SHAKSPER 2000: Re: The Topic

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 04/10/00 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.0733  Monday, 10 April 2000.

[1]     From:   Ed Taft <TAFT@marshall.edu>
        Date:   Wednesday, 05 Apr 2000 11:19:10 -0400 (EDT)
        Subj:   The Topic

[2]     From:   Sean Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
        Date:   Wednesday, 05 Apr 2000 10:11:04 -0700
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0711 Re: The Topic

[3]     From:   Alex Houck <ahouck@scu.edu>
        Date:   Wednesday, 05 Apr 2000 19:56:47 -0700
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0711 Re: The Topic


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Ed Taft <TAFT@marshall.edu>
Date:           Wednesday, 05 Apr 2000 11:19:10 -0400 (EDT)
Subject:        The Topic

Thanks for giving me your views on the subtext of 5.2, Judy.  I see your
point. I also wonder if the subtext of WT 5.2 and the naming of the
artist (Julio Romano) might have something to do with the years of
celibacy that presumably both Leontes and Hermione have endured. If so,
there certainly is REAL joy and wonder in their immediate future!

PS: I don't think Leontes deserves it, though!

--Ed Taft

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sean Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
Date:           Wednesday, 05 Apr 2000 10:11:04 -0700
Subject: 11.0711 Re: The Topic
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0711 Re: The Topic

Gabriel Egan writes:

> If I've got my Saussure right (and Leonard Jackson's The
> Dematerialization of Marx made me wonder), we can trace to him the
> necessary antecedents (about arbitrary signifier-signified relations,
> and about the absence of positive terms) of the modern idea that
> language doesn't  merely reflect or denote the world but also
> constitutes it.

I think that John Lee wasn't so much contesting the claim that language
isn't entirely neutral, as the need to summon the shade of Saussure from
Hades to argue this.  In fact, I'm not even sure that the idea that
language "doesn't merely reflect or denote the world but also
constitutes it" is particularly "modern".  Ernesto Grassi finds this
Heideggerian (!) idea in Italian humanists.  Personally, I think that
it's rather implicit in Adam's naming the animals in Paradise Lost, or
the creation of the world by the word of God, for that matter.

Cheers,
Seán.

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Alex Houck <ahouck@scu.edu>
Date:           Wednesday, 05 Apr 2000 19:56:47 -0700
Subject: 11.0711 Re: The Topic
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0711 Re: The Topic

I could not resist responding to this posting since I recently was in a
production of The Winter's Tale and delivered the (rather lengthy)
description of the statue created by Julio Romano (Folio spelling).
During the trial scene of WT (III.2) dies/faints (depending on
directorial interpretation) and is removed from the stage and for
sixteen years Leontes is leant to believe that he has killed his wife
and son.  Julio Romano comes into the story because he is attributed
with making the statue of Hermione.  His artwork is so exact that he
takes into account the passage of time (16 years) and is so life like
"that they say one would speak to her, and stand in hope of answer."
(V.2.108-9)  Julio Romano is of the Mannerist tradition and is a
comparable artist to Caravagio.

Alex Houck
Santa Clara University

>Leonates has "frozen" his wife into a
>death-like state similar to that of a statue because of his insane and
>unreasoned (by that I mean unsupported by facts) jealousy.  She cannot
>relate to him and he denies her "life." In the play, she is a statue
>after the art of Guilio Romano, who according to the list depicted
>various stages of intercourse in almost pornographic detail.  I take the
>"subtext" to mean that she is not a literal statue nor an unfeeling slab
>of stone if reality were not one-dimensional and determined by her
>husband's "gaze" and attitude.    She has the potential to be sexually
>alive and satisfying in the most graphic sense if she had been "seen" so
>by her husband.
>
>Judy


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