EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
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User ID: 78
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
10mo ago
So, what are you reading?
Still on This Star of England.
Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread starts off as a surprisingly typical communist screed, but it starts distinguishing itself after it denies the labour theory of value, saying that new forms of production must yield new forms of consumption. An interesting discussion of liberty soon follows. He has a keen eye to underappreciated people, which ameliorates his otherwise combative style.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
10mo ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m still on This Star of England, and picking up Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
10mo ago
So, what are you reading?
Still on The Mysterious William Shakespeare and This Star of England. I wonder if the distinction between orthodox and unorthodox is really between “objective” and “subjective” theories of art.
The orthodox (some of them?) tell us that Shakespeare was apparently an objective artist whose works stand on their own. He was a workaday man who wrote plays for profit and there is no hidden significance to be interpreted. The unorthodox would have us believe that the author’s life and the people he knew strongly influenced the works, to the point where the works themselves can help fill in a missing biography. He was a man who didn’t care about money and whose sensitive nature is visible in the works.
I find the orthodox position (if this is an accurate representation of it- it may be dated) baffling. I cannot believe that Hamlet is devoid of subjective intent. In fairness to the orthodox, the attempt to reduce Shakespeare to a force of nature seems in part a backlash to their own excesses in the past, where scholars painted fanciful biographies for the man from Strafrord. I’ll have to delve into some of their works soon.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
10mo ago
So, what are you reading?
Still on This Star of England and The Mysterious William Shakespeare. My appreciation of Shakespeare is certainly increasing as a side effect.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
10mo ago
This Star of England is a biography Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, in light of the theory that he wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare.
Some of its scholarship seems, for lack of a better word, incestuous, as Ward's biography (he was an Oxfordian) is cited often, and Looney’s (also an Oxfordian) attributions of certain poems to Edward de Vere are also taken as a given.
The narrative itself is much more engaging than I expected. Still the truth is that the Lord Oxford does not always come off as being the sensitive, honest and forthright man who they attempt to portray him as. He seems an awful lot like a man who avoided his wife despite her faithfulness and then accused her of infidelity because he had a personality disorder. But then again the record is not complete, so much is, as the authors say, optional to assume.
Yet I’m enjoying myself immensely; the book reads like a mythology which is pregnant with potential meaning, and such books I deem essential to a complete picture of wisdom. These are the kinds of things which make me upset with our society’s tendency to hide certain books from view: one doesn’t even know where to begin to find a canon of such books. One must rediscover in agonizingly slow steps, in utter confusion, and at his own peril. Ogburn Jr.’s preface (pdf) is well worth reading, if nothing else.
So, what are you reading?
I’m going through This Star of England by the Ogburns, an Oxfordian biography of the man presumed to be the real Shakespeare by the authors. Thoughts below.
Still going through Abundance, Generosity and the State and The Mysterious William Shakespeare.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
11mo ago
I never got around to actually reading Lacan, but the IEP's entry on him was stellar reading.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
11mo ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m still on Hülsmann’s Abundance, Generosity and the State. Also going through Ogburn Jr.’s The Mysterious William Shakespeare, an Oxfordian tract. So far it has been a lot of interesting information well-presented, though occasionally I find his logic odd.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
11mo ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m on Hülsmann’s Abundance, Generosity and the State, an attempt to understand gifts in the framework of Austrian economics. It was apparently inspired by Benedict XVI’s Caritas in veritate.
Wadsworth's The Poacher from Stratford, a book on the Shakespeare authorship question, has an unfortunate aspect of subtle but pervasive mockery under a veneer of objectivity, perhaps somewhat deserved, but still frustrating. Very rarely Wadsworth deigns to break the illusion and offer the most inane forms of contempt (“J. Thomas Looney, not to be confused with the Baconian, George M. Battey”). The information itself is appreciated, though by now at least some of it is known to be inaccurate.
For those anti-Stratfordians who seem more likely to have mental issues, there is often an element of a “hidden place” or something similar, some one thing which establishes complete proof of the proposition but is not really intended to be checked. Delia Bacon claimed that she had a historical study which proved her case that Francis Bacon was Shakespeare, one which she never published, and also that manuscripts would be found in Shakespeare’s grave, but (if what I’ve read is true) she lost the courage to unearth it. Similar things are noted in some of the other anti-Stratfordians, and not only Baconians. I wonder if something like this is necessary to underpin the general faith for certain kinds of minds. They may even believe it. Perhaps Delia never did write that historical study, but had a false memory that she did. In her telling, “It seemed better to save to the world the power and beauty of this demonstration, its intellectual stimulus, its demand on the judgement.” I do still wonder about the accuracy of reports of her insanity, given that this was the 19th century.
The book, in my opinion, gets less interesting after the Baconians are dealt with, no doubt because the Oxfordians were recent history at the time this book was written. Greenwood and Looney are given short thrift, and the familiar ciphers and buried documents take center stage again. I’m not finished yet, so there is still space to impress me.
Overall, it was worth reading, with some caveats. There are hints of familiar tropes, such as Shakespeare’s “genius” and allegations of snobbery, but these are surprisingly subdued. Most of it delves into details about the works and methods of anti-Stratfordians, with some terms like “literary sincerity” (the idea that an author’s life necessarily exerts a direct influence on his art) perhaps deserving a second look. The evident sneering (at least, that’s what I saw, it isn't always open) thoroughly undermines any claims to fair play, and it leaves an unpleasant image of a face behind the mask which outwardly says “Our role should be not to suppress debate but to instruct students how to consider the Oxfordians’ (and others’) arguments carefully and thoughtfully.” Nevertheless he did after all bother to write a book about the topic. A somewhat inauspicious but still valuable beginning to academic overviews of the topic.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
11mo ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m still on The Poacher from Stratford. Thoughts below.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
11mo ago
So, what are you reading?
I’m on Wadsworth’s The Poacher from Stratford, a now somewhat dated academic book on the Shakespeare authorship question which affirms the orthodox case and studies the skeptics.
So, what are you reading?
I'm still on This Star of England and The Conquest of Bread.
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