I must have extraordinary insight into the works of Shakespeare and any number of other writers. A's straight through in anything resembling English lit in high school, uni and a couple of stray courses later.
Well, either insight or the instructors loved my arguments - including the ones pointing out their own deficiencies, delicately worded of course.
LOL!
Well, we were treated harshly and had to have damned good arguments to get an A
o.k. - i'll admit it - there weren't that many A's being handed out around me. I don't enjoy literary criticism, but perhaps I wasn't bad at it.
So - who else has read King Lear, and would like to say something about it?
I still don't get, for the life of me, how people can assert psycological insight about a fictional character as fact.
That is not even possible with real characters to work with. Psychology is not an exact science and to hold assertions about the interpretation of fictional characters to be true is absurd.
The realm of possibility in a fictional world is such that any assertion that is not directly contradicted by the fictional work is untouchable.
If one wants to make this a more precise study then they should stick to studying the authors. And in that case it's usually still projecting. This time about dead people.
Thing is, phycology is so flawed as a science that with access to the individual the conclusions are still often wrong. How ironclad conclusions are made about fictional or deseased characters defies reason.
This psych grad applauds you, cdeK!
Just a qualifier:
I LOVE psycology, It's still about as exact a science as phrenology. Ok, I jest. But to qualifty that phrenology is fun as well.
I enjoyed my studies - mostly for all the statistics courses I took. Those courses taught me as much about the weaknesses as the strengths of psychology as a science.
Hmmm - I was about to write the following: "I am not sure that anyone asserts psychological insight about a literary character as "fact" " - but I recalled that people DO do this - or DID - (I do not read enough lit crit to know if it still happens) - much as people assert psychological insights about real people as fact - neither is really supportable - but I agree that the fictional assertions are farther into the realm of prophecy and tealeaf reading.
To say that psychology is not an exact science is, of course, a truism - although I am aware that some people who work with its insights seem to lose sight of this obvious fact.
Nonetheless, it is a tool for gaining knowledge of the world - however slowly and inexactly - and it can certainly be fun and interesting to apply it to literary characters - odd as that may seem - we do it all the time when we read - if we enter the world of a piece of fiction - and it seems as worthwhile to me to discuss this aspect of our reading experience as any other.
Your comment, Craven, about "The realm of possibility in a fictional world is such that any assertion that is not directly contradicted by the fictional work is untouchable" is also a truism, but, I would argue, just as it is a truism that we cannot know that anything (apart from our knowing consciousness - if that) exists, but we sensibly behave AS IF it does - so we can, in discussing literary worlds, interpret in ways that make more and less sense - and are more or less interesting and fruitful.
I never said anything against behaving with assumptions that are not certainties but I do think behaving as if those assumptions preclude the possibility of differing assumptions having validity when one has to acknowledge that they are not even talking about reality to be a tad daft.
Sure, some assumptions make more sense than others. But lots of reality makes little sense.
Making sense is not always the best criteria. Especially in fiction.
Heehee - the irony of critiquing psychological insights in the language of such - (projecting) - has not escaped me!
Sorry, Craven - was anyone precluding the validity of differing assumptions?
I thought Lola was at one stage - but she clarified, and said she was not.
It's not ironic at all to me. Unless you think criticising a war should avoid the use of the words bomb, death, military....
Dlowan,
just as you say you did not say that other interpretations were not valid I think it equally important to note that I did not say you (or anyone else here) were.
That war turned out to be a total bomb.
Oh yeah. I can think of more than a few people who would not 'get' it.
cdeK - can you get that avatar to the orthodontist - before I get out the pliers.
LOL. I see irony in the use of a posited psychological defence mechanism to support an argument criticising the validity of psychology!
I think we would both agree that bombs and such are in a higher order of likely reality than psychological defence mechanisms.
CDK said (albeit toothily): "just as you say you did not say that other interpretations were not valid I think it equally important to note that I did not say you (or anyone else here) were."
Ok - I think - if I understood it...
BTW, projecting is not always a defense mechanism.
ehBeth
Freudian theory a total botch, you figure? Or just not capable of actually pointing in any valuable direction as regards literature?
Here's a notion from Northrop Frye (Fools of Time, p 45) "The killing of the order-figure relates itself to the theme of the primal father. Therefore the tragedy of the destruction of vitality in a sick society may easily become the tragedy of youth, where the order-figure is an evil father-figure and the victim is typically a son or daughter in revolt against him."
Lear is such a wonderful piece of art, and this discussion could be really fun and interesting if it were to be declawed. (correction on an earlier date of mine...play was again performed as originally written in 1838).
AC Bradley..."King Lear seems to me Shakespeare's greatest achievement, but it seems to me not his best play....the fullest revelation of Shakespeare's power...the appeal is made not so much to dramatic perception as to a rarer and more strictly poetic kind of imagination. For this reason too, even the best attempts at exposition of King Lear are disappointing; they remind us of attempts to reduce to prose the impalpable spirit of the Tempest." This makes good sense to me, and goes some way to explaining why the theatre (or film) experience of the play can seem so stolid while the reading of it is really not unlike reading the sort of poetry that sets interior continents in motion.
Frye..."In the tragic vision death is, not an incident in life, not even the inevitable end of life, but the essential event that gives shape and form to life....The mood of tragedy preserves our ambiguous and paradoxical feling about death; it is inevitable and always happens, and yet, when it does happen, it carries with it some sense of the unnatural and premature...Tragedy is also existential in a broader, and perhaps contradictory sense, in that the experience of the tragic cannot be moralized or contained within any conceptual world-view...And while a religious or philosophical system that answers all questions and solves all problems may find a place for tragedy, and so make it a part of a larger and less tragic whole, it can never absorb the kind of experience that tragedy represents."
For me, the final scene of the play - the unbearableness of Lear's internal condition (like the unbearableness of one's own eternal annihilation) - is an existentialist portrait.
Can anyone make a case for redemption in this ending?
I do agree with everyone, if I'm reading you all correctly, that no one can say anything about anyone or anything for certain. Certainty is dogma and dogma is stagnation. It leaves room only for putridity.
I do believe we've had a few misunderstandings of a type lately. And it's a shame because this thread has the potential for being fun. I did respond from my personal and private presumptions about other's intentions the other night, specifically I didn't stop to recognize my own assumptions about what Deb was saying before I jumped all over her about it, and for this I apologize. Sometimes, I can be obnoxious. I notice that it happens to the best of us. So, oh well. Take my apology as I offer it, if you will.
Deb has asked of Craven, and by way of asking, I think is making a statement of sorts (just trying to be clear about those ideas of mine that are less discernable from the text and those that might be more so) that she has some doubts about whether any of us were precluding the validity of differing assumptions. She points out that she thought I was at one point, but I clarified that I was not. I made the same mistake with her and she clarified as well. I've been surprised to find that what I wrote was perceived in this way. I certainly didn't intend it to be so, however, I can see I might have been more careful with the way in which I wrote my comments.
I'm trying to share my thoughts about the play. And my thoughts about it will be from the psychoanalytic perspective. That's what I know about and I know a lot about it. It's my profession and I take it seriously. But no psychoanalyst I know (or none worth her salt) believes the psychoanalytic point of view is all there is.
I will try to explain this much and then go back to my work...........it's become a way of life for me, to consider all aspects of life from many perspectives, including and perhaps especially from the point of view of personal dynamics. A dream, a fantasy, an unwanted character trait (or a wanted one for that matter) a play, all have the potential for me to be studied in this way. Those of you who don't agree with the theory from which I work, don't have to agree. And if caution is practiced by all of us to examine our assumptions and clarify them (by asking questions) when we're not sure, then disagreement is welcome. For me debate, practiced in this way, is helpful and I learn from it and enjoy it. And maybe it would be helpful to distinguish what I mean by "debate" from debate that is practiced as a tournament, purposefully set up as a competition. But even there, I think it's a good idea to clarify, because building an argument based on a false assumption is a losing proposition. And personal attacks do not constitute sound reasoning. It surely isn't going to help this process to get caught up in personal attacks. And I hope we can get back on track from here.
Now to Blatham's question, my answer is this: No, I can't but am open to ideas others have on the subject. I believe there is nothing redemptive about suffering. No place for martyrdom except in extreme situations of unavoidable war (if there is such a thing) or sudden danger. I personally would rather Jesus had simply taken care of his own mistakes and allowed me to take care of mine. My own mistakes are much easier to manage than the guilt imposed by his dying, as he supposedly did, for my sins. There's nothing wrong with feeling the pain of others, but I can't see how it helps to suffer and die for it. For me suffering is only a reality that must be accepted and managed. It does seem to me, however that without the reality of death, our lives would be meaningless, or I haven't thought of a meaning, unless it might be the simple and endless pursuit of pleasurable bodily sensations...............which, now that I think of it (and you know I will think of it sooner rather than later) that's not a bad possibility.
