Re: Thinking with Jim and Robbie

Will said: "I've been told recently that single author studies are
irrelevant and that books about literature should focus on cultural themes."

That's an interesting idea, but I really don't think it can hold up. This
idea that's been springing up, that everything (or nearly so) is dependent
upon and defined by culture and custom seems exaggerated to me. These
things certainly have a profound influence, but they do not absolutely
determine everything. I cannot imagine that a reasonable person can sustain
such a belief through the careful reading of varied texts from far-ranging
times and cultures. It soon becomes plainly evident that we all really do
share much more than separates us, and what we share provides a very
substantial context.

And: "Though I respect robbie's reading acumen and know he's onto very good
insights and experiences, I think Jim is heavier from where I see their
lovely seesaw...if we read APDFB, we know it's a great story, but don't we
know and understand more when we read RHTBC, SAI, and Hapworth?"

We do, and I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. I am in fact a proponent of
a much more radical contextualization -- one that begins with the very
earliest written words.

My assertion was not that reading more books is unhelpful to understanding
one book, but only that I can understand Hamlet without reading Professor
X's Elizabethan cultural and historical hypothesizing. Certainly I will
understand such a Great text imperfectly, and certainly I will comes to see
more in it with each reading over years and decades, but by reading
Shakespeare's words and ONLY Shakespeare's words, something of Shakespeare's
ACTUAL MEANING will reach me. Not his Whole And Final Meaning, mind you,
but something that he did actually put into words will actually come out
sensible to me on the other end.

It is disheartening to me that this is a controversial statement.

Also: "It seems to me that in our new century, we are increasing our ability
to be intertextual (thanks to the WWW?)."

I disagree. Read a randomly selected book written two hundred years ago and
tell me that the author was less "intertextual" than the typical scholar
today. The Great Schism that I referred to earlier is making us far, far
less intertextual. It was once expected that every scholar be studied in
Latin and poetry and geometry and physics and music (et cetera) BEFORE he
could start to specialize. As a society, democratization has allowed us to
become far more knowledgeable and educated; but the most educated among us,
our scholars, have for whatever reasons acquired a profoundly narrower
vision.

-robbie
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Received on Sat Oct 26 07:10:50 2002