I do not want to go to Shakespeare class
*whimpers* My professor paraphrases and paraphrases and never stops talking and he says the same thing over and over and over again and then he asks us questions and after I answer he asks me more questions, but they're never about anything interesting and half the time I don't know what he's actually asking me, and the rest of the time it's a question that's been answered already and I have nothing new to say, argh, and we're still on sonnets.
Which are easy.
Also, he's one of those annoying people who assume an autobiographical basis for poetry. Despite telling us not to do it. Which just nags at me. AND he constructs theories that don't have much basis at all in the text, which is sometimes that autobiographical thing, and is sometimes just... not sticking particularly close to text.
I hate it when people do that. I really do.
The autobiographical thing bugs me more with someone like Shakespeare, I admit, where we know very little about his life. It's one thing to talk about probable sources and origin of imagery with someone like, say, Melville, where there's a large body of correspondence still remaining, and we have his library reading records and know where he headed and all of that. Even then, Melville's work is NOT his life, and it drove the man CRAZY that people thought it was.
Even in straight up autobiography, there is going to be a certain distance between experience and prose. There just is, this is the way it works, and the presentation of circumstances in a sonnet is probably not the literal truth of the situation, even presuming the situation existed in the first place.
The poet is not the speaker, because even when the poet intends the speaker to be understood as the poet's voice, the speaker is a few lines on the page and the poet is a living person (or was, and is now deceased), and therefore infinitely more complex.
…I’m probably not being totally coherent here. Just. Pet peeve. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.
Well, more than one pet peeve - if we’re not to assume that the poet and the speaker are one, stop doing it when you model for us, darn it.
ETA: I'm probably being a bit unfair.
Which are easy.
Also, he's one of those annoying people who assume an autobiographical basis for poetry. Despite telling us not to do it. Which just nags at me. AND he constructs theories that don't have much basis at all in the text, which is sometimes that autobiographical thing, and is sometimes just... not sticking particularly close to text.
I hate it when people do that. I really do.
The autobiographical thing bugs me more with someone like Shakespeare, I admit, where we know very little about his life. It's one thing to talk about probable sources and origin of imagery with someone like, say, Melville, where there's a large body of correspondence still remaining, and we have his library reading records and know where he headed and all of that. Even then, Melville's work is NOT his life, and it drove the man CRAZY that people thought it was.
Even in straight up autobiography, there is going to be a certain distance between experience and prose. There just is, this is the way it works, and the presentation of circumstances in a sonnet is probably not the literal truth of the situation, even presuming the situation existed in the first place.
The poet is not the speaker, because even when the poet intends the speaker to be understood as the poet's voice, the speaker is a few lines on the page and the poet is a living person (or was, and is now deceased), and therefore infinitely more complex.
…I’m probably not being totally coherent here. Just. Pet peeve. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.
Well, more than one pet peeve - if we’re not to assume that the poet and the speaker are one, stop doing it when you model for us, darn it.
ETA: I'm probably being a bit unfair.