I'm really interested in Shakespeare's writing, so Professor Harold Bloom's highly controversial theory appeals to me, but is his claim valid?: did the introspection of Shakespeare's characters (like Hamlet) lead to a new dawn in human consciousness? Did these inward-looking characters encourage people to reflect deeply on their lives, for the first time in our mutual history? Obviously, we're not lacking in pre-modern literary expressions of deep thought but these are too often founded on religious meditation or, basically, non-personal philosophies. Anyway, here's an introduction to Bloom's book Shakespeare: the Invention of the Human ~
Books Did Shakespeare 'invent what it is to be human'? Apparently not...
- Thread starter SteveJ
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Maybe in the UK.
I thought it was The Killers with Are we Human or are we Dancers
Thank you for your intriguing contribution, Professor Elvis.In all seriousness it does seem interesting but I absolutely hated reading Shakespeare in school and I've never revisited it. Perhaps I can revisit it over summer.
Bloom said:
Yeah, the olde worlde language is off-putting. Plus the mere length, and long-windedness, of the texts. I only grew to appreciate WS by reading critics' opinions rather than reading the plays themselves.
Not sure about that , he had a lot of precursors in Sophocles, Euripides, Marlowe etc. who were are all very insightful about what it means to be human.
His private life, if you read into the theories about the sonnets, is pretty explosive. I'm surprised no one has made a film about it, especially in this day and age.
His private life, if you read into the theories about the sonnets, is pretty explosive. I'm surprised no one has made a film about it, especially in this day and age.
Oh, absolutely. I'm biased about Bloom's theory but that, perhaps, is telling: it's said that many WS admirers (and not merely the famous ones) see themselves in Shakespeare and his major characters; as preposterous as that seems, I think it might be true for 'somebodies' like Bloom but also for nobodies like me: we like to think that we're 'deep'.
He definitely invented 'what it is to be bored' for millions of schoolchildren.
I dunno stuff going back to Gilgamesh and Sinuhe, just for starts, gets pretty down and dirty in the human mire.
Shakespeare as a collection of works is pretty incomparable though in its all encompassing examination of the human condition. Or at least that's what I figure from the modest chunk I've read.
Shakespeare as a collection of works is pretty incomparable though in its all encompassing examination of the human condition. Or at least that's what I figure from the modest chunk I've read.
Yes, it's surely a dubious theory, to be completely honest.dumbo said:
It's mentioned by quite a few critics that Bloom, despite his incredible passion for Shakespeare's work, is the worst-possible choice to present a theory like this (such is his bias). Ironically - considering Bloom's notion that WS's characters often fail to fully articulate their angst with their speech - Bloom himself cannot truly express why those characters are 'brilliant' except to state that they're self-evidently...brilliant.
I might be misunderstanding, but without there being a rich inner life to begin with, how on earth would Shakespeare be describing it?
Giving him credit for that in literature is one thing, but to me it seems obvious that he wouldn't have invented human reflection and inner life as we know it.
Giving him credit for that in literature is one thing, but to me it seems obvious that he wouldn't have invented human reflection and inner life as we know it.
He didn't even invent all his own books did he?
Maybe Bloom meant that Shakespeare's writing encouraged the mass of people to truly think about their lives for, perhaps, the first time? I hope that's the case...for Bloom's sake.
He certainly reshaped longstanding characters who were (mostly) written about by previous authors. However, if I understand your point correctly, he took plots and stories from elsewhere, rather than actually creating them.
I think there have been some very valid responses in this thread already that suggest that the answer to this question is, no.
And there are so many ways and approaches from which this answer is no just within literary and cultural studies, that it does seem to totter.
For example, if Shakespeare invented what it is to be human and uniquely opened up these modes of being which reshaped the human mind, then the human mind is by definition accessible - or at least only fully enlarged - within the scope of Shakespeare's cultural influence, propagated solely by Western colonialism and subsequent cultural hegemony. You can take this further and since, from the perspective of modern linguistics, a word in translation can never be the exact same concept in mind, we can say that only those who can fully appreciate Shakespeare in the original can claim fully realised humanity. Pretty great to be a Shakespeare-mad, canon-inventing, English-speaking literary critic ensconced all your life in an institution at the leading edge of Western intellectual hegemony. Can't get more human than that.
For another, the vast majority of cultural critics, drawing on Foucault and those who've followed him, argue very convincingly that the role of any individual in the formation of knowledge is far more passive than the universalist, romantic tradition on which Bloom props his cult-of-the-author based theory of the Western Canon. No writer, who in order for his works to be intelligibly communicable, works outside the network of discourses at his/her disposal; the new is made possible by the structural rules preceding it diachronically and the web of possible discursive relations surrounding it synchronically. It's not new; just newly articulated within the extant range of representative possibilities.
I love Shakespeare; he's great and as I've grown older I have come to see him as more distinct from the other Elizabethan playwrights than I did when I first studied them all. But not so distinct. His characters are more complex, sure. But not so much more complex (apart from his women; Shakespeare's women are so far superior to the female creations of his contemporaries, which he deserves immense credit for). And it's well worth remembering that Shakespeare - and all his contemporaries - had no such romanticised ideal of the writer as artist that Bloom draws upon. The history of this cult of the author has been well traced and it started long after Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare wrote for money; he wrote on commission; and once he became a stakeholder in the theatre, he made money by getting bums on seats. There was almost no critical acclaim to be had for plays because plays weren't much esteemed, and the concept of the critic had barely been invented. So, yes, Shakespeare played around with some of the generic conventions of his form. But not too much. As has pretty much always been the case (some notable exceptions, like the publication of Tristram Shandy, do exist), extreme, cutting edge novelty rarely makes huge, immediate money in the arts. So it's far more plausible that Shakespeare just happened to be doing what everyone else was doing, but - to modern tastes formed in part by the influence of the literary establishment that Bloom embodies - better. Not a God; but probably a genius in our terms.
Writers and their creations are really useful for tracing the evolution of modernity as we know it. Less because they make it, than because an artist is always a kind of representative of the culturally-constitutive concepts of his/her time. And in terms of interiority and the modern individual, I'd consider Bunyan's self-portrait in Grace Abounding or Defoe's Robinson Crusoe just as plausible and significant markers in understanding ourselves now as Hamlet or Ophelia.
I hope that's the longest post I ever make on Redcafe. It's almost certainly longer than anyone could want, so apologies.
And there are so many ways and approaches from which this answer is no just within literary and cultural studies, that it does seem to totter.
For example, if Shakespeare invented what it is to be human and uniquely opened up these modes of being which reshaped the human mind, then the human mind is by definition accessible - or at least only fully enlarged - within the scope of Shakespeare's cultural influence, propagated solely by Western colonialism and subsequent cultural hegemony. You can take this further and since, from the perspective of modern linguistics, a word in translation can never be the exact same concept in mind, we can say that only those who can fully appreciate Shakespeare in the original can claim fully realised humanity. Pretty great to be a Shakespeare-mad, canon-inventing, English-speaking literary critic ensconced all your life in an institution at the leading edge of Western intellectual hegemony. Can't get more human than that.
For another, the vast majority of cultural critics, drawing on Foucault and those who've followed him, argue very convincingly that the role of any individual in the formation of knowledge is far more passive than the universalist, romantic tradition on which Bloom props his cult-of-the-author based theory of the Western Canon. No writer, who in order for his works to be intelligibly communicable, works outside the network of discourses at his/her disposal; the new is made possible by the structural rules preceding it diachronically and the web of possible discursive relations surrounding it synchronically. It's not new; just newly articulated within the extant range of representative possibilities.
I love Shakespeare; he's great and as I've grown older I have come to see him as more distinct from the other Elizabethan playwrights than I did when I first studied them all. But not so distinct. His characters are more complex, sure. But not so much more complex (apart from his women; Shakespeare's women are so far superior to the female creations of his contemporaries, which he deserves immense credit for). And it's well worth remembering that Shakespeare - and all his contemporaries - had no such romanticised ideal of the writer as artist that Bloom draws upon. The history of this cult of the author has been well traced and it started long after Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare wrote for money; he wrote on commission; and once he became a stakeholder in the theatre, he made money by getting bums on seats. There was almost no critical acclaim to be had for plays because plays weren't much esteemed, and the concept of the critic had barely been invented. So, yes, Shakespeare played around with some of the generic conventions of his form. But not too much. As has pretty much always been the case (some notable exceptions, like the publication of Tristram Shandy, do exist), extreme, cutting edge novelty rarely makes huge, immediate money in the arts. So it's far more plausible that Shakespeare just happened to be doing what everyone else was doing, but - to modern tastes formed in part by the influence of the literary establishment that Bloom embodies - better. Not a God; but probably a genius in our terms.
Writers and their creations are really useful for tracing the evolution of modernity as we know it. Less because they make it, than because an artist is always a kind of representative of the culturally-constitutive concepts of his/her time. And in terms of interiority and the modern individual, I'd consider Bunyan's self-portrait in Grace Abounding or Defoe's Robinson Crusoe just as plausible and significant markers in understanding ourselves now as Hamlet or Ophelia.
I hope that's the longest post I ever make on Redcafe. It's almost certainly longer than anyone could want, so apologies.
That's a fantastic post, I think. And one which makes a tremendous, triumphant point.
It's still easier to read than that Willy Shake shit
Yeah, the bard's got nothin' on me.It's still easier to read than that Willy Shake shit
Thanks!
I wasn't a human before 1564. Story checks out.
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Did Shakespeare 'invent what it is to be human' or did Shakespeare 'invent what is not to be human', that is the question.
@Eriku and @Thaumaste (very interesting post) already said a lot of this, but I guess it's okay to say it in my own words:
The idea of an artist "inventing" any part of the human condition obviously makes no sense. It echoes the romantic idea of the otherworldly "genius", basically an ahistorical fetish of the individual.
As opposed to this, I think great artists have the talent to perceive something that's already there in the human world, even if only as a potential, and give it an expression, using and expanding the artistic means of their time.
So without knowing terribly much about Shakespeare, I'm sure his work - like all art - functioned more as an intricate portrait of the human condition* observable in his social surroundings, instead of inventing it out of nothing.
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* which I, as I already said elsewhere, see as a historically malleable thing. Both the product of, and in constant exchange with, the social environment people live in.
So there was obviously something in the water in terms of individuality on the brink of modernity, and some brilliant people in the right positions were able to anticipate and capture it. I'm sure many other examples can be found within the humanist tendencies of Renaissance culture (which is not to say that Shakespeare can't be an outstanding one).
Finally, as others have said, there is probably a long line of people in other times & cultures who gave a voice to individual sensibilities in some form or another.
The idea of an artist "inventing" any part of the human condition obviously makes no sense. It echoes the romantic idea of the otherworldly "genius", basically an ahistorical fetish of the individual.
As opposed to this, I think great artists have the talent to perceive something that's already there in the human world, even if only as a potential, and give it an expression, using and expanding the artistic means of their time.
So without knowing terribly much about Shakespeare, I'm sure his work - like all art - functioned more as an intricate portrait of the human condition* observable in his social surroundings, instead of inventing it out of nothing.
-----
* which I, as I already said elsewhere, see as a historically malleable thing. Both the product of, and in constant exchange with, the social environment people live in.
Going beyond literature, there are some contemporaries of Shakespeare with whom I get a similar impression of the individual really becoming a focal point of their art. Two I find very intriguing are Greek-Spanish painter El Greco and Monteverdi.
So there was obviously something in the water in terms of individuality on the brink of modernity, and some brilliant people in the right positions were able to anticipate and capture it. I'm sure many other examples can be found within the humanist tendencies of Renaissance culture (which is not to say that Shakespeare can't be an outstanding one).
Finally, as others have said, there is probably a long line of people in other times & cultures who gave a voice to individual sensibilities in some form or another.
Bloom said:
'For these are Shakespeare’s greatest inventions, and all of them take human nature to some of its limits, without violating these limits. Falstaff’s wit, Hamlet’s ambivalent yet charismatic intensity, Cleopatra’s mobility of spirit find their rivals in Macbeth’s proleptic imagination, Rosalind’s control of all perspectives, and Iago’s genius for improvisation…'
It's worth highlighting statements like this which really do often go totally unchallenged in literary discussions, largely because you get very influential establishment figures like Bloom pronouncing them with total certainty. These are all great characters in their way, but he just picks a largely decontextualised and undefined characteristic (I mean, what's 'mobility of spirit'? Changing your mind? Having mood-swings?), meaningless on its own outside the structural framework of the play in which it takes shape and finds significance, and claims for it a kind of crystallised psychological perfection.
Crazy when you think he's dealing with words meant to be uttered by actors and liable to all the typical excisions and modifications that such interpretations inevitably have. Indeed, these are just Bloom's, intransigent and unacknowledged, interpretations. Take wit, for example. Something that is by definition inherently nebulous and down to personal taste and interpretation. Now, I love Falstaff; I find him funny, certainly by Shakespeare's standards. But if you want really modern, probably closer to what would now be called post-modern, humour in the Elizabethan period, then your man isn't Shakespeare, it's Thomas Nashe. But when Bloom was constructing his version of the Western Canon, Nashe was hardly studied at all; it took till the 21st Century for a full-length critical monograph to be written on him.
Basically, definitive judgments on art that are not based on clearly defined structural criteria often seem to live or die based on the status of the person uttering them and the force with which they are uttered. Bloom scores highly on both these counts, which allows him to produce occasions of fairly shoddy scholarship. He's not a psychologist, for one thing, so how he feels qualified to comment on where the limits of human nature - which it seems he here takes to mean human psychology - are, I'm not totally sure. I guess, if you believe that knowing Shakespeare better than anyone else makes you better at being human, then writing his book solipsistically makes him ideally qualified to make judgments on all human things, including that most human of all things, the works of Shakespeare.
'For these are Shakespeare’s greatest inventions, and all of them take human nature to some of its limits, without violating these limits. Falstaff’s wit, Hamlet’s ambivalent yet charismatic intensity, Cleopatra’s mobility of spirit find their rivals in Macbeth’s proleptic imagination, Rosalind’s control of all perspectives, and Iago’s genius for improvisation…'
It's worth highlighting statements like this which really do often go totally unchallenged in literary discussions, largely because you get very influential establishment figures like Bloom pronouncing them with total certainty. These are all great characters in their way, but he just picks a largely decontextualised and undefined characteristic (I mean, what's 'mobility of spirit'? Changing your mind? Having mood-swings?), meaningless on its own outside the structural framework of the play in which it takes shape and finds significance, and claims for it a kind of crystallised psychological perfection.
Crazy when you think he's dealing with words meant to be uttered by actors and liable to all the typical excisions and modifications that such interpretations inevitably have. Indeed, these are just Bloom's, intransigent and unacknowledged, interpretations. Take wit, for example. Something that is by definition inherently nebulous and down to personal taste and interpretation. Now, I love Falstaff; I find him funny, certainly by Shakespeare's standards. But if you want really modern, probably closer to what would now be called post-modern, humour in the Elizabethan period, then your man isn't Shakespeare, it's Thomas Nashe. But when Bloom was constructing his version of the Western Canon, Nashe was hardly studied at all; it took till the 21st Century for a full-length critical monograph to be written on him.
Basically, definitive judgments on art that are not based on clearly defined structural criteria often seem to live or die based on the status of the person uttering them and the force with which they are uttered. Bloom scores highly on both these counts, which allows him to produce occasions of fairly shoddy scholarship. He's not a psychologist, for one thing, so how he feels qualified to comment on where the limits of human nature - which it seems he here takes to mean human psychology - are, I'm not totally sure. I guess, if you believe that knowing Shakespeare better than anyone else makes you better at being human, then writing his book solipsistically makes him ideally qualified to make judgments on all human things, including that most human of all things, the works of Shakespeare.
At least SteveJ's stupid question birthed some interesting replies!
jk, I love you Steve!
jk, I love you Steve!
Think I should stick to the 'Is this house haunted by Shakespeare?!?' posts...
Thanks for all your interesting posts though, folks. I've loved them.
Dante said:
Ivor Ballokov said:
Some great answers so I think it's time for my take on this.
No.
Damn.
Fresh from trashing a 5G mast, my only contribution here is that, as someone who's studied plenty of Shakespeare, I still find it hard to believe that one guy was responsible for all of that output. I mean, the sonnets alone are a major undertaking but to have churned out all those plays as well? Just seems wildly improbable!
I think that old-fashioned 'great man' theory, once beloved of historians, is still very seductive to many...despite overwhelming evidence of collaboration amongst Elizabethan dramatists.
I seem to be in the minority as I liked it .... we did Romeo and Juliet, Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Nights Dream. Years later I went to see R&J in Stratford, brilliant.
Maybe it helped with the choice of plays (bit of drama, bit of humour) and probably helped that I had a mad woman as an English teacher who took us outside and made us act stuff out.
In answer to ops question.... no idea. Hope that helps?
Nice.
What’s your favourite Shakespeare play?
I love Macbeth and Merchant. I doubt he invented what he means to be human, he did write absolute classic stories that focus on the human condition fantastically well.
I love Macbeth and Merchant. I doubt he invented what he means to be human, he did write absolute classic stories that focus on the human condition fantastically well.
Just shows the narrow viewpoint of the author.And if anyone has read shakespeare and came away with "Ah, this is what it means to be human", I'd like to sell them a straitjacket.
Othello is, in the words of Shakespeare's age, 'fecking good'. Iago is a great character.
Macbeth takes some beating, mind.
Also, wasn't Chaucer arguably as big an influence on the English language? Sure I remember reading that he had a major influence over Shakespeare - especially his poems. It's a long time since I read it though, so might just be making that up.