Tahir Wood <twood at uwc.ac.za> wrote:
"I was referring to Bakhtin's notion, which has influenced me enormously, that the poeticising tendency is always on the conservative, official side of language"
I guess you mean the conservative, official side of society? No doubt Shakespeare was a subject/admirer of Queen Elizabeth, wrote flattering verse to nobles and himself became a prosperous middle class gentleman. But many of his plays question power, and power seekers (Henry IV eg), though you could argue that his views of political man were about the same as those of Hobbes.
Vergil was certainly a conservative poet, but Milton, who imitated him, was in political terms a fiery radical. Bachtin's views might apply to someone like Pope, or Tennyson, but not to Blake, Wordsworth, or Whitman (two of whom "poeticised" -- i.e. wrote in the grand style.)
In the 20th century, poets give up "poetic speech" so Bachtin's comments really dont apply there.
Did you also say somewhere that the novel is by definition popular and anti-aristocratic? That one doesn't hold up either: Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, George Eliot never questioned the basic institutions of their society, but radically critiqued many of its values. In our times, many an angry, nihilistic, rebellious young novelist (Martin Amis, eg) have turned out to be creepily conservative.
BTW, your explication of Carrol's couplet from Cymbeline was dazzling!
BobW
>>> 12/11/07 7:57 PM >>>
From: Robert Wrubel
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Shakespeare
Tahir commented that Shakespeare's language is often too poetic, too elevated. This might apply to the English history plays, but not to Hamlet or even less to King Lear. What Tahir calls "the dialectic of high and low" speech is more central to Shakespeare than any other writer I can think of. And that may be the core of why Carrol finds S so fascinating ("weird") -- the continual intermingling and testing of the lofty with the base ( e.g. "th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame. ." ) Marianne Moore called it making "imaginary gardens with real toads".
I can see that I'm not going to get very far with any anti-Shakespeare sentiments in this crowd! I am familiar with the above arguments, and I did think someone would raise them. I don't disagree completely of course. But I was referring to Bakhtin's notion, which has influenced me enormously, that the poeticising tendency is always on the conservative, official side of language, unless it is being explicitly debunked by common speech. That means that poetic speech, if it appears to be close to an authorial point of view (i.e. not being debunked in any way), serves a conservative function. And in Sakespeare the poeticising tendency IS dominant. Of course Bakhtin was a populist, for whom Rabelais was an ultimate hero, and I don't share his views on everything - I don't share his admiration for Dostoevsky for example - but his view has been tremendously important for me. I think that it is fundamentally right. But even Bakhtin would have said (and probably did say somewhere) that the 'novelising' tendency is also present in Shakespeare. Tahir
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