessexgirl]

Possibly the thing with Shakespeare's time was that the Church of England had only been well established 30 years prior to his birth. So, where the doctrine of the Catholic Church was adamant before, all of a sudden, anything goes in religion. One does not have to attend church, but can read the bible and can make his own doctrine if one wants. As such, Shakespeare can wel have known most things in that thing, but interpreted it his own way, with his own views on humanity as well, of course. So, in that, he does not always have the good win and evil punished, because that is not life's way. However, his tragedies like Lear could well have to do with an extreme interpretation of the Free Will.

Tolstoy was probably thinking too doctrinal: 'surely God punishes evil and rewards good'. He at least thought that he was going to be happy being pacifist and giving his riches away. As if... A+B does not make C in this case.

Shakespeare was thinking more deeply: Lear chooses his path based on bad ideas, so does Edmund, and where does it bring them? Cordelia wasn't forced to go and save her father. They all choose their path, but that has consequences and so has the free will. In a world where God has truly left man to his own will and He renounces to intervene, dangerous situations come into existance, because man does not seem to be capble in certain cases to judge properly and always choose the good path (as has been suggested in the bible itself wit the serpent and Eve). What happens if God lets man choose the bad one?

Not true Kiki. Elizabeth may well have said I have no desire to make windows into mens souls about the Catholic/Protestant issue, but people were penalised if they did not attend Church. Religion permeated that society, and whether Shakespeare himself was "religious", everyone would understand any religious undercurrents in the work. There is some speculation that Will was a secret Catholic, but as usual it is speculation, we don't know.

[PeterL]

From the several volumes of criticism I've read, as well as the 1800 pages of the complete works I've read in the last year, I see no good evidence for Shakespeare being Christian! He might be, but it doesn't seem likely to me. Bloom has said he is "post Christian", which seems about right. Heavily influenced by Christianity, but far beyond it. Which puts him far beyond the late Tolstoy, hence Tolstoy's descent into malicious envy and self destruction.

I think that Shakespeare was Christian from his background and the situation in which he lived, but I don't think he let that damage his writing much. Yesterday, I had the misfortune of hearing part of a discussion of who Shakespeare really was. One item mentioned was that Stratford was a relatively highly religious area on the Catholic side.


The Orwell essay says Tolstoy read Shakespeare several times, in three languages (including English). But he also suggests he might not have known English well enough to "get" the beauty of the poetry. But he also points out that this should not matter, there is so much else in Shakespeare that Tolstoy should have seen his greatness, on an unbiased reading! Look at all the people who have admired Shakespeare in translation. Anyway, I suggest you read Orwell's essay, it's a marvel.

If he read in English, then I expect that your idea is correct, that he didn't know English well enough.

[kiki1982]

I was only going on what Neely said about church attendance. It depends if people were really able to check whether people actually went to church. There were certain professions that were excused I seem to remember.

But even then, even if people had to attend church, then still there was a lot less doctrine and a lot more freedom of thought than in the Catholic era which could account for a somewhat 'odd' view on the worl and humanity in it.

[blp]

The people who taught at the missionary school I attended for a year in Kenya, aged 12, believed that the Bible, from the book of Genesis onwards, was literally true.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Not true Kiki. Elizabeth may well have said I have no desire to make windows into mens souls about the Catholic/Protestant issue, but people were penalised if they did not attend Church. Religion permeated that society, and whether Shakespeare himself was "religious", everyone would understand any religious undercurrents in the work. There is some speculation that Will was a secret Catholic, but as usual it is speculation, we don't know.



I was only going on what Neely said about church attendance. It depends if people were really able to check whether people actually went to church. There were certain professions that were excused I seem to remember.

Yes, the idea that nearly everybody attended church at this time, every Sunday is something of a myth, it did just not happen like that. Of course religion was a fundamental aspect of this period, but people disagreed, often violently, about how it should be interpreted and put into practice. There were direct clashes, not just between those of the Protestant and Catholic faiths, (at times) but radically differing views and interpretations of what it meant to live by the Protestant faith. Individual belief often varied from church theology and the general belief was that doing good by ones neighbours and occasionally attending church was enough. Indeed, many people were still wedded to the older superstitious beliefs, such as elements of witchcraft, and as a result the fundamental development of Protestantism took a long time to establish itself properly in 17th century England (I say 17th England because Britain as a nation didn’t officially exist until the Act of Union in 1707). It is also quite interesting to read about the level of abuse that was often directed by members of the public to members of the clergy, incidents of verbal and even physical abuse was quite common, no doubt whenever people did attend church, they were bitter because they would have rather spend time in the inns and taverns, whose attendance every Sunday was far superior to that of the churches.

[Drkshadow03]

From the several volumes of criticism I've read, as well as the 1800 pages of the complete works I've read in the last year, I see no good evidence for Shakespeare being Christian! He might be, but it doesn't seem likely to me. Bloom has said he is "post Christian", which seems about right. Heavily influenced by Christianity, but far beyond it. Which puts him far beyond the late Tolstoy, hence Tolstoy's descent into malicious envy and self destruction.

Seriously? Reading The Merchant of Venice with its theme of Christian mercy being better than Jewish strict adherence to the letter of the law I think is pretty pro-Christian sentiment.

[OrphanPip]

I find Virginia Woolf's conclusion that Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" was about getting a tooth pulled quite amusing.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Seriously? Reading The Merchant of Venice with its theme of Christian mercy being better than Jewish strict adherence to the letter of the law I think is pretty pro-Christian sentiment.

Oh no, not again~! :yikes:

I'll just quote what I said earlier:

I think that it is all but fruitless to try to find Shakespeare within his plays, as he seemed to have had the perfect ability to separate himself from his art. Whether this is searching for his religious beliefs in his work, damning him for anti-Semitism in Merchant of Venice or trying to prove his sexuality based on the sonnets – it just seems so reductive. Speculation is all well and good but without the biographical evidence, which none of us has (thankfully I think sometimes) it becomes just that, speculation. You might as well speculate that he was mad because he wrote Lear!

[wessexgirl]

Yes, the idea that nearly everybody attended church at this time, every Sunday is something of a myth, it did just not happen like that. Of course religion was a fundamental aspect of this period, but people disagreed, often violently, about how it should be interpreted and put into practice. There were direct clashes, not just between those of the Protestant and Catholic faiths, (at times) but radically differing views and interpretations of what it meant to live by the Protestant faith. Individual belief often varied from church theology and the general belief was that doing good by ones neighbours and occasionally attending church was enough. Indeed, many people were still wedded to the older superstitious beliefs, such as elements of witchcraft, and as a result the fundamental development of Protestantism took a long time to establish itself properly in 17th century England (I say 17th England because Britain as a nation didn’t officially exist until the Act of Union in 1707). It is also quite interesting to read about the level of abuse that was often directed by members of the public to members of the clergy, incidents of verbal and even physical abuse was quite common, no doubt whenever people did attend church, they were bitter because they would have rather spend time in the inns and taverns, whose attendance every Sunday was far superior to that of the churches.

The Act of Uniformity passed in 1559 made it compulsory to go to Church. Whether or not everyone did, it was a law of the land, which Shakespeare, (born 1564), along with the rest of the inhabitants of the country, would have been acutely aware. Recusants were fined for non-attendance. He would have grown up in an era where religion was extremely important, and was around under both Elizabeth and James, who may have been personally tolerant towards any variation in religious matters, but at a state level, religion was of primary importance. An age of plots and counter-plots, with fears of a Catholic resurgence and attempts on the lives of the monarchs and the security of the state etc. could not fail to have an impact on the collective psyche of a nation, or Shakespeare.

[Drkshadow03]

Oh no, not again~! :yikes:

I'll just quote what I said earlier:

Actually, I partially agree with you. I find Mal4mac's statement dubious precisely because he is making an immutable claim about the author's identity. His claim was specifically, "From the several volumes of criticism I've read, as well as the 1800 pages of the complete works I've read in the last year, I see no good evidence for Shakespeare being Christian!"

If you re-read my follow-up comments I talk strictly about the nature of the play itself. Since the play shows pro-Christian sentiments, I think it is reasonable to suggest that such evidence exists. I never claimed, "Shakespeare is DEFINITELY a Christian." I instead brought it up because I don't buy there is no good evidence, especially on the grounds of reading his plays.

I do think it's reasonable to infer or speculate that Shakespeare shared some of those sentiments, at least, at that point in his life.

Just like I think it is more than reasonable to assume that the sculptor who did the work below probably had pro-Christian sentiments:

http://www.aug.edu/augusta/iconography/iconographySupplementalImages/autunTympanum.jpg

Just like I think it's a fair assumption that Philip Roth's Jewish identity plays a strong role in his fiction, which can be discerned merely by reading his works.

[kelby_lake]

The 1996 version of A Midsummer Night's Dream puts a homoerotic spin on Puck and Oberon's relationship (and amusingly our teacher told us that he wished to portray Oberon as a sexually undiscerning sort of guy in their high school production).

Implying that Antonio and Bassiano from The Merchant of Venice are homosexual.

Dull feminist interpretations of AMSND that focus on Hippolyta being Theseus' captive.

And I read an amusing Shakespeare history book written in 1920 which was scandalised as Measure for Measure and suggested that Mariana's song be cut, plus all the bawdy references, and even then it would still be 'repulsive'.

I think there are enough themes and similarities in Shakespeare's works to conclude that there is something of him in there. What it is is not quite obvious...

[LitNetIsGreat]

The Act of Uniformity passed in 1559 made it compulsory to go to Church. Whether or not everyone did, it was a law of the land, which Shakespeare, (born 1564), along with the rest of the inhabitants of the country, would have been acutely aware. Recusants were fined for non-attendance. He would have grown up in an era where religion was extremely important, and was around under both Elizabeth and James, who may have been personally tolerant towards any variation in religious matters, but at a state level, religion was of primary importance. An age of plots and counter-plots, with fears of a Catholic resurgence and attempts on the lives of the monarchs and the security of the state etc. could not fail to have an impact on the collective psyche of a nation, or Shakespeare.

Yes I'm not in dispute with any of that, I agree with it. The points I wanted to push is that church attendance was not at all high during this period, even though religion was a fundamental aspect of daily life at this time, from which Shakespeare simply could not have been severed from or "above" it.


Actually, I partially agree with you. I find Mal4mac's statement dubious precisely because he is making an immutable claim about the author's identity. His claim was specifically, "From the several volumes of criticism I've read, as well as the 1800 pages of the complete works I've read in the last year, I see no good evidence for Shakespeare being Christian!"

If you re-read my follow-up comments I talk strictly about the nature of the play itself. Since the play shows pro-Christian sentiments, I think it is reasonable to suggest that such evidence exists. I never claimed, "Shakespeare is DEFINITELY a Christian." I instead brought it up because I don't buy there is no good evidence, especially on the grounds of reading his plays.

OK, I can certainly go with that, you could read the play in such a way if you wanted to.

Edit: I might have misread what you said above slightly, apologies if that was so.


I do think it's reasonable to infer or speculate that Shakespeare shared some of those sentiments, at least, at that point in his life.

See, now I think we are going on "shaky" ground from this point. Of course people are free to go where they want with such speculations, but for me it is rather unfruitful not to mention possibly messily anachronistic.

Edit: Also, I took you to mean that Shakespeare was anti-Semitic based on Merchant and not "pro-Christian" which is granted a different position. As I said previously Shakespeare could not have been apart from the massive impact that religion had at that time, so it only stands to reason that it is evident within his plays.

[mortalterror]

Just like I think it is more than reasonable to assume that the sculptor who did the work below probably had pro-Christian sentiments:
http://www.aug.edu/augusta/iconography/iconographySupplementalImages/autunTympanum.jpg
Well that could mean anything. Don't they have winged crossing guards in New York?

[Jeremydav]

Perhaps the fact that Shakespeare could separate himself so well from his works contributes to his status. Though, I've always liked finding semi-autobiographical aspects of works I read.

[kelby_lake]

It's not necessarily that he separated himself. In most works of literature and films, emphasis is placed on one character; the character the author is clearly most interested in. You can often conclude that the author and character share certain elements.

However, Shakespeare seems to have spread himself out amongst the characters, so we can find an individual story in all of them.

[keilj]

the second most ridiculous: pretty much every english or lit teacher I ever had trying to ascribe "symbols" and "meanings" to stories and books - trying to tell the class what the author was thinking and what the author meant - only the author knows that

the most ridiculous: every comment ever made in class by the "kiss-up student" who raises his/her hand and offers some hackneyed comment just for the sake participating in the discussion



one specific example - I had one lit teacher in college who tried to read sexual meanings into every book that we read that semester. (the teacher was actually pretty cool, but this habit of his was annoying)

[kelby_lake]

the most ridiculous: every comment ever made in class by the "kiss-up student" who raises his/her hand and offers some hackneyed comment just for the sake participating in the discussion


There's always one, isn't there? And they basically just repeat exactly what the teacher has said as if they were giving some profound insight into it.

[keilj]

There's always one, isn't there? And they basically just repeat exactly what the teacher has said as if they were giving some profound insight into it.

lol - exactly. But they want to get that participation grade!

[WuWei]

Mmm, I must confess that I find Spivak's interpretation of Jane Eyre quite irritating.

Also, Chinua Achebe's remarks on "Heart of Darkness" being a racist novel similarly annoy me.

All in all, I find that the most ridiculous interpretations are the ones that try to superimpose contemporary feelings to books written decades, if not centuries before.

[kiki1982]

hear, hear.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

The people who taught at the missionary school I attended for a year in Kenya, aged 12, believed that the Bible, from the book of Genesis onwards, was literally true.

:lol: That must've sucked.

[kiki1982]

Oh, that's not so special, sorry if this offends anyone and if this is against the rules, but I have a brother- and sister-in-law who believe that too. (JW)

I am still hoping to discuss it one day :D

Oh, my pet hate is Rouseau and Emily Brontë being heathens. :nonod:

[hanzklein]

I slightly agree with Tolstoi about Shakespeare. Sometimes Shakespeare is too wordy with no purpose. Some of his scenes are also extremely boring. It also seems like everything he was writing was indiscernible from each other, and just new characters and scenery were injected. There are also improbable and coincidental things which happen in the plot in many of his plays.

That said, Shakespeare really shines sometimes, in terms of intelligence and holding an interesting plot. Tolstoi just could not find that in Shakespeare. He said that Shakespeare literally put him to sleep.


Perhaps the fact that Shakespeare could separate himself so well from his works contributes to his status. Though, I've always liked finding semi-autobiographical aspects of works I read.

Remember, we have no clue who Shakespeare really was. In theory, all of his characters could have had real life counterparts from his life and we wouldn't know.

[JCamilo]

I do not think Ahebe criticism is ridiculous, wrong, but there is a context of western awarenes that works well there.

Tolstoy is also a man from a conservative society. He is more close to Voltaire than to Shakespeare. XVIII century writers didnt had this anonimous view of Shakespeare. Talking about Voltaire I saw once a dude arguing that Voltaire was favorable to keep people ignorant, due the ending of Candide. Never irony was lost so easily.

[hanzklein]

I do not think Ahebe criticism is ridiculous, wrong, but there is a context of western awarenes that works well there.

Tolstoy is also a man from a conservative society. He is more close to Voltaire than to Shakespeare. XVIII century writers didnt had this anonimous view of Shakespeare. Talking about Voltaire I saw once a dude arguing that Voltaire was favorable to keep people ignorant, due the ending of Candide. Never irony was lost so easily.

I always got the impression that Tolstoy was like a hippy in the 1800's. He was always advocating peace, equality and spirituality. I think the problem is that Tolstoy viewed Shakespeare from a literary/artistic viewpoint: he didn't care at all about his politics or views when thinking about his work.

Judging by his essay, from what I can remember his language and especially his plots and characters bothered him as being the work of an unskilled person.

I mean, T.S. Eliot once said Hamlet was an aesthetic failure. Shakespeare is not perfect.

[JCamilo]

Yes, Tosltoy, specially the final tolstoy is a mystic. But that is pretty much a man of XVIII century, order, his place in harmony in the world, balance...

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I mean, T.S. Eliot once said Hamlet was an aesthetic failure. Shakespeare is not perfect.

Neither is T. S. Eliot.

[Pecksie]

Only the other week, I went to see a performance of Calderón de la Barca's 'Life is a Dream', directed by the Spanish Calisto Beito. I just hated it. The actors delivered their lines so fast it was almost impossible to understand what they were saying (especially for the many people in the audience who were not used to seventeenth-century literary Spanish). They probably didn't understand it either. And I wonder why it is that directors catering to modern audiences feel the need to include sexuality/obscenity where there isn't any --- the character of Clarín was always rubbing against someone or other, touching himself, farting, or something equally out of place. King Basilius (and later Segismond) wore silk pajamas and coats of the Hugh Hefner type. The rest of the male cast (save for Clarín, who was in fluorescent pink breeches) wore Nazi-type uniforms. The ladies were in vaguely nineteenth-century attire. But the worst (I insist) was all that misplaced touching and belching and stuff. If Calderón hadn't been already out of this world, he'd have dropped dead after this play. It was just so ugly.

I was so disappointed, as I had gone to see the play with people who don't know Calderón's work at all, and afterwards I had to try to convince them that it's not the rubbish they saw that night onstage, but writing so beautiful it often takes your breath away.

[Jozanny]

Yes I've heard of the Tolstoy criticisms before, quite embarrassing.

One of the most annoying modern criticisms I've read of Wilde's early work, his collection of poems and his two plays, Vera and The Duchess of Padua, was that they are poor because Wilde had not yet had an homosexual encounter. When he did have his work became much better. Nonsense.

I can see the development of the argument leading to repression and all of that, but it is still nonsense. I'm not arguing that these works aren't weak, they are, but not for the reason presented. You can trace Wilde's development as a writer and thinker right the way through his life, from his childhood letters through to De Profundis, and it has very little to do with his sexuality upon this point.

This sounds like me with homo-erotic readings of Henry James. Of course it should be acknowledged, but one critic who I won't name sees homosexual affairs going on in every novel. To me this reduces James' literary achievement, and the same could be said for Wilde's social observations.

[kiki1982]

Only the other week, I went to see a performance of Calderón de la Barca's 'Life is a Dream', directed by the Spanish Calisto Beito. I just hated it. The actors delivered their lines so fast it was almost impossible to understand what they were saying (especially for the many people in the audience who were not used to seventeenth-century literary Spanish). They probably didn't understand it either. And I wonder why it is that directors catering to modern audiences feel the need to include sexuality/obscenity where there isn't any --- the character of Clarín was always rubbing against someone or other, touching himself, farting, or something equally out of place. King Basilius (and later Segismond) wore silk pajamas and coats of the Hugh Hefner type. The rest of the male cast (save for Clarín, who was in fluorescent pink breeches) wore Nazi-type uniforms. The ladies were in vaguely nineteenth-century attire. But the worst (I insist) was all that misplaced touching and belching and stuff. If Calderón hadn't been already out of this world, he'd have dropped dead after this play. It was just so ugly.

I was so disappointed, as I had gone to see the play with people who don't know Calderón's work at all, and afterwards I had to try to convince them that it's not the rubbish they saw that night onstage, but writing so beautiful it often takes your breath away.

I feel your pain... Not about Calderón, but Hortvath in this case. A leading Flemish theatre company went to perform Casimir und Caroline by Ödön von Horvath at that famous theatre festival of Avignon in 2008. Got the stage inside the Palais des Papes (best place) and delivered such DRIVVLE that some people of the public went out shouting 'c'est chiant' ('it is sh*t') in the middle of the play and a whole lot left after the break. I mean, they just... mucked up a play which asks questions with the pressing beginning Nazi bourgeois culture in a time of severe recession. You would think that, at the start of this recession, this would have been a very good message. Yet, characters were running up and down scaffolding without any seeming purpose, getting into cars, etc. There was just nothing there. It was broadcasted live on ARTE and on the forum they were discussing what had happened to the play. You would think that a director would know the significance of People's Theatre in German lit history, wouldn't you? Instead the director just claimed that people didn't understand...

Leading Flemish theatre companies also have a certain fetish for obscenity, getting people naked on stage and stuff (farting and belching is another thing they do not do). I just wonder why? What's the purpose of having people naked on stage?

There was one 12 hour long version of the Kings' Dramas of Shakespeare (yes, Shakespeare is worth to be reworked!) which featured one character Edward (don't know which) shouting 'f*ck', 'f*cking' and 'sh*t' all the time. I just... My teacher didn't understand my disgust. I think as a writer, one should be extremely arrogant and haughty to think that one can make a better version of Shakespeare. I understand there are several versions on stage, but another version for adults I think is a bit much.

Once, as a child, I also went to play of Shakespeare, with school. Great, I thought (my parents too). It was MacBeth. Thinking back, that is, as I didn't uderstand one bit of it, although it had been translated in Dutch. The thing was done with 2 people, a man and a woman, who put on different hats and a coat when they were playing someone else. Duncan being killed, I still remember, was a coat hanging on the back of a chair. I still remember thinking, 'But where is that person Duncan they're talking about?' We were all 12 I think. That was a bit far-fetched and I regularly went to plays with my parents. The end, I also remember, was a big blow-up black castle and they rolled about in it.

I just couldn't see why that person 'Shakespeare' was so revered.


This sounds like me with homo-erotic readings of Henry James. Of course it should be acknowledged, but one critic who I won't name sees homosexual affairs going on in every novel. To me this reduces James' literary achievement, and the same could be said for Wilde's social observations.

Haha, I suppose the question should be asked whether not rather the critic has got something to say about himself than about any work whatsoever;).

[Jozanny]

On the issue of James and sexual orientation, I was called out on the matter, as I may have mentioned, for raising objections to seeing his entire oeuvre as a homo-erotic or bisexual subversion of Victorian bonds.

I will stipulate that any such serious study of Henry James demands that his homosexual socialability, as one critic called it, is important--but what I mean is James was not agenda driven in his work like Forster was with Maurice. Scholars are divided on how sexually active James was or wasn't, but no one knows for sure.

This woman though, if one was to accept hers as an authoritative voice, makes James's private life read like Casanova, and I think doing that is as irresponsible to good scholarship as my more conservative approach may be considered self-limiting. What keeps James on the canon is his ambiguity, in letting the reader infer the terrible consequences of physical intimacy as it impresses upon emotional vulnerability, and that may not be the thud of my own genius on deconstructing his work, but understanding him cannot be limited to a binary straight/gay dialectic.

Okay, I'm done :) (really arguing with them)

[kelby_lake]

On the issue of James and sexual orientation, I was called out on the matter, as I may have mentioned, for raising objections to seeing his entire oeuvre as a homo-erotic or bisexual subversion of Victorian bonds.

I will stipulate that any such serious study of Henry James demands that his homosexual socialability, as one critic called it, is important--but what I mean is James was not agenda driven in his work like Forster was with Maurice. Scholars are divided on how sexually active James was or wasn't, but no one knows for sure.

This woman though, if one was to accept hers as an authoritative voice, makes James's private life read like Casanova, and I think doing that is as irresponsible to good scholarship as my more conservative approach may be considered self-limiting. What keeps James on the canon is his ambiguity, in letting the reader infer the terrible consequences of physical intimacy as it impresses upon emotional vulnerability, and that may not be the thud of my own genius on deconstructing his work, but understanding him cannot be limited to a binary straight/gay dialectic.

Okay, I'm done :) (really arguing with them)

Yes, looking at writers purely in terms of sexuality can be simplistic. However, I think that it can reveal areas in the text which we didn't think of as erotic, or it highlights the eroticism. That wrestling scene from Women in Love is more erotic than anything from Lady Chatterley's Lover.

[manuscript]

i recently saw a very bad film adaptation of Mansfield Park by Patricia Rozema with Frances O'Connor as Fanny Price. which was so illiterate that it confused Austen with her character.

[kiki1982]

That was a reasonable adaptation (it is the 1999 one with Johnny Lee Miller, right?), apart from the emphasis on the writing thing. There was no refernce to excessive writing in the novel, only to reservedness. I suppose the writing was one of the good ways of expressing that reservedness, though. If you keep showing a character as part of a group, you don't give that impresson so easily.

If you really want to see an adaptation that totally and utterly misses the point, you have to watch the last BBC adaptation of Emma. It wasn't even funny. There were no servants and it was by all means pointless. Basicly Emma and Miss Smith were two teenage girls running about like headless chickens. It was difficult to believe how any Regency man would even have considered marrying any of those two. Even Mr Woodhouse had a genuine reason to feel as he did. :rolleyes:. Not to mention Mr Churchill who was the biggest d*ck and the most unworthy of SPOILER Jane's affection SPOILER OVER I have ever seen. Then give me the short and quite yellow version by Davies any day.

[manuscript]

That was a reasonable adaptation (it is the 1999 one with Johnny Lee Miller, right?), apart from the emphasis on the writing thing. There was no refernce to excessive writing in the novel, only to reservedness. I suppose the writing was one of the good ways of expressing that reservedness, though. If you keep showing a character as part of a group, you don't give that impresson so easily.

although johnny lee miller delivers a dependable performance, i did not think the film was reasonable, i honestly hated it. i am not able to provide a thorough critique because i guess it is just not that important a topic. i became confused early on when it becomes clear that film Fanny is a romantic sort, who is given to running out in rain storms and expressing outbursts of emotion, very different from the more classical and fragile Fanny Price Austen created, and actually difficult to differentiate in this sense from the characters of her stepsisters. the character of Fanny Price is also somewhat confused with Edmund in her aims, so that he becomes the constant one who knows he loves her from the start, rather than she, which strikes me as just bizarre. all this sort of thing seemed to straight away completely miss the point of the novel, which was in the subtleties of character within the contexts of sort of the cultural (partly very religion-based) social rules of that time, and particularly the integrity of the character of the very complex Fanny, which is just totally done away with, there is no relation to the original character. Fanny of the movie actually takes on Austen's narrator voice, which is just not right, Fanny is not Austen's narrator at all. i found every single character basically unrecognisable, they had changed so much. for example Tom became some kind of pervert monster, and Lady Bertram becomes a kind of alcoholic or drug addict or something, it was cheap and sensationalist. Tom in the book was a gambler, and Lady Bertram was a scatterbrain, Austen did not need these sorts of sensationalist devices to mark her characters as flawed, their more regular flaws condemned them enough. certain changes did not actually make proper sense, as when Mary Crawford discovers very late in the narrative that Edmund intends on a career in the clergy, it is ridiculous that she would discover this so late in their acquaintance. the scene in which Mary explains her plans for resolving the scandal to the entire family, rather than in private correspondence, was too improbable to pay attention to at all, it just made no sense, that would just never ever happen, even in an Austen novel. the production seemed unable to discriminate in nuances of character or to understand the very delicate mechanisms of a very deep and intricate society and pop philosophy novel.

sorry i am not being very clear but it is hard to describe without thinking very deeply about how to articulate my impressions of the novel and all of the ideas i thought were in it, ie without actually doing research and thinking properly and coherently, which i am not likely to ever really do. but i just could not understand how it related to the novel at all. i thought it seemed to want to make some of the concerns of the novel easier to relate to for a contemporary audience, kind of like sex in the city, but not in an even slightly knowing helen fielding type way, just in a way that did not understand the intricacies of the novel, and how much effort Austen went to in order to deal with the social intricacies that are relevant to the concerns she seemed to have in composing that novel. or else it seemed like it wanted to make use of Austen's absorbing narrative techniques to pursue its own agenda, in which case it may as well have just been a "10 Things I Hate About You" modern type adaptation and completely dispensed with the historical setting. none of it made any sense to me, i cant work out how to approach it, it seemed like a completely different narrative and artistic product, not really associated with the novel.


If you really want to see an adaptation that totally and utterly misses the point, you have to watch the last BBC adaptation of Emma. It wasn't even funny. There were no servants and it was by all means pointless. Basicly Emma and Miss Smith were two teenage girls running about like headless chickens. It was difficult to believe how any Regency man would even have considered marrying any of those two. Even Mr Woodhouse had a genuine reason to feel as he did. :rolleyes:. Not to mention Mr Churchill who was the biggest d*ck and the most unworthy of SPOILER Jane's affection SPOILER OVER I have ever seen. Then give me the short and quite yellow version by Davies any day.

i have seen it. i actually enjoyed it a lot. i found Romola Garai's performance brilliant and comical. i admit i laughed very hard. i thought it was part of the point of the novel that Emma runs about like a headless chicken acting inappropriately and being difficult to love. but then i have not read the novel since i was 16 and so i cant really remember well enough to give a very meaningful opinion. there did seem to me to be something slightly wrong about the Mr Churchill and Jane thing. and that is very perceptive of you to notice the absence of servants. i will have to read emma again sometime and see what i think properly.

thank you

[AuntShecky]

If I may say so, mining the works of Shakespeare for autobigraphical ore might be prospecting for fool's gold.

If you've read the seminal Dwight MacDonald essay, "Masscult and Midcult," you'll know that the reputations of earlier authors such as Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and Pope were based on their works rather than their lives. It wasn't until Byron that readers started to meld the work with the man. Lord Byron's poems "were not taken as artistic objects in themselves but as expressions of their creator's personality," even though, MacDonald hastens to add, the poems weren't really about the real man but a "contrived personality."

A couple decades before Dwight Mac., T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" insisted that we keep the poem and poet separate, that the poet must subsume his personality, as well as maintaining an objective distance, almost like that of a scientist --"chemical catalyst." So it's really fruitless to look for juicy autobiographical details in authors who lived centuries before the Romantics.

Back to the original poster's question: the most laughably ridiculous literary interpretation I've ever read occurred in John Kilgore's essay "Why Teachers Can't Read Poetry."

http://www.thescreamonline.com/essays/essays08-01/poetry.html

Writing more than a decade ago, Kilgore disputed bringing literature down to the students' level rather than the other way around in which teachers had their teenagers read "The Road Less Travelled" as an example of "individualism," or an object lesson in avoiding "peer pressure" (!) What, as in promoting abstinence or "saying no to drugs"? Unbelievable.

An opposite example is "The Rocking Horse Winner" by D.H. Lawrence. If that story is really about what people have been telling me it is about -- and there's lots of internal evidence, albeit subtle -- then we all have to wonder what that story is doing in high school anthologies!

[OrphanPip]

If you've read the seminal Dwight MacDonald essay, "Masscult and Midcult," you'll know that the reputations of earlier authors such as Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, and Pope were based on their works rather than their lives. It wasn't until Byron that readers started to meld the work with the man. Lord Byron's poems "were not taken as artistic objects in themselves but as expressions of their creator's personality," even though, MacDonald hastens to add, the poems weren't really about the real man but a "contrived personality."


I'm not sure it starts as late as Byron, there has always been art written with the intent of conflating the author with the art. We can see the popularity of that thought in the attacks thrown at female authors in the 18th century which likened them to prostitutes because literary production was deemed to be intimately personal. Or we can look at cavalier poetry of the 17th century and see the personal, autobiographical elements that are so common.

Dr. Johnson's literary criticism also makes it pretty clear that the identity of the author was very important to how literature was read in the 18th century. Why else would he include equal parts biography and criticism in Lives of the Poets?

[JCamilo]

Dante was so linked to the Comedy that legends about his travel being true spread quite fast. There is certainly a great difficulty to put apart him and his literary persona. Voltaire is another that predates Byron was creating a persona for the public that mixed in how his works were seen. Arabic poetry, most in andaluzia, did the byron trick already as well, as the authors had to pretend to be "controversial" according the style of work they followed.

[JBI]

I'm not sure it starts as late as Byron, there has always been art written with the intent of conflating the author with the art. We can see the popularity of that thought in the attacks thrown at female authors in the 18th century which likened them to prostitutes because literary production was deemed to be intimately personal. Or we can look at cavalier poetry of the 17th century and see the personal, autobiographical elements that are so common.

Dr. Johnson's literary criticism also makes it pretty clear that the identity of the author was very important to how literature was read in the 18th century. Why else would he include equal parts biography and criticism in Lives of the Poets?

The problem with your argument is in terms of readership etc.

Byron is the first cult poet in English, and the second best-seller. The first bestseller being Alexander Pope. The female poets you mentioned were never popular, and never really read (except now by University people paying lip-service to the "lost voices" of the tradition) so it is not safe to say they were ever "read" that way, in the sense that nobody actually took them seriously, or followed them much. They were not, for instance, Edna st. Vincent Millay, who is like a female Byron, and whose bohemian life translated into the reading of her poetry.

As for Johnson's work, it stresses the life in the sense that Vasari's Lives of the Artists does, or even Vasari's previous Roman historians, particularly The Lives of the Roman Empires by Plutarch. The story is important, but the divide between artist and author is still present - poetry and writing in the Renaissance is closely linked to rhetoric and rhetorical practice. Writing in the 18th century linked with "rationalization" and "reason". There is still a divide between poetry and the poet - the poem is read as a mirror to the world, not as a mirror to the poet.

Byron on the other hand was a super-celebrity whose dismissal of everything in good taste, melancholia, etc. made him the biggest man in England. Loved by everybody, yet a social parasite, he had his face even painted on Byron memorabilia. There is no precedent for such a public poet as this one in English. There probably hasn't even been a poet since Byron who was as large a personality. The lives of Johnson are more a biography, the life of Byron is one of literary criticism. It is completely different.

[JCamilo]

Byron maybe the english guy, but not the first one at all. Goethe, Voltaire and Rousseau were all super-stars in all continent and Walter Scott predates Byron as well. Voltaire and Goethe are super-personalities in the Byron style. You just cannot ignore the persona Voltaire while studying his texts, in this he pretty much predates Byron.

Dante and Cervantes lifes in large amount where never left behind by those studying their works. Specially considering they are not enigmas like Shakespeare and their lives has direct influence on their works.

You cannot talk of modern crticism in the past, of course, but if we look the study of saints lifes, we see the interpretation of religious texts always considered the author life and the text mixed. (As much will point, it is a different relation with the book, yet, it is pretty much the same, but in a age of religious way of thinking).

[OrphanPip]

The problem with your argument is in terms of readership etc.

Byron is the first cult poet in English, and the second best-seller. The first bestseller being Alexander Pope. The female poets you mentioned were never popular, and never really read (except now by University people paying lip-service to the "lost voices" of the tradition) so it is not safe to say they were ever "read" that way, in the sense that nobody actually took them seriously, or followed them much. They were not, for instance, Edna st. Vincent Millay, who is like a female Byron, and whose bohemian life translated into the reading of her poetry.

I was actually thinking more broadly of novelists and playwrights like Delavrier Manley and Eliza Haywood, who were massively popular. Haywood was the third bestselling author of the 18th century. Enough to be mentioned with derision by Pope in the Dunciad, or to likewise be painted as the "English Muses" around the same time. The "respectable" female novelist doesn't emerge until the Pamela media event mid-century, before that the female novelist were always a bit scandalous and they were often implicated in the public mind with the moral/immoral stories they told.



As for Johnson's work, it stresses the life in the sense that Vasari's Lives of the Artists does, or even Vasari's previous Roman historians, particularly The Lives of the Roman Empires by Plutarch. The story is important, but the divide between artist and author is still present - poetry and writing in the Renaissance is closely linked to rhetoric and rhetorical practice. Writing in the 18th century linked with "rationalization" and "reason". There is still a divide between poetry and the poet - the poem is read as a mirror to the world, not as a mirror to the poet.

Johnson does a little more than that though, his biographies concentrate most often on the moment of literary production, the context of the poem, who else may have contributed, how it was received, and how it reflects on the poet. There is a clear interest in the personality of the poet, and in the concept of the inspired genius.



Byron on the other hand was a super-celebrity whose dismissal of everything in good taste, melancholia, etc. made him the biggest man in England. Loved by everybody, yet a social parasite, he had his face even painted on Byron memorabilia. There is no precedent for such a public poet as this one in English. There probably hasn't even been a poet since Byron who was as large a personality. The lives of Johnson are more a biography, the life of Byron is one of literary criticism. It is completely different.

Byron is certainly a very pronounced example, but he is not the origin of these kind of attitudes towards art. He is not even entirely unique when it comes to the relationship between artist and public. Horace Walpole built himself a pastiche gothic home at Strawberry Hill and received constant visitors from around Europe. He deliberately melded his reputation as author with how he lived his life. (Walpole was also fond of showing visitors the vase from Gray's "On a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfish.")

I'm just saying this interest in the person is not an invention of the Romantics, it always existed to one extent or another.

[PeterL]

Coleridge's explanation of his "Kubla Khan" with the postman interrupting a dream is top of the list for me.

[kelby_lake]

An opposite example is "The Rocking Horse Winner" by D.H. Lawrence. If that story is really about what people have been telling me it is about -- and there's lots of internal evidence, albeit subtle -- then we all have to wonder what that story is doing in high school anthologies!

Ooh, what's it about? :D We studied all sorts at high school.

[MorpheusSandman]

Coleridge's explanation of his "Kubla Khan" with the postman interrupting a dream is top of the list for me.I don't think that was an interpretation so much as an excuse for why it was a fragment. Although, speaking of ridiculous interpretations surrounding Kubla Khan, the notion that the preface is part of the poetic production itself is a bit silly.

[PeterL]

I don't think that was an interpretation so much as an excuse for why it was a fragment. Although, speaking of ridiculous interpretations surrounding Kubla Khan, the notion that the preface is part of the poetic production itself is a bit silly.

Whether interpretation or excuse, it is lame, and it does not fit the poem.

[JCamilo]

It is actually bigger than the poem.

[MorpheusSandman]

Whether interpretation or excuse, it is lame, and it does not fit the poem.I don't know what you mean by "does not fit the poem." It's Coleridge explaining where the idea came from and why he wasn't able to complete his original conception. It could be a lot of bull, but it certainly stirred up a lot of interpretations and theories as it relates to the notion of poetic creativity.

[PeterL]

I don't know what you mean by "does not fit the poem." It's Coleridge explaining where the idea came from and why he wasn't able to complete his original conception. It could be a lot of bull, but it certainly stirred up a lot of interpretations and theories as it relates to the notion of poetic creativity.

It is my opinion that Coleridge lied in that explanation and the poem contains a complete and well put together set of thoughts. I suspect that eomeone was about to condemn him for his shamelss bragging in the poem, so he made up some slightly plausible lies. That's one collection of bull that continues to make controversy after two centuries. I really want to get my time machine fixed so that I will be able to confront him about the lies.

[kelby_lake]

It was probably just a bit of a joke.

[MorpheusSandman]

It is my opinion that Coleridge lied in that explanation and the poem contains a complete and well put together set of thoughts. I suspect that eomeone was about to condemn him for his shamelss bragging in the poem, so he made up some slightly plausible lies. That's one collection of bull that continues to make controversy after two centuries. I really want to get my time machine fixed so that I will be able to confront him about the lies.The fact is that we have no clue how much of it is true. It's not implausible that a poem came to him in a dream/vision and he forgot it after being disturbed (this has happened to me more than once). I don't know how you think that it reads like a "complete and well put together set of thoughts," it reads like a symbolic, fragmented, postmodern collage, which is probably why it continues to intrigue readers and critics. The last stanza doesn't connect a whit to what came before it except in a very elusive, meta way; it's entirely atypical of the romantic ideal of a complete poem.

[kelby_lake]

Maybe Coleridge just didn't feel like finishing it. Poetry relies very much on spontanaity of feeling. You have to be in the right mood to write it.

[MorpheusSandman]

That very much depends on the poet and the poem. Some feel they have to be inspired, in the right mood, "blessed by the muse," while others are more technical and cerebral about it; both approaches can be mixed, too. Certainly there are poems that you may start writing because you're in one mood and not be able to finish them because you can't get back there, but it can also just be a manner of laziness of not feeling like working on them. I tend to find what starts out as spontaneously inspired ends in the dull drudgery of being a watchmaker trying to put the pieces together. The latter part isn't nearly as fun as the former, and that's probably what prevents a lot of poems from getting finished (not to mention a lot of poets from fulfilling their potential).

[PeterL]

The fact is that we have no clue how much of it is true. It's not implausible that a poem came to him in a dream/vision and he forgot it after being disturbed (this has happened to me more than once). I don't know how you think that it reads like a "complete and well put together set of thoughts," it reads like a symbolic, fragmented, postmodern collage, which is probably why it continues to intrigue readers and critics. The last stanza doesn't connect a whit to what came before it except in a very elusive, meta way; it's entirely atypical of the romantic ideal of a complete poem.

If you want to believe the myth that Coleridge created, then do so. For me it is something else entirely.

The last stanza is different, but it is intimately connected with the rest. The poem is unified and complete.

You have to give Coleridge a lot of credit for creating a myth that has left people confused for two hundred years. When I get the time machine going I'll stop by, take a video, and congratulate him.

[MorpheusSandman]

Coleridge didn't create the myth, future readers/critics with too much imagination and too little logic and common sense created the myth; Coleridge was just trying to offer a preemptive defense against criticism of it being an incomplete fragment, either because the story was (partly/mostly) true, or because of some more mundane reason (eg, he got lazy). I doubt it even dawned on him at the time that the preface was in any meaningful way connected to the poem itself, or that it was some kind of deep, mystical insight into poetic creativity. You can state that the "last stanza is... innately connected with the rest," but the fact is that you can't find anything else like it from that period. The reason we view it as "unified and complete" NOW is that we've grown up in a post modern era where the collage and fragment has been elevated to high art; it wasn't so back then. Kubla Kahn was accidentally prescient, not some ingenious, intentional piece of mythmaking.

[kelby_lake]

Seeing as poetry is all about the words, maybe he just couldn't find the right words to explain the rest of it.

[JCamilo]

It is a bit irrelevant if Coleridge lied or not. Without the introdutory explanation, that poem would be one of many forgotten poems of Coleridge. With the introduction it became THE forgotten poem of all literature. With this, he predates Carlyle and Borges with the prefaces, commentaries to imagined works never fully written or developed.

[ennison]

It's fairly obvious where he was interrupted and there is nothing terribly odd about inspired dreaming especially drug inspired dreaming.

[ennison]

Oh how do you know it was the post man?

[PeterL]

Maybe Coleridge just didn't feel like finishing it. Poetry relies very much on spontanaity of feeling. You have to be in the right mood to write it.

But it is complete. He just wanted to mislead some people. ):

[PeterL]

It is a bit irrelevant if Coleridge lied or not. Without the introdutory explanation, that poem would be one of many forgotten poems of Coleridge. With the introduction it became THE forgotten poem of all literature. With this, he predates Carlyle and Borges with the prefaces, commentaries to imagined works never fully written or developed.

It was published some years before the preface. I had thought that it was reasonably popular before that pack of lies was written. I wouldn't besurprised if the poem would be even better known, if he hadn't added the preface, and it relied on criticsm and interpretation only.

[JCamilo]

If I am not mistaken, the poem was left out of early publishing and only published with the preface already years latter, when Coleridge decline started and didnt had a good reception at all. The poem, as anything Coleridge did, never got the Ancient Mariner level. Most poems are playfull, not fully devolped. Really, the preface was quite something unique to turn the interpretation of the text into something else.

[PeterL]

If I am not mistaken, the poem was left out of early publishing and only published with the preface already years latter, when Coleridge decline started and didnt had a good reception at all. The poem, as anything Coleridge did, never got the Ancient Mariner level. Most poems are playfull, not fully devolped. Really, the preface was quite something unique to turn the interpretation of the text into something else.

You are right. I was mistaken. It was only circulated among his friends for several years. But yes, if one accepts the preface at face value, then it certainly does "turn the interpretation of the text into something else." But I do ot accept the preface at face value.

[MorpheusSandman]

Without the introdutory explanation, that poem would be one of many forgotten poems of Coleridge.I disagree with that; I first encountered the poem sans-intro in an anthology and I was really intrigued with it back then. There are numerous things to recommend it regardless of the intro.

[JCamilo]

You are right. I was mistaken. It was only circulated among his friends for several years. But yes, if one accepts the preface at face value, then it certainly does "turn the interpretation of the text into something else." But I do ot accept the preface at face value.

Face vallue? The introduction is easily a mistification, a drug adict excuse, etc. The Vallue lies in being fictional, but working effectively and trully, giving originality to the poem.

[PeterL]

Face vallue? The introduction is easily a mistification, a drug adict excuse, etc. The Vallue lies in being fictional, but working effectively and trully, giving originality to the poem.

Either one takes the preface at face value, believes what it says, or one interprets the poem as would befit it, if the preface did not exist.

[JCamilo]

I do not take the introduction as face vallue and it is rather obvious many do not and this completely change the relevancy and understanding of this poem. Either you accept it or not.

[PeterL]

Fine, maybe I should post my imterpretation of the poem.

[kelby_lake]

I studied a play called The Shoemaker's Holiday (it's a sixteenth century city comedy) and the lecturer was obsessed with the image of this man putting a shoe on a girl's foot and how sexual it was.