XXV. The Secret of Love's Labour's Lost

PMLA ◽  
1924 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin K. Gray
Keyword(s):  
Literary Theory ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Working Hypothesis ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Love's Labour's Lost ◽  
Definite Statement ◽  
Made In

[In the following paper, for reasons of brevity, a working hypothesis has been presented in narrative form: wherever a definite statement of historical fact has been made in support of a literary theory, the authority has been given in the footnotes. The article aims at elucidating certain problems in Love's Labour's Lost by correlating them with certain matters of historical fact which took place in and about the year 1591. The following points constitute problems in Love's Labour's Lost: (a) date of composition and first performance; (b) The unexpected dénoûment in the postponed marriages; (c) The choice of names for the leading male characters, Navarre, Berowne, etc.; (d) The curious emphasis laid upon the killing of the deer by the Princess; (e) The similarity of the Pageant scene at the close of the play to the Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe in The Midsummer Night's Dream; (f) The satire on Euphuism and Sonnets and other courtly affectations; (g) The unique observance by Shakespeare of the unities of time and place. The ensuing narrative has been evolved by applying to these problems the following matters of historical fact: (a) Burleigh's attempts, 1589–94, to force Southampton into marriage with his grand-daughter, Elizabeth de Vere, and Southampton's successful evasion of his betrothal; (b) Southampton's flight to France, 1591, to take part in the war in Normandy; (c) The Royal Progress, 1591, to Portsmouth and certain incidents in the entertainment of the Queen at Cowdray House.]

scholarly journals From Novels to Video Games: Romantic Love and Narrative Form in Japanese Visual Novels and Romance Adventure Games

Arts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Kumiko Saito
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Romantic Love ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
Adventure Games ◽  
Narrative Forms ◽  
Female Audience ◽  
Modern Identity

Video games are powerful narrative media that continue to evolve. Romance games in Japan, which began as text-based adventure games and are today known as bishōjo games and otome games, form a powerful textual corpus for literary and media studies. They adopt conventional literary narrative strategies and explore new narrative forms formulated by an interface with computer-generated texts and audiovisual fetishism, thereby challenging the assumptions about the modern textual values of storytelling. The article first examines differences between visual novels that feature female characters for a male audience and romance adventure games that feature male characters for a female audience. Through the comparison, the article investigates how notions of romantic love and relationship have transformed from the modern identity politics based on freedom and the autonomous self to the decentered model of mediation and interaction in the contemporary era.

May Games and Metamorphoses on a Midsummer Night

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. L. Barber
Keyword(s):  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Love's Labour's Lost

This chapter examines Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It argues that the whole night's action is presented as a release of shaping fantasy which brings clarification about the tricks of strong imagination. We watch a dream; but we are awake, thanks to pervasive humor about the tendency to take fantasy literally, whether in love, in superstition, or in Bottom's mechanical dramatics. As in Love's Labour's Lost, the folly of wit becomes the generalized comic subject in the course of an astonishing release of witty invention, so here in the course of a more inclusive release of imagination, the folly of fantasy becomes the general subject, echoed back and forth between the strains of the play's imitative counterpoint.

Conclusion

Unsaying God ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 293-300
Author(s):  
Aydogan Kars
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Negative Theology ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Single Question ◽  
Made In

This chapter highlights the broader theoretical points that can be made on the basis of the analysis made in the previous chapters. It engages with contemporary philosophical and theological discussions beyond Islamic studies, criticizing the reduction of negative theology to paradoxicality, and the modern association of apophaticism with mysticism, critical thinking, and morality. It further argues that “negative theology” does not address a sui generis category or an enduring, well-defined group of intellectuals; it is rather a conceptual construct with debated meanings in changing historical settings. The chapter reminds that there were numerous negative theological positions regarding but a single question in a rich field of intellectual activity. These positions could and did transcend disciplinary boundaries as they were adopted by scholars with diverse orientations and backgrounds. Thus, construction of singular and distinct Christian, Jewish, or Muslim “negative theological traditions” not only overlooks the diversity, and sometimes conflicts, among various theological positions within religious traditions, but it also misses the historical fact that the negative theological positions among intellectuals from different religious backgrounds had strong overlaps. The rich theological networks highlighted the intellectual porosities between not only disciplines but also religious traditions.

scholarly journals IX. Experiments on Phyllotaxis. II. — The effect of displacing a primordium

1932 ◽  
Vol 222 (483-493) ◽  
pp. 353-400 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Minimum Distance ◽  
Leaf Primordium ◽  
Suitable Method ◽  
Normal Position ◽  
Minimum Width ◽  
Stem Apex ◽  
Working Hypothesis ◽  
Radial Plane ◽  
Made In

Part 1.— Introduction. (1) Nature and Purpose of the operations, and Methods. Experiments on Lupinusalhus were reported previously in which the arrangement of the subsequent leaves was changed as a result of the isolation from the stem apex of the region from which the next leaf or the next but one was due to arise (Snow and Sn o w , 1931). The results led to the conclusion that each new leaf-primordium arises in the first space that attains both a certain minimum width and a certain minimum distance below the apex (p. 36), a conclusion which strongly supports v a n It e r so n ’s theory of phyllotaxis (1907). The purpose of the present experiments was to test this conclusion further by means of a different operation performed on the same plant. The conclusion of the previous paper will therefore be taken again as a working hypothesis, and an attempt will be made to explain the present results on the basis of it. In the present experiments a slight vertical cut was made in a radial plane through the area from which the next primordium was due to arise, or in other words through the presumptive area of Ix (for terminology see section 4). The cut sometimes extended downwards a little way below this presumptive area, but probably never reached more than a very little above it. This operation was considered to be a suitable method for testing the conclusions reached previously for the following reasons. Firstly, if the centres of primordia arise only in positions that allow room for their stipules, as the previous results indicated (p. 23), any primordia arising in contact with the sides of the wound should arise with their centres at some distance from it, and consequently at some distance from the normal position of the centre of Ix. Secondly, as a result of these displacements, the positions of the subsequent primordia should also be changed, if they arise in accordance with the working hypothesis

Orestes and the Argive Alliance

1964 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. Quincey
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Systematic Theory ◽  
Wide Acceptance ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
Made In

Tragic allusions to contemporary events are not, as a rule, taken on trust, but the Eumenides of Aeschylus provides three notable exceptions. The view that the Athenian-Argive alliance of 462 B.C. (Thuc. 1. 102. 4, Paus. 4. 24. 6–7) is reflected in Eum. 287–91, 667–73, anc^ 762–74 has won wide acceptance, although no systematic theory of the relation between the drama and the historical context has yet been advanced. If demonstration in detail has been wanting, the view seems to be supported by three general considerations. In the first place, the emphasis put on the dramatic declaration of friendship exceeds the requirements of the plot: the acquittal of Orestes rather than his gesture of gratitude to Athens is the natural climax of this part of the drama, 1–777, and yet the gesture has been considered important enough to be heralded twice before it is actually made in 762–74. Secondly, Orestes' declaration is not limited in duration but binding on his successors in perpetuity; it seems, therefore, to have been deliberately formulated in order to react upon historical fact. Thirdly, in instituting the Council of the Areopagus and dwelling upon the importance of its constitutional function (see especially 681–710), Aeschylus seems to have gone out of his way to pass judgement of some sort on the recent reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles; the theory that he has also appreciated their foreign policy on the tragic stage is thus relieved of some of the obvious practical objections and made inherently more plausible.

The Alliance of Seriousness and Levity in As You Like It

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. L. Barber
Keyword(s):  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
As You Like It ◽  
Prose Romance ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Love's Labour's Lost ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines Shakespeare's As You Like It. The play is very similar in the way it moves to A Midsummer Night's Dream and Love's Labour's Lost, despite the fact that its plot is taken over almost entirely from Lodge's Rosalynde. It argues that the reality we feel about the experience of love in the play, reality which is not in the pleasant little prose romance, comes from presenting what was sentimental extremity as impulsive extravagance and so leaving judgment free to mock what the heart embraces. The Forest of Arden, like the Wood outside Athens, is a region defined by an attitude of liberty from ordinary limitations, a festive place where the folly of romance can have its day.

The Folly of Wit and Masquerade in Love’s Labour’s Lost

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. L. Barber
Keyword(s):  
Fresh Start ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Love's Labour's Lost ◽  
Exciting Action

This chapter examines Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. It argues that the most striking thing about the play is how little Shakespeare used exciting action, story, or conflict; how far he went in the direction of making the piece a set exhibition of pastimes and games. The play is a strikingly fresh start, a more complete break with what he had been doing earlier in his career. The change goes with the fact that there are no theatrical or literary sources, so far as anyone has been able to discover, for what story there is in the play—Shakespeare, here and in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and nowhere else, makes up everything himself, because he is making up action on the model of games and pastimes.

A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Hands of Garrick and Colman

PMLA ◽  
1939 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 467-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geo. Winchester Stone
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
New Criticism ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Classical Mythology ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Plot Structure ◽  
Made In

By 1755 English dramatic audiences as well as English dramatic critics were less concerned with faults in the construction of Shakespeare's plays then they had been twenty years earlier. Largely because of Garrick's excellent acting, the focal point of Shakespearian criticism was shifting from consideration of plot structure to consideration of character delineation. But even though advance was being made in the new criticism as well as in the growth of Shakespeare idolatry, such a varied mixture of realistic material, classical mythology, and fairy lore as Shakespeare used in A Midsummer Night's Dream was bound to fail in presentation. Pepys, nearly one hundred years earlier (September 29, 1662), had seen the play and had remarked that it was the most insipid and ridiculous one he had ever witnessed in his life. In 1716 Richard Leveridge presented his Comick Masque of Pyramus and Thisbe at Lincoln's Inn Fields, where it had nine performances (from April 11 of that year until September 9, 1723). As the title suggests, it was a brief handling of Bottom's playing artisans—a mere fragment of Shakespeare's play. On January 21, 1745 an anonymous Mock Opera, Pyramus and Thisbe, appeared at Covent Garden and enjoyed some twenty-two performances until April 13, 1748. The music was composed by John Frederick Lampe, and the play was slightly longer than Leveridge's. No other performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream in any of its parts is recorded until 1755 when Garrick made his first attempt to give his audiences some more of the material of the play. He was wise, as subsequent events proved, not to try to present it at that time in its entirety. Yet he was vitally interested in the whole of the play and joined eight years later with his friend George Colman in an attempt to produce it in its Shakespearian form.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document