Tahir Wood <twood at uwc.ac.za> wrote:
"But there is nevertheless an inexorable movement from, say, Homer to Rabelais
and beyond. And that is the movement towards dialogical language in literature ('heteroglossia'), which is part of a much broader process of social differentiation and differentiation within consciousness. "
Well, if I can guess what "dialogic" language means, I certainly wouldn't dispute this, and in fact it seems self-evident. I dont think it sheds any light on Shakespeare's achievement, though, any more than it does on Chaucer. Both spoke mixed high and low language; the charm (and weirdness) of both is in the mixture. Milton, on the other hand, consciously does use a classical, conservative style of speech, and this limits his modern audience, but in no way lessens the power of his poetry.
Obviously I have to read Backtin. From your comments, though, he doesnt appear to link the different forms of modern consciousness with modern class positions, but simply locates them on some straight-ahead path of development, like the forward movement of capitalism itself..
BobW
>>> 12/12/07 10:22 PM >>> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Shakespeare
Well, this is quite an enjoyable debate of the sort I haven't been involved in for a while. One of the good things about LBO is that it is a list that can go virtually anywhere (even if the topic of communism is generally frowned upon!!!) Some responses below. Tahir
Tahir Wood 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?
Tahir: No I really did mean 'of language'. Your interpretation would be very easy to dismiss. There have been very radical poets, like Shelley, and conservative novelists, like VS Naipaul, for example. Marx was perhaps one of the first literary critics to dispense entirely with the 'intentional fallacy'. He recognised the progressive import of Balzac's novels while being fully aware of his conservative leanings as a person. No, the Bakhtinian argument is much more subtle than you have realised, much more historical in fact. He is talking about the rise of the novelising ('dialogic') tendency in literary language. He points out that this can even be found to some extent in poetry, and its opposite can also be found in the novel, as I've pointed out. But there is nevertheless an inexorable movement from, say, Homer to Rabelais and beyond. And that is the movement towards dialogical language in literature ('heteroglossia'), which is part of a much broader process of social differentiation and differentiation within consciousness. It has relatively little to do with individuals and their intentions in writing.
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.
Tahir: On the contrary, that is the ultimate illustration of the historical movement that Bakhtin was pointing to, the 'novelising' of the literary genres. But why don't you supply your own explanation of why, as you say, 20th century poets gave up on poetic speech. I doubt whether, once you've thought it through, you'll come up with a very different explanation.
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.
Tahir: This is all consistent with what I've said. It is not a question of individual ideology. The novel as a historical emergence is significant (and progressive) in two very important ways: a) it shatters the notion of a one, true and beautiful language, as originally established by texts such as the bible or by national epics - Chinese civil servants up until the 19th century still trained for their jobs by memorising large amounts of classical poetry - and b) it begins to lift the lid on 'private life', the closed world of the patriarchal family, which it initially does by presenting the points of view of all sorts of spies, vagabonds and rogues. Of course, all of this does also mean that you eventually end up with Jerry Springer ... but that's another story! Here's an example that Bakhtin cites as an example of dialogism within authorial speech: It's from Dickens's Little Dorrit:
"Oh what a wonderful man this Merdle, what a great man, what a master man, how blessedly and enviably endowed - in one word what a rich man!"
BTW, your explication of Carrol's couplet from Cymbeline was dazzling!
Tahir: Thank you. I realised after sending that it contained one or two mistakes. One of those is interesting. I said that words such as 'will' and 'lift' contain the 'schwa' or mid-central vowel. In fact this is only true of my own South African accent. In most lects of English that vowel is in fact raised and articulated further forward. Ha! Compared to how people pounced on my other 'errors', this one shows how this list obviously has a paucity of linguists compared to literati types.
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