(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

[florahart]

*snork*

Was fucking THRILLED that when they added the litcrit requirement to my lit degree, I was one quarter too close to done for them to make me go back and take it.

I feel your pain. Kind of. In, uh, theory.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

LOL! I want your icon.

Shit, they just added this bullshit course. I just learned this last week that I might not have had to take it. Jeeze.

I really am quoting Robin Williams. And I'm throwing in The Onion, if I can manage it.

Icarus

[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!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

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

Icarus

*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

[cesperanza.livejournal.com]

You're a FANWRITER. You do Lit Crit for a VOCATION. Just do the non-fiction version; that's really all it is!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

*falls on knife in appropriately Shakespearian manner*

Icarus

[ngaio]

A friend at college was planning to (but forgot to) quote Charles Schultz in a Philosophy essay. As in: As the author Schultz observes 'what's true is true, and what's false is false'. I was so disappointed she didn't because he was our one good lecturer and it'd have been fun seeing if he got the reference or if he asked her about it.

[theemdash]

In one class I quoted Star Wars. Extensively.

I got an A. ;)

[h-oserheidi.livejournal.com]

one time, in english 101, i quoted leo lioni and synthesized it with Zizek. and that might have been the climax of my writing career to date.

[h-oserheidi.livejournal.com]

ps, this is my favorite line from my essay, do you think i should keep it? hahaha. "the scent of homophobia was sniffed out by Radford like a drug dog sniffing out crack, once he scented a potential homoerotic love story, it was all he could do to have a butt sex scene behind a scrim to tell you that Antonio and Bassanio were gay lovers. "

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Hey, I quoted the Onion as if it were a serious source. Go for it. Though to keep it properly Shakespearian you would probably adopt a high tone ('anal sex' as opposed to 'butt sex') -- ha.

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

[chinesefirebal.livejournal.com]

I managed to quote Monty Python and the meaning of life in a religion essay. The essay was meant to be on Marriage and Divorce in Christianity and Judaism - I got distraced when yabbering about marriage in Catholicism - wondered into the whole "no sex before marriage" and then decided to back up my yabberings with "every sperm is sacred, every sperm is good" - the teacher who marked it circled it and said "not a scared text"

Suprisingly I did better on that essay, then i did on another (the two were almost identical) in which i made a decent attempt