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Friday, January 01, 2010
BARDOLATRY QUESTIONED, HUZZAH!
Holy Crap! M. Gender-Neutral Webnets Super-Hero!
I missed it.
(Sigh)
There’s been an outbreak of skepticism about Shakespeare over at Crooked Timber, and I missed it. George Scialabba fired the first salvo in a Shakespeare thread initiated by John Quiggan on 21 December (so very loonnggg ago). That discussion was stopped on 26 Dec. Chris Bertram initiated a new discussion on 29 December; that discussion may still be on-going.
Come on folks! Will this reflexive worship of The Bard as THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME never end?
Has anyone argued, for example, that the standard-issue 19th century novelists saw deeper into humankind than Shakespeare did?
Happy New Year!
Comments
Come on, Bill, surely the very word “bardolotry” itself questions the unmatched greatness of Shakespeare.
“Has anyone argued, for example, that the standard-issue 19th century novelists saw deeper into humankind than Shakespeare did?”
Anyone would be free to, if anyone wanted to actually construct an argument.
Seeing deeply into human nature, whatever that means exactly, is not a necessary quality for artistic genius. Did Cezanne’s work ever say anything about human nature? Do Beethoven’s piano sonatas say anything about human nature? I don’t even think Homer says much about human nature that’s all that complex.
Shakespeare’s genius rests on the verbal texture of his work. I’d agree with Keats that, to the degree that Shakespeare’s plays have any ideas, they are simply part of the patterning of the work, part of its texture, the effect of which he called negative capability.
More to the point, Bill, Scialabba’s argument has nothing to do with whether Shakespeare “saw deeper into humankind” than anyone. Quite the opposite: he’s following Shaw in criticizing Shakespeare for being too interested in the petty human foibles of self-interested characters, rather than in the grand plans of ideologically motivated ones. He’s saying that Shakespeare is too interested in human nature and not enough in the Manichaean struggle against wrongness and evil.
It seems that you’re not interested in the actual discussion taking place, you just like to see someone needling Shakespeare, for whatever reason. That does not impress me as intellectually serious. It’s just another of your continuing efforts to make The Valve into academia’s finest link aggregator, which are not appreciated by this reader, at least.
You’re right, tomemos, the actual content of Scialabba’s argument was not a primary matter. What attracted my attention, and prompted this post, was the amount of opposition he got and the fact that someone else thought it useful to string the conversation on to a second post.
As for link posts, if they don’t interest you, don’t read ‘em. Sheesh.
"As for link posts, if they don’t interest you, don’t read ‘em.”
But Bill, that’s the point: who could be interested by a post like this? This is a literary blog; is there any literary analysis? No. Do you actually engage with the question of Shakespeare’s merit? No, not at all. You say that you are interested in the way the discussion unfolded, but do you have anything to say about it? No; you even misrepresent what Scialabba actually says. The closest thing to content here is a knee-jerk response to a straw man (is anyone on those threads, or here at The Valve, insisting that Shakespeare is indisputably “THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME”?), and a sketch of an argument you’d like to see someone else make, so that you could endorse it. How could something that lazy and vacuous not elicit annoyance?
At the same time, you’re right that the most rational response to something we dislike is to simply avoid it. But that poses a problem in The Valve’s case, because 1) most of your posts here are similarly free of content, and 2) most of the posts at The Valve are now by you. I just checked: this last month, eight consecutive Valve posts were by you. You’re largely determining the content of the site right now, so if your posts don’t offer serious intellectual engagement, then to a large extent neither does The Valve.
1. (Just waiting for the wedge to open a slot large enough to stick my “Kit Shakelowe” remarks through...)
2. Is Bill the first official recipient of a Reverse Troll Accusation? 2010’s first Webtrend… ?
What struck me about the CT discussion was that Scialabba seemed unaware of Johnson and Voltaire’s argument about Shakespeare. And that the issue of Shakespeare’s language, which Luther raises (as an English major should), went largely unmentioned.
Good point, Josh. There always seems to be a lot of historical ignorance when it comes to deflating Bardolotry. The real target is ultimately a certain Romantic perspective on Shakespeare that sees him as being a Romantic soul before the fact. Margreta De Grazia’s work on the history of *Hamlet* criticism does a great job of showing critics, largely between 1600 and 1800, who have intense problems with Shakespeare at the level of both form and content. And they have a point, even once you get beyond their neo-classical hang-ups. But I don’t think there’s a necessary contradiction between having a realistic view of Shakespeare’s strengths and weaknesses and yet still considering him among the few truly unimaginably great artists the world has ever seen.
tomemos does not like the free ice cream.
Should be spelled “BARDOLATRY” not “BARDOLOTRY”. “-latry” meaning worship. As in “idolatry”.