Posted on 01/09/2008 10:56:17 AM PST by bs9021
Shakesqueer
by: Bethany Stotts, January 09, 2008
Chicago, Ill.—The recent Shakespeare panel at the 2007 Modern Language Association (MLA) convention, ironically titled “Shakesqueer,” featured four queer theorists presenting articles soon to be published by the notoriously liberal Duke University press. The panelists described the collection as the first reputable, scholarly collection of Shakespeare queer theory criticism, and it will join other illustrious Duke Press lesbian bisexual gay transsexual (LGBT) titles such as “Barbie’s Queer Accessories,” “Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies,” “Female Masculinity,” and “In the Name of National Security: Hitchcock, Homophobia, and the Political Construction of Gender in Postwar America.”
They presented a quick peek inside their theses:
Hamlet.....
Asserting that Hamlet’s faults derive not from his hostile intentions, but from his overwhelming desire to reestablish the reproductive norm, Nonokawa implied that Hamlet is a “monster” because he uses ruthless methods to enforce monogamous, opposite-sex marriages. According to Nonokawa Hamlet is “stricken by his excess of filial passion for the reassertion of norm. Hamlet is truly too much in the son, too much, that is, his father’s son.” This turns him into a “monster of normativity incapable of ... seeing how much he gets off on the luxury of his antiluxurious discourse.”
Romeo and Juliet...
“Changing the gender of objects of desire can easily leave intact the grand mystified romance of star-crossed lovers struggling—and failing— to surmount insuperable cultural impediments to their love... Romeo and Juliet can remain in tragically romantic dire straights, even when it’s a girl-on-girl song,” she said.
...
Cleopatra and Antony....
Love’s Labors Lost.....
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreportonline.net ...
“Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ‘Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.”
`Skin-flute’?
What are we going to do with these over-educated ninnies when the sh!t hits the fan?
Just because a poem is dedicated to someone (man or woman) has nothing to do with anything. You see that all the time. Someone will write a book, and the dedication will be ‘For Katie’ or “For Dad’ or whoever. It’s just someone to dedicate your book to. The sex of that person (the dedicatee) has nothing to do with anything. Sheesh!
There’s some good evidence that he was a recusant, or at least sympathetic
How did I know Duke was involved?
So says deconstructionist and queer theory. Simply a case of reading into things what they want to. There is no objective evidence to the theory, and plenty of objective evidence that Shakespeare was a randy hetero horndog.
......"I began to deconstruct everything I could get my hands on," says Grok. "The Old Testament, Shakespeare, Dick and Jane, a 1967 J.C. Whitney catalog, the Boston phone book, you name it.........
ROTFLMAO!!!
That's basically true, but if the poem itself is discussing the beauty of a man, that is significant for the question at hand.
These people spend waaaaay too much time thinking about their naughty bits.
I didn't have to assume anything.
Who knows your wild assumptions could be but the mere ravings of a pillow-biter.
FYI I have never been a "pillow-biter" or inclined in that direction, and I'm too old to start now.
one can easily fall into the trap of projecting modern sensibilities back onto historical times,
Actually people were noticing these things about Shakespeare's writing long before "deconstructionist" or "queer theory" came along. I first heard about this question from a book published in the 1920's. The author was defending Shakespeare from the accusation of being gay, but it is clear that the question had come up before this.
There is no objective evidence to the theory,
How about you read the first 126 sonnets and get back to me.
Or four hundred years after Shakespeare’s time. Did anyone write this in 1620?
Or four hundred years after Shakespeare’s time.
Only three hundred.
Did anyone write this in 1620?
Is 1640 close enough?
"Despite these alternative interpretations, numerous readers throughout the past four centuries have been disturbed by the poems' apparent homoeroticism. In 1640, John Benson published a second edition of the Sonnets in which he changed most of the pronouns from masculine to feminine so that readers would believe nearly all of the sonnets were addressed to the Dark Lady. Benson’s modified version soon became the best-known text, and it was not until 1780 that Edmund Malone re-published the sonnets in their original forms. [13]
The question of the sexual orientation of the Sonnets was first openly articulated in 1780, when George Steevens, upon reading Shakespeare's description of a young man as his "master-mistress" remarked, "it is impossible to read this fulsome panegyrick, addressed to a male object, without an equal mixture of disgust and indignation". [14] Other English scholars, dismayed at the possibility that their national hero might have been a "sodomite", concurred with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's comment, around 1800, that Shakespeare’s love was "pure" and in his sonnets there is "not even an allusion to that very worst of all possible vices." [15] Robert Browning, writing of Wordsworth's assertion that "with this key [the Sonnets] Shakespeare unlocked his heart," famously replied, "If so, the less Shakespeare he!"
Critics in Continental Europe were also surprised. In 1834, a French reviewer asked, "He instead of she?… Can I be mistaken? Can these sonnets be addressed to a man? Shakespeare! Great Shakespeare? Did you feel yourself authorized by Virgil’s example?" alluding to the Roman poet known for his pederastic verse."
True. My math sucks. But then again, 1640 is not the first year the theory was floated, as your link shows.
See #54.
NOw that wasn’t nice. I am a Shakespear fan. My point is it has no affect on what effect the literature brings to individuals. At least it should not.
I have read them.
Is it possible that the sonnets weren’t even written by Shakespeare? The authorship of his plays has been the subject of much debate; perhaps his sonnets should be, also. The implied homoeroticism of the sonnets doesn’t follow in the same footsteps as his non-homoerotic plays. Wouldn’t we have heard of a scandal if these sonnets came out at the same time as his plays?
"My a$$, poor Yorik. I knew him Fellatio"?
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