Shakespeare's Feminist Critics

Campus Report ^ | February 6, 2009 | Bethany Stotts

[bs9021]

Shakespeare’s Feminist Critics

Bethany Stotts, February 06, 2009

The tragedy of too many college courses on William Shakespeare these days is that students may be learning more about literary criticism than the Bard himself. “The fact is, even if you sign up for a course with ‘Shakespeare’ or ‘Faulkner’ in the title, there’s absolutely no guarantee that you’re going to be taught English or American literature,” argued Dr. Elizabeth Kantor in her 2006 Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature.

“On the contrary, the professor is all too likely to make use of the literature to indoctrinate you in some ideology that’s worse than irrelevant—that’s positively hostile—to the literature you’re ostensibly studying...The professor’s own politics...will be the real content of the course.”

Thus, the irony did not escape this correspondent when a sick female professor requested that her male colleague read her essay on Shakespeare’s misogyny in her stead at the most recent Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention.

“I’m too old to be a boy actor, but you’ll have to imagine this as a kind of transvestite performance,” joked Professor Gary Taylor, standing in for his colleague, Professor Celia Daileader. Both teach in the English Department at Florida State University (FSU). Professor Taylor continued...(snip)

“In this paper I [Daileader] hope to shed new light on the debate about Shakespeare’s gendered politics by contrasting his work with that of his sometimes collaborators John Fletcher and Thomas Middleton. I will proceed by way of something we might call a ‘feminist boxing match,’ a sort of million-dollar-baby meets Shakespeare in love. Or, if you prefer a less pugnacious metaphor, we may call it a feminist face test in which we will be tempted away from bardolatry and treated all in the way to some very lyrical praise of women.” ...

[Poison Pill]

we may call it a feminist face test in which we will be tempted away from bardolatry and treated all in the way to some very lyrical praise of women.” ...

Let me guess; single, 45, homely, drives a Prius, lots of cats.

[1rudeboy]

“The fact is, even if you sign up for a course with ‘Shakespeare’ or ‘Faulkner’ in the title, there’s absolutely no guarantee that you’re going to be taught English or American literature . . . .”

To: Joseph Blotner
Professor Emeritus, The University of Michigan

I miss you and your stories about hanging out with "Bill" Faulkner, and the gentleman's C you gave me after I wrote that term paper about Light in August.

He began the first day of class by saying, "if I say 'he' or 'his' during a discussion of any character, I mean 'he and she,' or 'his and her.' So don't interrupt me."

[Dean Wormer]

and it probably entails more than that

[jeffc]

Let me guess; single, 45, homely, drives a Prius, lots of cats.

You know, Top Gear road-tested a Prius against a BMW M3; the Prius did 17.x MPG. The BMW did 19.x MPG . . . .

So much for the left's hyper-activity about saving the world!

[TheWriterTX]

Any creature who claims to have studied Shakespeare, and then further claims that Shakespeare was a misogynist, is lying.

Exhibit 1, this testament to Shakespeare's love, found in Sonnet #29.

Exhibit 2, Romeo's love and devotion to Juliette was so intense, that he took his life rather than live without her.

Exhibit 3, his description of the beauty of a pregnant woman in Midsummer Night's Dream.

Uhmmmm...shall I go on, or have I sufficiently proved my point?

FemiNazis look for signs of hatred towards women because they are convinced that men are incapable of real love; all is just a pretense, an illusion, for their prime motivation - intercourse.

FemiNazis are the true haters, they are just too stupid to realize it. They hate themselves, they hate men. They are irritating to the extreme.

Please note, feminists and FemiNazis are very different. There are conservative, pro-life feminists out there; I'm one of them.

[wildbill]

When taking my MA in Lit. after a hiatus from school of about 30 years, I was excited about finally studying the Bard at a graduate level.

Unfortunately, the course was taught by a rabid feminist and all the books in the syllabus were about Shakespeare from the feminist point of view.

It didn[t take long to see that any discussion in class or papers that questioned that point of view would lead to a terrible grade.

Reluctantly I decided to drop the class rather than play ball with that lady.