(no subject)

[icarus]

I hate literary criticism so much. I can't take myself this seriously!

I've started deliberately quoting Robin Williams in a Shakespeare essay, and if I had a copy of the National Enquirer I would use it as a source!

The Onion! I could quote The Onion!

*quietly dies*

Comments

[delurker.livejournal.com]

My favourite quote I've found in my eng lit classes is this:

"Roger Shermnan Lookmis, in a critical move that would solve many other literary cruxes, suggested that the author might have been drunk when he wrote it."<sup>1

1</sup>The Development of Arthurian Romance (New York, 1964), p 175.

(From C. David Benson's "The Ending of the Morte D'Arthur" in A Companion to Malory, edited by Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards.) Argh, you can tell I've done too much academia when my random quotes are footnoted so much. :(

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I could drink, and then write this essay. That might improve it.

Icarus

[delurker.livejournal.com]

Hee!

*hated essay, mocked even as I write it*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Shakespeare wrote for the social context of the late 17th and early 18th century, and while his plays touch upon universal human concerns of revenge and love and war which remain relevant three hundred years later (and will likely remain so three hundred years from now), The Merchant of Venice has become a "problem play" as social tensions have shifted. Robin Williams says "at a certain point, everything becomes funny." Pain is the source of comedy. But comedy suffers the most with change. In the present day, with increased tensions surrounding anti-Semitism, and the current acceptance of the business class, the Jew Shylock looms painfully large, completely overshadowing the actual main character of The Merchant of Venice, Antonio. Modern readers brush by the wealthy businessman Antonio as if he scarcely exists, and miss the implications of the fact that Shylock is often not even named. It may seem briefly odd that Shakespeare is done with his all-important Shylock before the last act of the play, while the drab Antonio not only opens the play, he drifts on to the final scene. It might seem Shakespeare has created an uncommonly two-dimensional character with his Jew and left so much of the relationship between gentiles and Jews unexplored, while wasting time with the relationship between Brassanio and Antonio, Antonio and the state, and then Antonio and Portia. However, it is unlikely Shakespeare missed the focal point of his own play, or missed the points of tension that marked it easily as a comedy in his day. After all, he performed for "a rowdy audience of ne'er do-wells, servants, and charboys who interacted with the players and even threw things on stage" (Markham). If it wasn't funny he would have known very quickly. Shylock is a symbol and echo of the man who needs to learn his place within Elizabethan society, and the man he shadows is Antonio.


I've worked in The Onion and Robin Williams. Now I wonder if George Bush has made any anti-Semitic remarks....

Icarus

Re: *hated essay, mocked even as I write it*

[cordelia_v]

Um. Forgive me. I'm OCD this way. But you've got Shakespeare set a century too late. He wrote in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

Re: *hated essay, mocked even as I write it*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Hey, you're still here. :) *corrects essay, red-faced if amused* Maths.

Icarus

Re: *hated essay, mocked even as I write it*

[cordelia_v]

Oh, I'm very much still alive. Just struggling through end-of-term grading, on this coast.

Re: *hated essay, mocked even as I write it*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

By the way, you'll be happy to know that I decided to go with the Jackson School of International Studies. I'm really happy with their program and my professors are fresh from India and know their stuff.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I could drink, and then write this essay. That might improve it.

Icarus