The Vale of Soul Making in Keats and Shakespeare

I have been throwing around a lot of ideas for my term paper which is of course involves John Keats. Because Shakespeare is about showing and not telling as we have discussed much in class, I thought that Keats would be a great tie in. Much of my focus though will be on remembrance and negative capability. Remembrance is greatly driven by images in Shakespeare, for example through stars and flowers (especially the cowslip). Tracing back through the real (the social world) into the mythological (where we have ecstasy, insight...rhapsodic). I am considering looking at negative capability mostly in response to Shakespeare's sonnets and letters, in which words are used to thread the soul together. This circles back around to remembrance as well, of course! I have a lot more to say about Keats and Shakespeare but at least wanted to post my "small" ideas thus far! I am excited to once again focus on Keats' amazingly intricate ideas and tie them into Shakespeare. Two men with amazing talent and a way with words like none other, with this I begin (or am i ending?)

Sonnet

I decided that my spring cleaning must also consist of "cleaning" my to do list....a long, long list of assignments. Blogging- I need to get going...so here is my sonnet that should have been written long ago. My creative writing class inspired me. I know the rhyme scheme is correct in regards to a traditional sonnet, it's almost an ode to a traditional sonnet, But the rhythm is a bit off. It was easier for me to write a sonnet than i thought, it really takes a different sort of focus to write a sonnet- it's amazing! I was skeptical when Dr. Sexton said writing sonnets when you can't sleep is soothing, but its true, it helps for the time being, it inspires. For me an ode to the past. I am inspired not only by Shakespeare and his sonnets, but by T.S. Eliot (of course) and the four quartets. This is obvious though, i didn't even need to mention it,


Tear drops fall like rain
Letting go, I take a deep breath
This is the paper where words reflect pain
No longer "us", memories treated like death
Do I cry and run or dance and sing?
No- I'll turn and sigh a breath of relief
Like a bird in the sky, my freedom rings
What we had was love though it was but brief
I could feel it burning like a fire
Your love, my wings. I could fly.
Singing loudly, our love ringing out, it was it's own choir
Why then? Why now? All it comes to is goodbye.
You were the fire. I was the rose.
Or so I guess, that's how the story goes.

It's all out of love...

Growing up with an older brother and 4 older sisters there was a lot of flyting going on in the household. Survival of the fittest. I had to laugh when Dr. Sexson asked who the favorite in the family was...I don't think my parents had a favorite, honestly we all drove them nuts! I have to give my sister brianna (the middle child) the most credit for her witty flyting. I think she gets worse as she gets older. When i was little though, if my sisters were teasing me I would respond with a question, "are you deaf or dumb?" they were usually so dumbfounded that they left me alone, Brianna would try to ponder the question seriously....that's how I came to the conclusion she was simply dumb. She can come up with some very creative insults...colorful to say the least though extraordinarily vulgar and inappropriate.



Sadly, my four year old nephew also is into flyting now. Poor addy, his sister, just 4 months old and he will insult her constantly telling her:
"no one wants to talk to you stupid baby" and "addy, keep your noises to your own self"...she never responds obviously but he sure is pro at flyting even with me!

I hate to say that as we grow older, the flyting only gets more cruel, but absolutely humorous. We get "catty" and we get even, but we also get over it. It's all out of love.

What do any of us really need?

When Dr. Sexson asked us to answer the question, "What do you really need?" I immediately whispered "nothing" to myself. But now that I sit here with my coffee (which I am delighted to say the barista has named "alice in wonderland" for me) I wonder..What do I need FOR WHAT? To live? to die? To breathe? to be delighted? Well....that one's answered, a special mocha with a fabulous name!

But really, this question could not have come at a better time for me. I journal every day, multiple times a day, convey thoughts and emotion through letters, create pieces of art every week expressing something. I think I "need" all of these things to stay whole, "get it out" and live more fully. But do I? Do I need counseling at $45 a session?! Goodness, I am rethinking everything here and I want to scream in answering this question. This is normally something I would reflect on in my personal blog but I suppose I will make an attempt to answer or explain and connect it to Shakespeare...?

I would usually come up with some artificial answer that satisfies my lifestyle. But right now I am going to go for the raw answer that no one wants to face. Call me a cynic if you will but here it is:

Do we need Love? No.
Friends? No.
Family? The die off.
Fun? Optional.


What do I need? Really need?
A little water, maybe some food every now and again. That's what I would need to just stay alive.

I am getting more frustrated by the minute thinking about this question. I can't really explain why but all I have to say is- I don't need anything. Nothing. No one.

Maybe I will carry on as I ponder this but really...

By having nothing I have everything right?

Frye-myth of deliverance

A brief overview of northrop Frye's myth of deliverance

I made it through a majority of Frye's myth of deliverance before i decided that it would probably take me another month to honestly sit down and focus on it (just being realistic). Northrop frye begins with the assumption of meaning and helps us to realize what the play really means, defining different types of comedies, etc. frye gives fairly general descriptions first of "problem plays" (realistic plays more concerned with serious social problems). These plays also illustrate the myth of deliverance that "it's all going to be ok, after all" as do typical comedies in which energies are released by forgiveness and reconciliation.

He also seems enthused with shakespeare's magical device, the bed trick (confusion of lovers in the dark...discussed a lot in class). Many pf Shakespeare's plays are retellings of folk tales, frye notes, taking on complex plots such as aristotles poetics, and the reversal and recognition (peripeteia and anagnorisis/discovery).

I took a lot of notes when reading this, but not having the boo in front of me (since i had to return it) makes it difficult for me to remember why i noted certain things. I am at a loss for words in a way, as i always am with frye, but will do my best to relay the rest.

Frye talks about the two poles of the arts and sciences: the social pole of origin and the opposite pole. Within the social pole the artist does things because society thinks it is important for them to do it. Tis reminds me of Shakespeare's problem plays because we are dealing with real life situations that are either mythologized or exaggerated to add to the comedy. For example, AMSND the lovers are loving and leaving. Granted the play becomes a fairy world and comedic, but yes, this does happen in real life. You love, you leave, and somehow everything connects. Th opposite pole was more difficult for me to come up with an example for, or honestly to understand. It desks with the inner laws of structure and making technical discoveries within it. I will have to look into this more.

Comedy has structure and like literature is a reflection or a mirror of social and historical concerns from which they arise. It does not necessarily reflect time, but the event or idea itself. With the mirror image comes illusions (Henry iv) in which only a "slice of real" is shown through illusions "inspired by fortune and victory".

I was disappointed that the idea of "the green world" was not explained further in this piece. There was a separation of the objective world and the subjective though. Ordinary experience and what we think is "the real" is associated with the objective, whereas illusion, love, hatred, emotions and dream correspond with the subjective. These two are connected through our "distortion" through emotion in which our perspective of "the real" changes. In Shakespeare, the real world contains the conventional ideas of reality, courts, order and justice while his fairytale world reflects magic, enchantment, unreasonable law and comic resolution.

Lastly, i loved that frye chose cressida's words to reflect the Way problem comedies work, it shows how human beings get into a mess requiring green world to intervene in order for resolution to be possible. Troillus and Cressida is also about the wooing of women largely apparent...

Cressida says-
"men concentrate on women only as long as they are out of reach; once the women are possessed, the men revert to their former interests." and it is a viscous cycle, i believe. Bitterness, hatred, love, the cyclical nature of relationships. It's all right their and it doesn't really take much to see it.

Rejection. Tragedy. The dream.

I was reading some blogs this morning and a few made me think about simple, every day life things. First, Anne takes a very interesting view on Venus and Adonis and she was so bothered by this play. I loved the play so to listen to her reasonings why was interesting and kind of fun to look at from her point of view. She talks about the denial of love in her blog and then centers her sonnet around this idea. But Anne, I question why you use the word denial when it actually seems more of a rejection of love in Venus and Adonis. Similar, yes...but denial is just the act of not admitting love whereas rejection is literally throwing that love away (a total slap in the face). Do you get what I am saying? I am not saying that denial was not present perhaps I just looked at it differently but just something to think about.

Lisette talks about her hatred for the ending as "it was all a dream". I agree, this can be extraordinarily frustrating but i think so often i have a hard time deciphering my own dream and reality that I have simply come to "not care" if i can say that. It makes me think that so much of our lives is dreamlike and the dream is so much more like reality than we realize. Whether dreaming or not, we constantly are left wanting more, wanting answers, or simply wanting an END, even in real life situations.

Like the dream, the play within the play can become so frustrating. As I was getting ready this morning, I was thinking about this concept some more. In my presentation i briefly touched on how the comedy of the play within the play overtakes the tragedy in the play, making it comedic. I find myself doing this a lot. In my own little life I so often attempt to make comedy of the tragedy, cover it with something to make it hurt a little less. It is so much easier to say "dance" than to accept and acknowledge that rejection and tragedy. I am not saying that Shakespeare writes this way to get us to think about things like this (it just happens) because we all know he wrote to entertain. That is what i am loving about this class. We get the entertainment but minds can also take these play, poems, and sonnets somewhere else completely.

Remembrance...

Misunderstandings

The group presentations went rather well i thought considering that none of us really knew where to start with that question, or so it seemed. I presented on a few ideas revolving around dream/illusion and why i thought act 5 truly expressed the comedic aspects of the play, reflecting that while there was tragedy, it was after all a comedy for entertainment.

One thing i can't stop saying to myself but did not even bother mentioning in my presentation was the play within the play....to me it represents the play (as a dream) within a play (as the reality). Even explaining this idea to my group they looked at me a bit quizzically because i can't seem to explain this the way i want, even now. Our whole life is a play within a play- going back to the concept if all the world's a stage.

For me act 5 reflected the comedy through this idea, but it also opened way to even more confusion creating a more "dreamlike" state for audience or reader. As if we are thinking as we so often do upon waking, "did this really happen?"

i have also been reading Frye's "Myth of Deliverance" which i am so selfishly keeping for quite awhile from the library! Frye says that comedy is a mix of festive and ironic. That is exactly what we have in act5. It is accurately shown in the last part of the play within the play through the desire for dance rather than epilogue. Since i am not horribly deep into this book yet because of my own distractions, the last thing i will mention is the dream vs. Reality. It is really about the dream and the illusion, the imagination that comes with both rather than the reality. I then ask myself why focus on the dream though? Which one is more important? What really happened or what could have or what we think/ want to happen? The latter. Both can be harsh to face so why not add some myth and illusion to our thoughts.