Authors with Illiterate Parents
Fryzer
"Poet. Her works remained unpublished in her lifetime. Born to poor
illiterate parents, Crawley became a scholar who was recognized for her
expertise in Greek and Latin. After studying midwifery, history,
theology, philosophy, and mathematics, she became the second wife of
George Grierson. "
(http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/gage/features/dict.html)
2. John Clare
"Born in 1793, the son of humble and almost illiterate parents, Clare
grew up in the Northamptonshire village of Helpston"
[At one time as famous as keats]
(http://oldpoetry.com/authors/John%20Clare)
3. Gerald Massey,
"a man of many talents, distinguished himself as a social reformer, a
poet and an Egyptologist... His humble birth at Gamble Wharf,
Hertfordshire, England in 1829 held scant promise for the future. His
parents were illiterate--his father was a poorly paid canal boatman. His
own early education was meager... "With brilliant scholarship and
insight he pierced Egypt's enigmatic scriptology, and documented the
provenance of both Old and New Testament literature from remote Egyptian
sources."
(http://www.africawithin.com/massey/gml1_foreword.htm)
4. Mario Puzo (Author: Godfather)
"Mario Puzo was born on October 15, 1920, in the part of New York City
known as "Hell's Kitchen," a neighborhood on Manhattan's West Side. He
is the son of Antonio and Maria, illiterate Italian immigrants. In 1946
he married Erika Lina Broske, who is now deceased. The couple had five
children: Anthony, Joey, Dorothy, Virginia, and Eugene."
(http://www3.isrl.uiuc.edu/~unsworth/courses/bestsellers/search.cgi?title=The+Godfather)
...just scratching the surface...
Tom Veal
the instances that I found, are special cases: The writers aren't good
enough, or they wrote in different genres from Shakespeare, or their
parents' illiteracy can't be demonstrated with absolute certainty
(whereas a weak inference is all that is needed to prove John and Mary
Shakespeare illiterate), or whatever. Then, when this subject arises
again in a year or two, he will declare that no Stratfordian has ever
been able to answer his challenge to produce even one example of an
author from an illiterate household.
Some phenomena are perfectly predictable.
Art Neuendorffer
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Tom Veal" <Tom...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Mr. Crowley will doubtless explain to us that all of these, as well as
> the instances that I found, are special cases: The writers aren't good
> enough, or they wrote in different genres from Shakespeare, or their
> parents' illiteracy can't be demonstrated with absolute certainty
> (whereas a weak inference is all that is needed to prove John and Mary
> Shakespeare illiterate), or whatever. Then, when this subject arises
> again in a year or two, he will declare that no Stratfordian has ever
> been able to answer his challenge to produce even one example
> of an author from an illiterate household.
Did any of the above examples live as an adult
as the head of an illiterate household????
Art Neuendorffer
Tom Veal
author could have so neglected his daughters as to fail to provide for
their education is entirely independent of the claim that no author
ever grew up in an illiterate household.
bernt_b...@hotmail.com
shoemaker. His mother was illiterate.
Ivar Lo-Johansson (1901-1990) was one of Sweden's foremost authors,
translated into 30 languages. His father was an illiterate worker.
Albert Camus' (1913-1916) father died when he was a year old. He as
brought up in poverty by his mother, who was not only illiterate but
hearing-impaired.
The Palestine Jabra Ibrahim Jabra (1920- ) is regarded as a re-newer of
Arab literature, not least through his translations of Beckett,
Faulkner and - Shakespeare's tragedies. His father was an
illiterate gardener.
The Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago (1922- ) is the son of
poor farmhands. His mother was an illiterate.
BLB
Art Neuendorffer
> Let's stick to one argument at a time. The contention that no great
> author could have so neglected his daughters as to fail to provide for
> their education is entirely independent of the claim that no author
> ever grew up in an illiterate household.
Crowley never said "GREW UP IN" an illiterate household.
The issue is could SHAKE-SPEARE have possible
been associated at all with an illiterate household.
(The answer is NO!)
Art Neuendorffer
lyra
a Scottish itinerant school teacher...
I'll try to find out if so.
(or grandson maybe?)
(quote)
http://www.englishonline.co.uk/freesite_tour/resource/literature/classic.html
John Clare (1793-1864)
John Clare was born in Helpstone, Northamptonshire, into a family of
poor agricultural labourers.
His parents were not well-educated themselves, but when he was five
they sent him to a dame school - a village school which gave a basic
primary education for infants - for two years, and then to another
school at Glinton church until he was about twelve.
Unusually for a time when education was not thought important for
working-class children, Clare became a keen reader early in life,
particularly of poems.
http://www.englishonline.co.uk/freesite_tour/resource/literature/classic.html
Also, note, that there is a titled family
of Clares, maybe there is a link.
lyra
Bate, on the other hand, rather than remarking on method or conviction,
merely noted the pleasure of a quintessentially Scottish prize being
given to an English biographer writing about an English poet who was
said to be England's own Robert Burns (and who was in fact a quarter
Scottish -- Clare's grandfather was from around Inverness, if memory
serves).
Insofar as England has always lagged behind Scotland in recognizing its
folk poetry and ballad traditions, Bate said, the ironic folds present
were altogether to his (and Clare's, he reckoned) satisfaction.
http://montycristo.typepad.com/the_count_of_monty_cristo/2005/04/justifying_exis.html
Fryzer
> "Tom Veal" <Tom...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Let's stick to one argument at a time. The contention that no great
>>author could have so neglected his daughters as to fail to provide for
>>their education is entirely independent of the claim that no author
>>ever grew up in an illiterate household.
>
>
> Crowley never said "GREW UP IN" an illiterate household.
Nonsense.
Crowley:
"Sure, but there are still billions of illiterates,
especially in under-developed countries.
There were billions of illiterates in the
19th century. How many 19th authors
were brought up by illiterate parents?"
...
"Question: How many were brought up by
illiterate parents?
Answer: NONE -- as far as we know.
If any were, the proportion must be
vanishingly small.
Conclusion: The likelihood that the Stratman
was the poet 'Shake-speare' is vanishingly
small. The odds against him (in this respect)
are of the order of 10,000 to one."
------------------
Of course we shouldn't expect the anti-strats to do anything but dodge
the issues once the fact show them wrong...
Fryzer
>>Mr. Crowley will doubtless explain to us that all of these, as well as
>>the instances that I found, are special cases: The writers aren't good
>>enough, or they wrote in different genres from Shakespeare, or their
>>parents' illiteracy can't be demonstrated with absolute certainty
>>(whereas a weak inference is all that is needed to prove John and Mary
>>Shakespeare illiterate), or whatever. Then, when this subject arises
>>again in a year or two, he will declare that no Stratfordian has ever
>>been able to answer his challenge to produce even one example
>>of an author from an illiterate household.
>
>
> Did any of the above examples live as an adult
> as the head of an illiterate household????
How many women attended oxford or cambridge in 1600-1700?
Paul Crowley
> ...just scratching the surface...
The question is NOT whether authors had
illiterate parents. It's whether or not they
were brought up in illiterate households.
Paul.
Fryzer
Crowley:
"Next to nothing is known of Caedmon.
When you have to go back to 680 a.d. -- and
the depths of the Dark Ages -- in an attempt
to find 'evidence' to support your argument,
then you've lost it. All we are looking for is
an author with illiterate parents. IF you had
had an argument, you'd be able to quote loads
of cases from the 17th, 18th or 19th centuries
-- or from other countries in the 20th century."
Let me put that in bold in case you missed it:
*All we are looking for is an author with illiterate parents.*
Fryzer
A few other observations.
Discounting the canon as evidence:
1. Quiney wrote a letter to shakespeare. Presumably this likely means
shakespeare could read. Else Quiney would not have bothered writing to him.
2. Shakespeare was an actor actors of some repute (our roscius). It
would be almost impossible (not to mention inefficient) to have actors
that could not read.
3. If shakespeare could read, somebody must have taught him to read.
4. If his parents were illiterate they could not have taught him.
5. He must then have either:
A. Taught himself to read
B. Have been Taught to read at a school.
6. Teaching oneself to read with few books and no instruction would be
almost impossible. Therefore 5B holds.
7. The only school in stratford was the stratford grammar school.
8. As shakespeare must have gone to shcool and there is no evidence of
his having left stratford in his youth to attend another school he must
have attended stratford grammar school.
QED.
Tom Veal
good evidence that he was brought up in an illiterate household? In
none of the cases cited so far is there reason to think that the
parents (generally impoverished) were surrounded by literate
house-sharers.
Art Neuendorffer
> > The question is NOT whether authors had
> > illiterate parents. It's whether or not they
> > were brought up in illiterate households.
> >
"Fryzer" <fry...@yahoo.com> wrote
> Crowley:
>
> "Next to nothing is known of Caedmon.
> When you have to go back to 680 a.d. -- and
> the depths of the Dark Ages -- in an attempt
> to find 'evidence' to support your argument,
> then you've lost it. All we are looking for is
> an author with illiterate parents. IF you had
> had an argument, you'd be able to quote loads
> of cases from the 17th, 18th or 19th centuries
> -- or from other countries in the 20th century."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"Cædmon remained illiterate but retained his ability to versify."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
<<The story of Caedmon, the illiterate cowherd who received the gift of
song from God, is told in Book Four, Chapter 25 of Bede's Ecclesiastical
History of the English People. It was translated into English, probably
during the reign of King Alfred the Great, by an anonymous Mercian
scholar.>> http://www.engl.virginia.edu/OE/OEA/caedmon.html
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saints/caedmon.html
<<St. Caedmon (d. c. 680) is the first known poet of the vernacular in
English. He is thought to have been a Celt, who was already old at the
time he came to Whitby to tend the animals. Too shy to join in the
communal singing after meals, he slipped out to work with the animals.
One night, according to Bede, Cædmon fell asleep and had a vision in
which he learned a hymn; when he awoke, he knew the song and could
recite it perfectly. After his performance, Hilda urged him to become a
monk. Cædmon remained illiterate but retained his ability to versify.>>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Paul Crowley
> Paul Crowley wrote:
> > The question is NOT whether authors had
> > illiterate parents. It's whether or not they
> > were brought up in illiterate households.
>
> Crowley:
>
> "Next to nothing is known of Caedmon.
> When you have to go back to 680 a.d. -- and
> the depths of the Dark Ages -- in an attempt
> to find 'evidence' to support your argument,
> then you've lost it. All we are looking for is
> an author with illiterate parents. IF you had
> had an argument, you'd be able to quote loads
> of cases from the 17th, 18th or 19th centuries
> -- or from other countries in the 20th century."
>
> Let me put that in bold in case you missed it:
>
> *All we are looking for is an author with illiterate parents.*
You idiot. If you take a look at the thread
from which you have taken this quote, you
will see that I realised that I had made a
TYPO, and soon after posting it, I posted
a correction.
Paul.
Tom Veal
by_ illiterate parents -- where the supposed author spent the greater
part of his childhood with them." So far as I can see, all of the
instances cited by Fryzer, BLB and me satisfy that criterion. Certainly
they meet that implied by another Crowleyan effusion in the same
thread:
"Schools are fine for producing the first generation of literates --
one that will be barely literate. Without being brought up by fully
literate people -- and without being surrounded by fully literate
relations, friends, siblings, etc., the child is unlikely to develop
any interest in the subjects which will encourage him to further study;
nor will he be able to acquire any fluency in their discussion."
Richard Kennedy
matter, for their son was not responsible for that. He was, however,
responsible for the education of his daughters, and they could neither
read nor write a line, and that's the decision of all Shakespearean
scholars of past days, and of today.
Paul Crowley
news:1115135371.1...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> Mr. Crowley will doubtless explain to us that all of these, as well as
> the instances that I found, are special cases:
The real evidence we need is NOT that
the parents were illiterate (for which, in
any case, the evidence is usually weak or
dubious) but that the author concerned
was BROUGHT UP by them in an illiterate
household.
The one case I would accept is:
> > 4. Mario Puzo (Author: Godfather)
> >
> > "Mario Puzo was born on October 15, 1920, in the part of
> > New York City known as "Hell's Kitchen," a neighborhood
> > on Manhattan's West Side. He is the son of Antonio and
> > Maria, illiterate Italian immigrants.
There must have been many (probably
millions) of illiterate immigrants into the
USA. Their children, born in the country,
(or sometimes brought in quite young),
would in nearly all cases have learned
to read and write.
But the differences here from the Stratman
could hardly be greater. The immigrant
parents would often have had a poor
command of English, and seen themselves
as Italian (or whatever). Whereas their
children would have seen themselves
as American, and would rarely have been
fluent in the language of their parents'
mother country. The immigrant father
would never have said (as regards
education and much else): 'What was
good enough for me and my father will be
good enough for my sons". The immigrant
parents would have realised the absolute
necessity of their children having as
good an education as they can get.
The attitudes of a English peasant or
yeoman family, whose forebears had
lead the same kind of life for countless
generations, would have been totally
different. They would have seen little
value in education -- and strongly
perceived its costs, dangers and
disadvantages.
I'd bet that most of the historical increase
in literacy has, in fact, come about from
such changes in family circumstances,
where illiterate rural people have moved
into cities for employment -- usually when
young and single. They then married and
had children, and (like the immigrants into
the USA) saw the importance for their
children of an education which they
themselves never had.
Those firmly established in the rural
environment, had no need to change --
and they rarely did.
But how many Maria Puzo's are there?
There must have been millions who
acquired basic literacy in his fashion --
with the encouragement of (but with
no real assistance from) his illiterate
parents. How many have actually
written their autobiographies?
I suggest that it is quite obvious that it
takes generations for LITERARY ability
to appear. We see this all around us, and
many of us can relate our own personal
experience in our own families to this
pattern. To take a fictional, but not
unrealistic example, Tony Soprano would
not have thought of writing poetry. His
parents were probably literate, but his
grandparents (born in Italy) probably not.
His children will probably go to college
and it is only in that generation that we
are LIKELY to find authors.
That is the real world. Strats require us
to believe in one where (a) it is Tony
Soprano's father who started writing
sonnets and became the literary genius
. . . AND . . .
(b) the entire Soprano family never left
Sicily, but stayed there maintaining its
age-old customs and habits, including
one of near-total illiteracy.
> The writers aren't good
> enough, or they wrote in different genres from Shakespeare, or their
> parents' illiteracy can't be demonstrated with absolute certainty
> (whereas a weak inference is all that is needed to prove John and Mary
> Shakespeare illiterate), or whatever. Then, when this subject arises
> again in a year or two, he will declare that no Stratfordian has ever
> been able to answer his challenge to produce even one example of an
> author from an illiterate household.
As I constantly have to remind Strats
around here, we are talking about
PROBABILITES. How likely is it that
the son of an illiterate yeoman in a
small rural town would have developed
literary ability?
Strats love to believe in miracles -- in
fact, they are required to believe in
miracles. But, in the real world, such
things are not likely.
Paul.
Paul Crowley
> > The question is NOT whether authors had
> > illiterate parents. It's whether or not they
> > were brought up in illiterate households.
>
> A few other observations.
>
> Discounting the canon as evidence:
>
> 1. Quiney wrote a letter to shakespeare. Presumably this likely means
> shakespeare could read. Else Quiney would not have bothered writing to him.
Illiterate people _with_money_ often received
letters (such as begging letters). They paid a
literate person to read them, and help them in
any correspondence.
> 2. Shakespeare was an actor actors of some repute (our roscius). It
> would be almost impossible (not to mention inefficient) to have actors
> that could not read.
He was not an actor. The evidence for
that proposition is minimal, internally
inconsistent, and clearly contrived.
> 3. If shakespeare could read, somebody must have taught him to read.
>
> 4. If his parents were illiterate they could not have taught him.
>
> 5. He must then have either:
> A. Taught himself to read
> B. Have been Taught to read at a school.
>
> 6. Teaching oneself to read with few books and no instruction would be
> almost impossible. Therefore 5B holds.
>
> 7. The only school in stratford was the stratford grammar school.
There were probably at various times,
various forms of 'petty-school' as well.
Females in the town seem to have been
literate, such as Quiney's sister (who
signed a document on which Judith, the
Stratman's daughter, made her mark in
place of a signature) -- but she may have
been taught by her parents.
(Of course, the ability to sign is not
necessarily good evidence of literacy,
but it is a minimal requirement.)
Paul.
Tom Veal
"Schools are fine for producing the first generation of literates --
one that will be barely literate. Without being brought up by fully
literate people -- and without being surrounded by fully literate
relations, friends, siblings, etc., the child is unlikely to develop
any interest in the subjects which will encourage him to further study;
nor will he be able to acquire any fluency in their discussion."
Now he is confident that all of the writers cited by Fryzer, BLB and me
(except for the special case of Mario Puzo) were "brought up by fully
literate people" and "surrounded by fully literate relations, friends,
siblings, etc." So far as I can see, he believes that purely on the
strength of his a priori principle, not because he has ever
investigated the factual relationship between literate upbringing and
later literary accomplishments. When one has Irish intuition, what's
the use of facts? They just get in the way.
tom....@gmail.com
Tom Veal wrote:
> The corrected statement was, "We are looking for an author
_brought_up_
> by_ illiterate parents -- where the supposed author spent the greater
> part of his childhood with them." So far as I can see, all of the
> instances cited by Fryzer, BLB and me satisfy that criterion.
Certainly
> they meet that implied by another Crowleyan effusion in the same
> thread:
>
> "Schools are fine for producing the first generation of literates --
> one that will be barely literate. Without being brought up by fully
> literate people -- and without being surrounded by fully literate
> relations, friends, siblings, etc., the child is unlikely to develop
> any interest in the subjects which will encourage him to further
study;
> nor will he be able to acquire any fluency in their discussion."
Crowley does this regularly. Once he made the statement (based entirely
upon his rectal research) that "the vast preponderance of writers who
made any kind of reputation in England between 1550 and 1950 went to
the main public (i.e. private) schools and/or one of the major
universities (mostly Oxbridge)."
When I produced a list that contradicted his idiotic statement, he
tried to move the goalposts several times before abandoning the thread
and his argument.
TR
lyra
Again, it is unclear whether Clare knew these were parodies or
sincerely believed he was Lord Byron. "I'm John Clare now," the poet
assured a newspaper editor. "I was Byron and Shakespeare formerly."
To say that writing drove Clare crazy is to oversimplify. But Clare's
mental health is difficult to judge in isolation from his poetry.
Central to both is a blurring of the line between him and the world.
The more he disappeared into-and confused himself with-the people
and scenes around him, the more loudly he proclaimed, "I Am." It was,
as Bate says, "at once a losing and a finding of his true self."
Losing track of where one's self lets off and nature or literature
picks up, as Clare does in "A Vision
</id/2089950/sidebar/2089957/>"-this comes close to the definition of
insanity for a mid-19th-century Englishman. For us it is a given,
merely one of the paradoxes of existence, if not always the most
comfortable one.
Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at the Weekly Standard.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2089950/#ContinueArticle
......................................................................................................................................
(quote)
John Clare
John Clare (1793 to 1864) was an English poet from rural
Northamptonshire, and is now regarded as the most important English
poet of the natural world. He also wrote many essays and letters.
Even in his madness, his talents were not diminished. Ronald Blythe,
President of the Clare Society sees Clare as "... England's most
articulate village voice".
lyra
John Clare
1793-1864
'A Poet Is Born Not Made'
John Clare is buried in St. Botolph's churchyard, Helpston,
Cambridgeshire. (See map...ref no. 23)
For the last 27 years of his life Clare was treated as a lunatic and
resided at the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum. However, he
continued to write poetry until the end of his life. It was during this
time that he wrote the desolate affirmation I Am.
He died on 20th May 1864 in the asylum but in accordance with his
wishes he was buried at the churchyard in Helpston in the village where
he was born.
Clare requested an unpretentious gravestone, believing that if his work
lived on, an imposing stone would be unnecessary.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below, above, the vaulted sky.
>From *I am*
http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/clare.htm
......
...............................................................................................................................................................................
(quote, excerpts)
JOHN CLARE 1793-1864
Every so often I visit the grave of Northamptonshire poet John
Clare, who resides in the village of Helpston, not far from where I
live.
The first time I saw his grave and read the inscription - A POET IS
BORN NOT MAD - I thought it rather quaint seeing as JC spent much of
his life in an asylum (though I'm sure he was no further from his
rocker than most of us today).
It wasn't until my second visit, when I found that the crusty old stone
had been cleaned up a bit, that I was able to pick out the letter 'E'
at the end of the inscription, which put a rather different spin on
things. Whether or not there's anything in the sentiment, it's not a
bad epitaph.
After photographing JC's grave I went for the first time to the
cottage he and his family lived in (actually it was three or four small
cottages under one roof at that time). Humble peasant cottages once,
now a single 'desirable thatched residence' with a For Sale sign
attached. Fate, I thought. I could live in John Clare's cottage. Just
one small snag: I was three noughts short of the asking price of
£475,000. Next time maybe.
Fryzer
The fair assessment is that we don't have enough evidence to judge the
matter properly. Susanna certainly shows signs of being educated:
1. She could sign her name.
2. She was said to be 'witty above her sex'.
Paul Crowley
news:1115236933.3...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> Crowley does this regularly. Once he made the statement (based entirely
> upon his rectal research) that "the vast preponderance of writers who
> made any kind of reputation in England between 1550 and 1950 went to
> the main public (i.e. private) schools and/or one of the major
> universities (mostly Oxbridge)."
>
> When I produced a list that contradicted his idiotic statement, he
> tried to move the goalposts several times before abandoning the thread
> and his argument.
Reedy produced a list what he thought
were 'important writers' who had not been
to English public schools nor Oxbridge.
Unsurprisingly (given the size of Reedy's
brain) many were American. For some
reason he seemed to think that his list
constituted an argument.
I stand by my assertion above. It could
readily be tested in many ways, perhaps
by going through a standard directory,
such as the DNB, (perhaps just taking,
say, only the 'A's) and counting up the
major works listed under each entry for
authors, and working out who had been
to public school and/or Oxbridge.
Maybe I'll get access to the new DNB on
disk, and do a count sometime.
Paul.
Tom Reedy
news:IHcee.52680$Z14....@news.indigo.ie...
> <tom....@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1115236933.3...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Crowley does this regularly. Once he made the statement (based entirely
> > upon his rectal research) that "the vast preponderance of writers who
> > made any kind of reputation in England between 1550 and 1950 went to
> > the main public (i.e. private) schools and/or one of the major
> > universities (mostly Oxbridge)."
> >
> > When I produced a list that contradicted his idiotic statement, he
> > tried to move the goalposts several times before abandoning the thread
> > and his argument.
>
> Reedy produced a list what he thought
> were 'important writers' who had not been
> to English public schools nor Oxbridge.
> Unsurprisingly (given the size of Reedy's
> brain) many were American. For some
> reason he seemed to think that his list
> constituted an argument.
I encourage anybody who is curious about the truth of Crowley's assertions
to do a Google group search using the above quoted phrase. The results will
surprise no one who is familiar with Crowley's brand of idiocy.
>
> I stand by my assertion above. It could
> readily be tested in many ways, perhaps
> by going through a standard directory,
> such as the DNB, (perhaps just taking,
> say, only the 'A's) and counting up the
> major works listed under each entry for
> authors, and working out who had been
> to public school and/or Oxbridge.
>
> Maybe I'll get access to the new DNB on
> disk, and do a count sometime.
Maybe you will, but it's extremely doubtful.
TR
>
>
> Paul.
>
>
>
>
Chess One
"Art Neuendorffer" <aneuendor...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:5sydnYoOB6n...@comcast.com...
> <<St. Caedmon (d. c. 680) is the first known poet of the vernacular in
> English. He is thought to have been a Celt, who was already old at the
> time he came to Whitby to tend the animals. Too shy to join in the
> communal singing after meals, he slipped out to work with the animals.
> One night, according to Bede, Cædmon fell asleep and had a vision in
> which he learned a hymn; when he awoke, he knew the song and could
> recite it perfectly. After his performance, Hilda urged him to become a
> monk. Cædmon remained illiterate but retained his ability to versify.>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's most of it Art. But he was an ecstatic [Shak.] who composed in Anglo
Saxon, which was too rauncy and animist for Bede, though Bede was a noted
attavist, but who rerendered it into a more anodyne latin for public
consumption. Phil Innes
> Art Neuendorffer
>
>
Tom Veal
declaration, demand that others disprove it and take their failure to
do so to the crackpot's satisfaction as proof that it is correct.
Tom Veal
against his own interest: Oxenford was no more an Oxbridge student than
Shakespeare of Stratford, unless one counts the few months that he
spent as a Cambridge boarder at age eight, a period that he appears to
have spent breaking windows (not that I criticize him for that).
Robert Stonehouse
<slkwuoiut...@slkjlskjoioue.com> wrote:
>"Tom Veal" <Tom...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
>news:1115135371.1...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>
>> Mr. Crowley will doubtless explain to us that all of these, as well as
>> the instances that I found, are special cases:
>The attitudes of a English peasant or
>yeoman family, whose forebears had
>lead the same kind of life for countless
>generations, would have been totally
>different. They would have seen little
>value in education -- and strongly
>perceived its costs, dangers and
>disadvantages.
>As I constantly have to remind Strats
>around here, we are talking about
>PROBABILITES. How likely is it that
>the son of an illiterate yeoman in a
>small rural town would have developed
>literary ability?
A few words from William Lilly, the astrologer, in his
'History of his Life and Times from the year 1602 to 1681'. He
was a man nationally known; his autobiography was published in
1715 and reprinted 1774 and 1822. The MS is in the Ashmolean
Museum. It is dedicated to Elias Ashmole and has a Latin
inscription by him.
This is an actual example, not something we need to bet on. It
shows someone from a very ignorant village who became eminent
in his day for written work, and it illustrates how that
happened and what a poor farmer's attitude to it was; also,
incidentally, the heights to which a City man could rise
without ever having learnt to read.
[A few notes added in square brackets.] Omissions indicated by
... (there is far too much for me to type it all).
I was born in the county of Leicester, in an obscure town, in
the north-west borders thereof, called Diseworth, seven miles
south of the town of Derby, one mile from Castle-Donnington, a
town of great rudeness, wherein it is not remembered that any
of the farmers thereof did ever educate any of their sons to
learning, only my grandfather sent his younger son to
Cambridge, whose name was Robert Lilly, and died vicar of
[Chipping] Camden in Gloucestershire, about 1640.
...
I was, during my minority, put to learn at such schools, and
of such masters, as the rudeness of the place and country
afforded; my mother intending I should be a scholar from my
infancy, seeing my father's backslidings in the world, and no
hopes by plain husbandry to recruit a decayed esate; therefore
upon Trinity Tuesday, 1613, my father had me to
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, to be instructed by one Mr John Brinsley
[author of Ludus Litterarius or The Grammar School, 1612] ...
... Samuel Smatty ... told me that he had lately been at
London, where there was a gentleman wanted a youth ... I
acquainted my father with it, who was very willing to be rid
of me, for I could not work, drive the plough, or endure any
country labour; my father oft would say, I was good for
nothing.
...
My master's name was Gilbert Wright ... could neither write
nor read ... when he married a widow in Newgate Market, the
Lord Chancellor recommended him to the company of Salters,
London, to admit him ... and so they did, and my master in
1624 was master of that company; he was a man of excellent
natural parts, and would speak publicly upon any occasion very
rationally and to the purpose.
--
Robert Stonehouse
To mail me, replace invalid with uk. Inconvenience regretted.
Robert Stonehouse
<aneuendor...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> Paul Crowley wrote:
>> > The question is NOT whether authors had
>> > illiterate parents. It's whether or not they
>> > were brought up in illiterate households.
>> >
>"Fryzer" <fry...@yahoo.com> wrote
>> "Next to nothing is known of Caedmon.
>> When you have to go back to 680 a.d. -- and
>> the depths of the Dark Ages -- in an attempt
>> to find 'evidence' to support your argument,
>> then you've lost it. All we are looking for is
>> an author with illiterate parents. IF you had
>> had an argument, you'd be able to quote loads
>> of cases from the 17th, 18th or 19th centuries
>> -- or from other countries in the 20th century."
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
><<The story of Caedmon, the illiterate cowherd who received the gift of
>song from God, is told in Book Four, Chapter 25 of Bede's Ecclesiastical
>History of the English People. It was translated into English, probably
>during the reign of King Alfred the Great, by an anonymous Mercian
>scholar.>> http://www.engl.virginia.edu/OE/OEA/caedmon.html
>
> http://www.catholic.org/saints/saints/caedmon.html
>
><<St. Caedmon (d. c. 680) is the first known poet of the vernacular in
>English. He is thought to have been a Celt, who was already old at the
>time he came to Whitby to tend the animals. Too shy to join in the
>communal singing after meals, he slipped out to work with the animals.
>which he learned a hymn; when he awoke, he knew the song and could
>recite it perfectly. After his performance, Hilda urged him to become a
1. His name is British, but Bede says clearly 'in sua, id est
Anglorum, lingua', 'in his own language: that is, that of the
English'. Perhaps he was of British descent? But nations adopt
names from one another.
2. It was fairly late in life that he composed his first poem,
but he had previously been a worker (not a monk) at the
monastery. There is simply nothing to say when he arrived
there, at or after its foundation. 'Siquidem in habitu
saeculari usque ad tempora provectioris aetatis constitutus,
nil carminum aliquando didicerat' tells us that 'though he had
lived in the secular clothing until the times of his more
advanced age, he had never learnt any songs'.
3. The singing was not communal as we might understand it. The
harp passed round the table and each person, on getting it in
turn, was expected to perform solo. You hardly needed to be
shy to find this embarrasing, if you simply did not know any
songs. So when he saw the harp approaching, he would go off
home, and it was on one of those occasions that he dreamed a
dream.
Paul Crowley
> It is, of course, a commonplace crackpot tactic to make a sweeping
> declaration,
It was no more than a passing observation
of fact, to which I assumed no one could
possibly make the least objection.
>>> "the vast preponderance of writers who
>>> made any kind of reputation in England between
>>>1550 and 1950 went to the main public (i.e. private)
>>> schools and/or one of the major universities
>>> (mostly Oxbridge)."
But, yet again, a pair of Strats reveal their
profound ignorance of all things English
and all things Elizabethan. OK, being
American might be some excuse -- but
it's not enough. They should be old
enough to know when to stay silent.
(Still, they'd hardly be attempting to
defend the Strat viewpoint here if they
had any sense or awareness of the
world.)
I think we can assume that most "writers
who made any kind of reputation in
England between 1550 and 1950" had
some education. Where do Reedy and Veal
think they obtained it? No doubt they see
England's education system throughout
those centuries as being similar to that
of modern America.
> demand that others disprove it and take their failure to
> do so to the crackpot's satisfaction as proof that it is correct.
I make no such demand. I merely suggest
some methods by which its accuracy could
be determined (and it's not by a list pulled
from Reedy's arse) -- not that anyone who
had the least familiarity with English history
or social structure would want to check
such a mundane statement of fact.
Paul.
Paul Crowley
> It does occur to me that Mr. Crowley deserves credit for theorizing
> against his own interest: Oxenford was no more an Oxbridge student than
> Shakespeare of Stratford, unless one counts the few months that he
> spent as a Cambridge boarder at age eight, a period that he appears to
> have spent breaking windows (not that I criticize him for that).
The kind of education received at Oxbridge
may have been the best available to the
gentry and lower nobility, but it was far
inferior to that received by the progeny of
the top aristocrats (such as the royal wards)
Their private tutors were from the very best
of Oxbridge academics.
Sir Thomas Smith was Edward de Vere's tutor
for the first eight years of his schooling --
apparently doing little else during the time.
Lawrence Nowell (later Dean of Lichfield)
became his tutor later, writing to Burghley when
his pupil was 12 AFAIR, to inform him that he
had taught him all he knew. Both were famous
Greek scholars. According to Strype, Smith
initiated the teaching of Greek at Cambridge.
That was not true, but it indicates the extent
of his reputation. Smith was named Greek
Orator when he was barely out of his teens,
a post that required he give lectures in Greek
several times a week to the assembled student
body.
Smith also seems to have learnt Hebrew.
He had several books in the language in his
library, including grammars and a dictionary.
Oxford's maternal uncle was Arthur Golding,
whose name is on the translation of Ovid's
Metamorphoses -- done while he was living
under the same roof as his nephew.
Paul.
Paul Crowley
news:42791f53...@news.cityscape.co.uk...
> >As I constantly have to remind Strats
> >around here, we are talking about
> >PROBABILITES. How likely is it that
> >the son of an illiterate yeoman in a
> >small rural town would have developed
> >literary ability?
> A few words from William Lilly, the astrologer, in his
> 'History of his Life and Times from the year 1602 to 1681'
> This is an actual example, not something we need to bet on. It
> shows someone from a very ignorant village
That was Lilly's opinion of his own locality.
I doubt if any other was much better. Castle
Donnington is in the heart of England, ten
miles from Derby, ten miles from Leicester
and about 12 miles from Nottingham. It's
on a major north-south route, and much
less remote or obscure than Stratford-
upon-Avon.
> wherein it is not remembered that any
> of the farmers thereof did ever educate any of their sons to
> learning,
The population of England was about four
million at this time; the great bulk of it was
agricultural. So how many farmers would
we have? Perhaps 200,000? How many
of them would have "educated their sons
to learning"?
Hardly any. Castle Donnington was not
remarkable for its "great rudeness" -- it
was the norm.
> who became eminent
> in his day for written work, and it illustrates how that
> happened and what a poor farmer's attitude to it was;
His parents were (I suggest) clearly literate.
His uncle (his father's younger brother)
had been to Cambridge and become a vicar.
His mother might have been of an even higher
status than her husband, with her ambitions
for her son's scholarly career from his infancy,
her apparent comments on her husband's
'backslidings', and the excuses they made
for engaging in 'plain husbandry'.
With the references to their 'decayed estate'
they clearly seem to have been 'decayed
gentry', who regarded themselves as much
better than their neighbours.
> also,
> incidentally, the heights to which a City man could rise
> without ever having learnt to read.
This man seems to have been only a
master salter -- which was nothing great.
(Presumably it was a bit like a master
carpenter, or master printer, but without
the skills and training that such trades
demanded.) He had married a rich widow,
and that money seems to have bought
him that position (directly or indirectly).
It might be interesting to find out more
about the 'company of Salters'.
Paul.
Liam Too
naturally and being born with it.
Have you heard of a musician who began composing minuets at the age of
5?
Have you heard of a composer who was deaf?
Have you heard of a chessplayer who was able to beat his more than 50
opponents simultaneously and blindfolded? The main rule of the games
was that that he cannot see the chess board and players.
These people have become to be some of the greatest geniuses in
their own fields of endeavor and their ingenuities have nothing to do
with their parents' literacy.
Lance Smith
Tom Veal
in England without having attended a distinguished private school or
first-rank university - e.g., Pope, Keats, Burns, Scott, Dickens,
Browning, Meredith, Hardy, Gissing, Kipling, and all female authors
until very recent times - that talk of a "vast preponderance" isn't
meaningful. If it wasn't intended to prove anything, then it does no
harm, but it does sound like the sort of statement made by a foreigner
who knows little about England beyond lazy stereotypes. English
literature, to a far greater extent than, say, English politics, has
always been open to men who bypassed the elite educational system.
Alan Jones
> "Robert Stonehouse" <ew...@bcs.org.invalid> wrote in message
> news:42791f53...@news.cityscape.co.uk...
>> A few words from William Lilly, the astrologer, in his
>> 'History of his Life and Times from the year 1602 to 1681'
>
>> This is an actual example, not something we need to bet on. It
>> shows someone from a very ignorant village
>> who became eminent
>> in his day for written work, and it illustrates how that
>> happened and what a poor farmer's attitude to it was;
> This man seems to have been only a
> master salter -- which was nothing great.
> (Presumably it was a bit like a master
> carpenter, or master printer, but without
> the skills and training that such trades
> demanded.) He had married a rich widow,
> and that money seems to have bought
> him that position (directly or indirectly).
>
> It might be interesting to find out more
> about the 'company of Salters'.
Easily done!
From the website of the Salters' Company:
"The Salters' Company is ranked ninth of the Twelve Great Livery Companies
of the City of London. Its origins lie in the Salt Trade of mediaeval
London, its first licence having been granted in 1394 by King Richard II."
"Membership of the Company covered a surprisingly wide range of professions
outside the salt trade - around 80 in total. Some of the members who were
salt traders were also 'Drysalters' and dealt in flax, hemp, logwood,
cochineal, potashes and chemical preparations. Present day members are
therefore especially interested in the Chemical Industry." More details at
http://www.salters.co.uk/company/histbegin.html .
Lilly's tribute to the illiterate Gilbert Wright runs in part "...my master
in 1624 was **master of that company** [scil. the Salters]; he was a man of
excellent natural parts, and would speak publicly upon any occasion very
rationally and to the purpose". To be elected as Master of one of the Twelve
was, and is, a great distinction: Wright was not just a master of his craft.
Alan Jones
Robert Stonehouse
<slkwuoiut...@slkjlskjoioue.com> wrote:
>"Robert Stonehouse" <ew...@bcs.org.invalid> wrote in message
>news:42791f53...@news.cityscape.co.uk...
>
>> >As I constantly have to remind Strats
>> >around here, we are talking about
>> >PROBABILITES. How likely is it that
>> >the son of an illiterate yeoman in a
>> >small rural town would have developed
>> >literary ability?
>
>> A few words from William Lilly, the astrologer, in his
>> 'History of his Life and Times from the year 1602 to 1681'
>
>> This is an actual example, not something we need to bet on. It
>> shows someone from a very ignorant village
>
>That was Lilly's opinion of his own locality.
Well, he knew it better than we do. But the village was
Diseworth, not Castle Donnington.
>I doubt if any other was much better. Castle
>Donnington is in the heart of England, ten
>miles from Derby, ten miles from Leicester
>and about 12 miles from Nottingham. It's
>on a major north-south route, and much
>less remote or obscure than Stratford-
>upon-Avon.
The best way I can see of assessing the relative importance of
places is how they were shown in the atlases of the time.
Saxton uses three kinds of type, large capitals, smaller
capitals and upper/lower case. Speed also uses three,
capitals, large upper/lower case and small upper/lower case.
Both show Castle Donnington and Diseworth in the smallest
type, Stratford in the middle size and Coventry and Leicester
(both of which get a town plan in Speed) in the largest.
Saxton shows Warwick in the largest size, but Speed in the
middle size (the same as Stratford) though he gives it a town
plan, no doubt because it is the county town.
Altogether, Stratford was plainly a place of substance, not an
obscure backwater. (It has a fleeting mention in Drayton's
Polyolbion where apparently neither Castle Donnington nor
Diseworth figures, but that is not indicative: Polyolbion is a
poem, not a catalogue.)
>
>> wherein it is not remembered that any
>> of the farmers thereof did ever educate any of their sons to
>> learning,
>
>The population of England was about four
>million at this time; the great bulk of it was
>agricultural. So how many farmers would
>we have? Perhaps 200,000? How many
>of them would have "educated their sons
>to learning"?
>
>Hardly any. Castle Donnington was not
>remarkable for its "great rudeness" -- it
>was the norm.
What does this argument lead to? That no farmers' sons became
writers?
>
>> who became eminent
>> in his day for written work, and it illustrates how that
>> happened and what a poor farmer's attitude to it was;
>
>His parents were (I suggest) clearly literate.
No, certainly not clearly. His father may have possessed some
of the knowledge he despised; his mother may not have had any
of what she wanted for him. It was clearly not a literary
household. It is more likely than not, both parents were not
literate.
>His uncle (his father's younger brother)
>had been to Cambridge and become a vicar.
>His mother might have been of an even higher
>status than her husband, with her ambitions
>for her son's scholarly career from his infancy,
>her apparent comments on her husband's
>'backslidings', and the excuses they made
>for engaging in 'plain husbandry'.
I see no excuses. A farmer's wife whose husband could not make
a living might make biting comments without being an
aristocrat!
>
>With the references to their 'decayed estate'
>they clearly seem to have been 'decayed
>gentry', who regarded themselves as much
>better than their neighbours.
No, only that the family had once had some property and had
lost it.
>
>> also,
>> incidentally, the heights to which a City man could rise
>> without ever having learnt to read.
>
>This man seems to have been only a
>master salter -- which was nothing great.
>(Presumably it was a bit like a master
>carpenter, or master printer, but without
>the skills and training that such trades
>demanded.) He had married a rich widow,
>and that money seems to have bought
>him that position (directly or indirectly).
Well, he had the Lord Chancellor's recommendation: an unusual
advantage for a master carpenter. No doubt having that to get
accepted as a member was also an advantage, later, in becoming
Master of the Company. (I do not claim the Lord Chancellor was
illiterate!)
>
>It might be interesting to find out more
>about the 'company of Salters'.
...
Art Neuendorffer
> >As I constantly have to remind Strats
> >around here, we are talking about
> >PROBABILITES. How likely is it that
> >the son of an illiterate yeoman in a
> >small rural town would have developed
> >literary ability?
"Robert Stonehouse" <ew...@bcs.org.invalid> wrote
---------------------------------------------------------------
A History of Ashby-de-la-Zouch Grammar School
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
<<Zouche, or Zouch, the name of an English family descended from Alan la
Zouche, a Breton, who is sometimes called Alan de Porrhoet. Having settled
in England during the reign of Henry II., Alan obtained by marriage Ashby in
Leicestershire (called after him Ashby de la Zouch) and other lands. His
grandson, another Alan la Zouche, was justice of Chester and justice of
Ireland under Henry III.; he was loyal to the king during the struggle with
the barons, fought at Lewes and helped to arrange the peace of Kenilworth.
As the result of a quarrel over some lands with John, Earl Warenne, he was
seriously injured in Westminster Hall by the earl and his retainers, and
died on the xoth of August 1270. Alan's elder son Roger (d. 1285) had a son
Alan la Zouche, who was summoned to parliament as a baron about 1298. He
died without sons, and this barony fell into abeyance between his daughters
and has never been revived. The elder Alan's younger son, Eades or Ivo,
had a son William (c. 1276-1352), who was summoned to parliament as
a baron in 1308, and this barony, which is still in existence,
is known as that of Zouche of Haryngworth.>>
---------------------------------------------------------------
In Thomas Morley's *First Booke of Consort Lessons*,
#14 is titled "My Lord of Oxenfords Maske."
. #23 is titled "The Lord Sowches Maske."
[Edward, the 10th baron Zouche]
------------------------------------------------
david joseph kathman wrote HLAS:
<<while Sobran's article briefly mentions the dedication of
*Emaricdulfe*, he doesn't mention the content of the dedication,
which seems to indicate pretty clearly that the author was not the
Earl of Oxford or William Shakespeare. The title page says the author
was "E.C. Esquier", and the dedication is "To my very good friends,
John Zouch and Edward Fitton, Esquiers". These had most likely
been fellow law students of "E.C."'s, but I'm not aware of any
connection between either of them and the Earl of Oxford.
John Zouche and Edward Fitton were students at Gray's Inn in the
1580s (Zouche being admitted in 1582, Fitton in 1588), and there
were several students there at the same time with the initials
"E.C.", any of which might be the author of Emaricdulfe.>>
--------------------------------------------------
<<John, 7th baron Zouche of Haryngworth (c. 1460-1526), was attainted in
1485 as a supporter of Richard III., but was restored to his honors in 1495.
His descendant, Edward, the 10th baron (c. 1556-1625), was one of the peers
who tried Mary, queen of Scots, and was sent by Elizabeth as ambassador to
Scotland and to Denmark. He was president of Wales from 1602 to 1615 and
lord warden of the Cinque Ports from 1615 to 1624. He was a member of the
council of the Virginia Company and of the New England council. He had many
literary friends, among them being Ben Jonson and Sir Henry Wotton. Zouche
left no sons, and the barony remained in abeyance among the descendants of
his two daughters until 1815, when the abeyance was terminated in favor of
Sir Cecil Bisshopp, Bart. (1753-1828), who became the I2th baron. He died
without sons, a second abeyance being terminated in 1829 in favor of his
daughter Harriet Anne (1787-1870), wife of the Hon. Robert Curzon
(1771-1863). In 1873 her grandson, Robert Nathaniel Curzon (b. 1851),
became the 15th baron.
Two antiquaries, Henry Zouch (c. 1725-1795) and his brother Thomas Zouch
(1737-1815), claimed descent from the family of Zouche. Both were
voluminous writers, Thomas's works including a Life of Izaak Walton
(1823) and Memoirs of Sir Philip Sidney (1808).>>
--------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.montaguemillennium.com/research/crusaders.htm
MONTAGUES and the Crusades, ~1095-~1588
<<The Montague family had a long crusading tradition.
Cristopher Tyerman, in England and the Crusades,
1095-1588, notes the following:
"M.H. Keen has demonstrated the lively and persistent interest in
crusading of a number of noble families, including the Beauchamps,
Uffords, Bohuns, Percies, DESPENSERS, FitzWalters, Beaumonts,
Scropes, Courtenays, and MONTAGUES." (Tyerman, pp. 268)
Some signs of Montague crusading tradition can apparently still
be found in Turkey, where one of the seven ancient wonders
of the world was dismantled to construct a last-ditch defense,
the Castle of St. Peter at Bodrum.
"... the Knights (these would be the Hospitallers, ed.), having
lost their stronghold ... to Timur the Lame ("Tamurlane",) in 1402, were
establishing a new base at Bodrum, the site of the ancient Halicarnassus
and its famous Mausoleum, stone from which was used in the construction
of the Christian fortress dedicated to St. Peter. This fortress was to
act not simply as a military post, but also as a refuge for fugitive
Christians from the Ottoman Empire. ...
The castle of St. Peter itself provides more striking witness to English
participation. Over the gateway to one of its towers, known as the
English Tower, twenty-six coats of arms were set up in stone, including
those of Henry IV, the Prince of Wales, the dukes of Clarence, Bedford,
and Gloucester (the kings sons), the duke of York, and the families of
Grey, Zouche, de la Pole, Neville, Percy, Holland, Beauchamp, Burleigh,
STRANGE, Arundel, MONTAGUE, Stafford, DE VERE, Courtenay, FitzHugh,
Cresson, WOOLFE, and FAIRFAX, many of who could boast of both long
and recent crusading traditions." (Tyerman, pp. 313-314)>>
-----------------------------------------------------------
MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS,
Project Gutenberg Edition, Vol. 51
History of the United Netherlands, 1587
For there were now very grave rumours concerning the fidelity of
"that patient and foreseeing brother YORK," whom Stanley had been
so generously strengthening in Fort Zutphen. The lieutenant of
YORK, a certain Mr. Zouch, had been seen within the city of Zutphen, in
close conference with Colonel Tassis, Spanish governor of the place.
Moreover there had been a very frequent exchange of courtesies--by which
the horrors of war seemed to be much mitigated--between YORK on the
outside and Tassis within. The English commander sent baskets of
venison, wild fowl, and other game, which were rare in the market of a
besieged town. The Spanish governor responded with baskets of excellent
wine and barrels of beer. A very pleasant state of feeling, perhaps, to
contemplate--as an advance in civilization over the not very distant =
days of the Haarlem and Leyden sieges, when barrels of prisoners' heads,
cut off, a dozen or two at a time, were the social amenities usually
exchanged between Spaniards and Dutchmen--but somewhat
suspicious to those who had grown grey in this horrible warfare.
---------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Tom Reedy
So now are you backing down on your assertion that "the vast preponderance
of writers who made any kind of reputation in England between 1550 and 1950
went to the main public (i.e. private) schools and/or one of the major
universities (mostly Oxbridge)?"
> Where do Reedy and Veal
> think they obtained it? No doubt they see
> England's education system throughout
> those centuries as being similar to that
> of modern America.
>
> > demand that others disprove it and take their failure to
> > do so to the crackpot's satisfaction as proof that it is correct.
>
> I make no such demand. I merely suggest
> some methods by which its accuracy could
> be determined
The accuracy of which statement, exactly? Your first statement, which said
"the vast preponderance of writers who made any kind of reputation in
England between 1550 and 1950 went to the main public (i.e. private) schools
and/or one of the major universities (mostly Oxbridge)?"
Or your statement, when presented with such a list, that required English
writers only?
Or now apparently your third statement, which only requires that they "had
some education?"
> (and it's not by a list pulled
> from Reedy's arse) --
No, it came from the tables of contents of the Norton anthologies (1 & 2).
Here it is again, just in case you forgot:
Edmund Spenser - Cambridge
John Donne - attended Oxford and Cambridge
Ben Jonson - no college
John Milton - Cambridge
John Bunyan - no college
Daniel Defoe - no college
Jonathan Swift - Trinity College, Dublin
Joseph Addison - Oxford
Alexander Pope - no college
Samuel Johnson - attended Oxford
William Blake - no college
Robert Burns - no college
William Wordsworth - Cambridge
Percy Shelley - Oxford
John Keats - no college
Charles Dickens - no college
Thomas Hardy - no college
W. B. Yeats - no college
James Joyce - University College, Dublin
Dylan Thomas - no college
> not that anyone who
> had the least familiarity with English history
> or social structure would want to check
> such a mundane statement of fact.
*You* certainly wouldn't be one of those people, we know. Your "mundane
statements of fact" turn out to be merely the product of your e.coli-riddled
brain.
TR
>
>
> Paul.
>
>
>
>
>
Paul Crowley
> It is so easy to think of writers who made very impressive reputations
> in England
Yet another list from the nether end.
Get some pre-existing list from a
reputable source, and analyse that.
> without having attended a distinguished private school or
> first-rank university - e.g., Pope
A Catholic at a time of intense anti-
Catholic agitation. He was educated
privately by Catholic priests.
> Burns,
A Scot -- and I specified England. The
Scottish culture (including its class
system and education) is quite different
from that of England. It has little
relevance to the Stratman and kind of
education someone in his class would
expect.
> Scott,
Another Scot -- but also educated at
some of its best schools.
> Kipling
Went to an expensive boarding school.
e.g., Pope, Keats, Burns, Scott, Dickens,
Browning, Meredith, Hardy, Gissing, Kipling,
You listed poets/novelists -- neither
exactly popular occupations. My
term 'writers' covers a much wider
range.
> and all female authors until very recent times -
Not relevant to any assessment of the
likelihood of the Stratman being the
poet.
> - that talk of a "vast preponderance" isn't
> meaningful. If it wasn't intended to prove anything, then it does no
> harm,
Strats claim that the greatest writer of
all time got all his education from a local
rural school. There is almost no other
writer of any significance matching that
pattern -- and that's quite apart from his
upbringing in an illiterate household.
> but it does sound like the sort of statement made
> by a foreigner who knows little about England
> beyond lazy stereotypes.
If it was, you'd be able to disprove it
easily, instead of creating your own
lists (with lots of poets and Scotsmen)
> English literature, to a far greater extent than, say,
> English politics, has always been open to men who
> bypassed the elite educational system.
My casual remark (which both you and
Reedy declared insane) was not about
'literature' in a narrow sense, but about
'writers'.
>>>"writers
>>> who made any kind of reputation in
>>> England between 1550 and 1950"
Paul.
Tom Veal
background in order to gain a "reputation in England", Alexander Pope
and Jane Austen are sufficient to refute it, regardless of the reasons
why they couldn't matriculate at distinguished institutions.
If, on the other hand, the argument is that a good writer must have a
good education, it's worth noting that many an Oxbridge graduate
learned nothing in particular during his time there yet went on to
achieve literary success.
How about a counter-thesis that is no less (as well as no more) cogent?
A truly vast preponderance of writers with reputations in England have
been commoners rather than born noblemen (Sidney, Byron - I'll think of
more if given time). Shouldn't that fact render it highly improbable
that a 17th Earl of Oxenford could have written great dramatic works?
Paul Crowley
> If the thesis is that a writer *must* have a public school or Oxbridge
> background in order to gain a "reputation in England", Alexander Pope
> and Jane Austen are sufficient to refute it, regardless of the reasons
> why they couldn't matriculate at distinguished institutions.
That is not, of course, the thesis. As
I keep having to inform Strats, it is all
about probability.
Forgetting about illiterate parents for
the moment (even if that is the title of
the thread):
(a) How likely is it that an outstanding
English author would not have attended
one of the major schools or universities?
If not: (b) Can we identify a plausible
reason why that person did not have
such an education?
(c) Was that author's work of such a
nature, that the apparent lack of
education presented little handicap?
(d) Alternatively, can we propose likely
means whereby that author was able to
compensate for his (or her) apparent
lack of education?
The above are, I suggest, entirely reasonable
questions of the sort that would be set out
in any kind of study of authorship.
Looking at any list of English authors, we
will find that nearly all attended university
and/or a major school. But, in some cases,
they did not -- and we can see, in each
case, why that was so -- they were female,
or Catholic (at the wrong time), or their
parents had just gone bankrupt, or there
was some other good reason.
In many such cases we know how they
compensated: they had private tuition,
or they received inspiration and guidance
from some specially gifted teacher.
In cases where the author lacked formal
education, we can see the effects on their
work, or how the author choose a mode
or style that made it irrelevant. No one
reading Jane Austen, or Charles Dickens,
or John Clare or Robbie Burns, would see
any reason to think that the author had
been to university -- or even to a major
school.
Yet, as we know, there is one outstanding
exception to all such reasonable rules and
to all sensible enquiries.
Nothing about him makes any sense --
under the Strafordian conception. Either
that is false, or we have an extraordinary
exception to all reasonable rules.
Which is most likely?
Paul.
Art Neuendorffer
The Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago (1922- ) is
the son of poor farmhands. His mother was an illiterate.
----------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/saramago.htm
Among Saramago's other later novels is All the Names (1995), in which he
pays homage to the bureaucratic labyrinths of Kafka. It depicts a minor
official, Senhor José, in a dismal registrar's office, who becomes
obsessed with one of the names, an unknown woman, and begins to track
her down. But instead of order, he finds chaos. In Blindness: a novel
(1995) an epidemic of blindness starts to spread in a nameless city. An
asylum or a concentration camp, is founded to isolate the blind who see
only white light. A doctor's wife follows her husband to the asylum, and
soon around them forms a small group of people who try to maintain some
moral values among the internees, when violence starts to escalate. "...
blindness is the good fortune of the ugly," Saramago writes but actually
the blind cannot see the ugliness of the world. "Absurd to say it, but
the blindness in Saramago's novel is an allegory for not being able to
see. What exactly it is we should see, what Saramago -- with all his
years as a man and a writer and having lived through dictatorship and
revolution -- fears we cannot see, is present in the writing, present
abundantly, but it is not to be paraphrased." (Andrew Miller in the New
York Times, October 4, 1998) The Cave (2000) is a story of a potter and
his family, who are the "real" people, living the life of Plato's famous
allegory of the cave.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Veal
on the Elizabethan Age. In that period, what knowledge, craft or other
thing taught at the "major schools and universities" so clearly marks
the Shakespearean canon that its author must, to a high degree of
probability, have attended those institutions?
The answer cannot be, training in the use of the English language,
because that was entirely absent from the Latin-based curriculum.
If it is, knowledge of classical literature, there are two
difficulties:
(i) Ben Jonson, arguably the most classically learned author of his
age, had only scanty schooling (assuming that his claim to have
attended Westminster School was true; Mr. Crowley wouldn't accept such
thin evidence for any statement about the Stratford Man - indeed, he
rejects Shakespeare's well-documented acting career on the basis of a
hyper-skeptical approach to evidence). He obviously acquired, by means
that we do not know, knowledge well beyond what was imparted in the
first few years of grammar school.
(ii) Much classical mythology was known by people of limited or no
education. Popular ballads are extant recounting the stories of Troilus
and Cressida, Pyramus and Thisbe, Diana and Actaeon, Apelles and
Pygmalion, Aeneas, Penelope and many, many more.
"But these survivors are but a tithe of the ballads on classical
legends which were published during the early part of Elizabeth's
reign. In the one year 1569-70, no less than seven were entered in the
Stationers' Register: 'The tyranny of Judge Appius'; 'The Miserable
State of King Midas'; 'The unfortunate End of Iphis'; 'The Death of
Acrisius'; 'Ptolemy King of Egypt'; 'Synorix and Camma' [quick, without
looking it up, who were Synorix and Camma; if they were mentioned in
one of Shakespeare's plays, wouldn't they be cited as a recondite
allusion that no ignorant commoner could have grasped?], and one which
began 'No man could get Atalanta by running'." [C. H. Firth, "Ballads
and Broadsides", in II Shakespeare's England, 510, 526-8 (1916)]
Knowledge of ancient or English history likewise can't be the answer,
since neither was the subject of systematic instruction and, in any
case, the author of Shakespeare's works took his information from
published history books.
So, what did education at a major school or university teach
"Shakespeare"? Once that question is answered, we can consider whether
it is plausible that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon
possessed that essential of the writer's trade.
Paul Crowley
> In a spirit of inquiry, let's try to explore this thesis, concentrating
> on the Elizabethan Age. In that period, what knowledge, craft or other
> thing taught at the "major schools and universities" so clearly marks
> the Shakespearean canon that its author must, to a high degree of
> probability, have attended those institutions?
I would NOT accept that the "major schools
and universities" of the day were anywhere
good enough to provide our poet with even
the basics of what he needed. So, as far as
I am concerned, you are pursuing a quite
false thesis.
He had a training and an education that was
FAR superior to anything even the most
capable student in such institutions could
have obtained.
Paul.
Tom Veal
attend a major public school or university, etc. is beside the point.
Even if the Stratford man demonstrably had grown up in a household full
of books and had gone to Eton and Oxford, he wouldn't meet the standard
of "an education that was FAR superior to anything even the most
capable student in such institutions could have obtained".
Of course, there's not a scintilla of evidence that Edward de Vere
received such an education either, save in Oxenfordian fantasies.
Paul Crowley
> In other words, all the verbiage about illiterate parents, failure to
> attend a major public school or university, etc. is beside the point.
It's relevant to ruling out the Stratman
as a possible candidate for the
authorship.
> Even if the Stratford man demonstrably had grown up in a household full
> of books and had gone to Eton and Oxford, he wouldn't meet the standard
> of "an education that was FAR superior to anything even the most
> capable student in such institutions could have obtained".
Yep. Of course, we know he had nothing
of the kind, and the question is purely
hypothetical.
A writer as great as Shakespeare could only
have grown up, and been educated, in the
best possible circumstances. As we all know,
talent of that class is nearly always acquired
(and/or developed) when the mind is very
young and highly impressionable. Our poet
could only have been extremely precocious.
He must have been surrounded, from his
earliest days, by many educated people who
excited his interest, and who were anxious to
answer every question he posed, explaining
openly, honestly and in detail, all that he
wanted to know. As he grew, they would
have spoken to him clearly, and expertly
about many complex subjects, using long
words and good grammar, always explaining,
clearly and exactly, the concepts involved
and the meanings of the words, including
possibly their derivation and relationship
to other words.
He probably lived in a very large house, in
which his father (like his grandfather before
him) kept a company of players. Those, and
the other servants and teachers, would have
'spoilt the child' rotten, since he was of the
highest social status, and it was their duty
to give him all the attentions he requested.
That might, in the long run, not have been
very good for his character, taken as a
whole -- but it was wonderful from the
point of view of his extraordinarily
precocious talent.
During the crucial years, his parents and
their political and academic friends and
associates were probably not particularly
busy since, in spite of their great abilities
and talents, their party was out of power.
In consequence, they spent much of their
time in their large country house, nurturing
the genius of their young son, even if this
process was quite unplanned and their
awareness of its progress was far from
complete.
Paul.
Tom Veal
connection between anti-Stratfordianism and Bardolatry.
The simplest response is that we know quite a bit about the upbringing
of writers *almost* as good as Shakespeare, and none of them enjoyed a
childhood nearly so blissful as Mr. Crowley paints for the Bard. Then,
too, if he applied to his own side the same skeptical principles that
he uses to dismiss the Stratford Man, he would be forced to conclude
that Oxenford didn't write Shakespeare either. In fact, if the
conditions demanded by Crowleyan theory are necessary, Shakespeare
cannot have existed.
Paul Crowley
> Mr. Crowley's effusion could be a textbook example of the intimate
> connection between anti-Stratfordianism and Bardolatry.
>
> The simplest response is that we know quite a bit about the upbringing
> of writers *almost* as good as Shakespeare,
Care to give some names?
> and none of them enjoyed a
> childhood nearly so blissful as Mr. Crowley paints for the Bard.
None were anywhere near so good -- and nearly
all (in any list) would have come after him in
time when:
(a) his works were established, and
(b) relatively cheap printed works of all kinds
were readily available.
> Then, too, if he applied to his own side the same skeptical
> principles that he uses to dismiss the Stratford Man
Which are?
> In fact, if the conditions demanded by
> Crowleyan theory are necessary, Shakespeare cannot have
> existed.
Why? Are you claiming that such conditions
never existed for ANY child? In fact, we know
that they did -- or as near as can be established.
Oxford's parents and grandparents DID have
their own company of players. It was present
at Castle Hedingham while Oxford was a child.
Most aristocratic children at that time (and later)
had tutors -- of the highest qualifications -- in
near constant attendance.
I don't suppose that you have read William
Hague's recent biography of Pitt the Younger?
He was one of the most brilliant of his
generation, and of many others -- and was
universally acclaimed for his extraordinary
eloquence. He could IMHO have possibly
been another 'Shakespeare' had he been
able to dedicate his life to literature rather
than to politics. Or, at least, he had the right
sort of talent for such a role. But he and it
would have needed a better environment.
Georgian England and the Napoleonic wars
were not comparable, in that respect, with
the first two decades of the reign of
Elizabeth.
His father (Pitt the Elder) had provided a
household not unlike that of the 16th Earl
of Oxford's. Like Oxford's, it was intensely
political. The father's experience of Eton
had made him determined to protect his own
children from such a rough environment,
and he provided private tutors for his sons.
At some point I'll post a brief except from
the book.
Paul.
Tom Reedy
This is a prime example of why I think Crowley is a troll. Surely even
Ireland could not be the home of such unmitigated stupidity as this.
TR
>
>
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
> He was one of the most brilliant of his
> generation, and of many others -- and was
> universally acclaimed for his extraordinary
> eloquence. He could IMHO have possibly
> been another 'Shakespeare' had he been
> able to dedicate his life to literature rather
> than to politics.
Wrong. If Pitt had been born to be a poet, he would have found a way
to become one, period. He would not have wasted his life in anything
as trivial as politics. He could not have. His need for mental
stimulation would have forced him to study works of art and make his
own. Only someone as lacking in creative imagination and self-reliance
as you could not know this, Paul.
--Bob G.
bookburn
"Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:r9Pfe.277$2u5...@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Tom Veal may have cast a spell on Crowley by suggesting "Mr.
Crowley's effusion could be a textbook example of the intimate
connection between anti-Stratfordianism and Bardolatry, followed by
Crowley's sentimental vision of Oxford at home. If he proceeds to
paint himself into a corner of the 19th C., we've got him and maybe a
handle on anti-Stratfordism, too. bookburn
Tom Veal
Crowley assures us that anyone I might consider "almost as good as
Shakespeare" would in fact be not "anywhere near so good". In
literature, unlike every other field of human endeavor, we are expected
to believe that there is an immense gulf between best and second best,
so immense that entirely different rules apply to the two groups.
Nonetheless, sticking to the lifetime of Shakespeare, I think that most
readers and critics would rank Marlowe, Jonson and Spenser as
near-Shakespearean in quality. Their fathers (stepfather in Jonson's
case) were, respectively, a cobbler, a bricklayer and a clothmaker.
Jonson described himself as "badly brought up". Spenser was one of the
31 "poor scholars" who received one shilling and a gown under the will
of Robert Nowell in 1569. Marlowe went to grammar school and university
on scholarships. All these facts indicate that none came from so much
as a remote approximation of the leisured, intellectual background of
the kind that Mr. Crowley regards as essential to the flowering of
Shakespeare's talents. The discontinuity requires explanation if we are
to take Mr. Crowley seriously [pause for laughter to die down].
As for Edward de Vere, did he receive such an upbringing? Unless Mr.
Crowley has discovered a treasure trove of documents unknown to Captain
Ward or Professor Nelson, that is airy speculation on his part. The
lad's father was a rake with no known intellectual interests who played
a feeble part in national politics. After his one moment on the stage,
as an apparently reluctant supporter of the succession of Mary Tudor to
the throne, he showed little interest in events outside of East Anglia.
In a previous post, Mr. Crowley claimed that Sir Thomas Smith, a
genuine scholar, tutored Edward for the first eight years of his
education. Has he any evidence for that claim? All that the extant
records - casual mentions in correspondence years later - tell us is
that Edward lived in the Smith household at an indeterminate time
before 1562 (when he become a royal ward under William Cecil's
tutelage) and may have received some instruction, extent unknown, from
Sir Thomas. The only man who can be proven to have served as his tutor
was one Thomas Fowle, a Cambridge graduate but not a scholar of any
distinction, much less "of the highest qualifications".
The pertinence of Pitt the Younger's upbringing to that of a man who
lived two centuries earlier is not readily apparent to me. The image of
Pitt as a poet is mildly amusing.
Spam Scone
Tom Veal wrote:
> That we are well into the depths of Bardolatry is demonstrated when
Mr.
> Crowley assures us that anyone I might consider "almost as good as
> Shakespeare" would in fact be not "anywhere near so good". In
> literature, unlike every other field of human endeavor, we are
expected
> to believe that there is an immense gulf between best and second
best,
> so immense that entirely different rules apply to the two groups.
I've always considered antiStratfordian "thought" as Bardolatry run
mad. Scratch any antiStrat here; they'll all claim some sort of
elevated status for the Shakespeare canon above and beyond all other
human works.
John W. Kennedy
And to complete the circle, most of them really don't much like theatre,
and therefore don't actually much like Shakespeare; their bardolatry not
only overrates Shakespeare, it focuses on things that are not to be
found in Shakespeare at all.
--
John W. Kennedy
"I want everybody to be smart. As smart as they can be. A world of
ignorant people is too dangerous to live in."
-- Garson Kanin. "Born Yesterday"
Richard Kennedy
but see how the Strats rag at that round and about, like bull pups on a
towel, knawing for all worth, something to contest with, a fierce
chewing at something of no importance. It relieves them somewhat,
I suppose, after biting on the hard bone fact that the Stratman's
daughters were 'not' literate, and he was responsible for that.
Paul Crowley
news:1115671685....@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> > Hague's recent biography of Pitt the Younger?
> > He was one of the most brilliant of his
> > generation, and of many others -- and was
> > universally acclaimed for his extraordinary
> > eloquence. He could IMHO have possibly
> > been another 'Shakespeare' had he been
> > able to dedicate his life to literature rather
> > than to politics.
>
> Wrong. If Pitt had been born to be a poet, he would have found a way
> to become one, period. He would not have wasted his life in anything
> as trivial as politics.
Get your hands on Hague's book. It is well
written, and an enjoyable read. Btw, as you
probably don't know, Hague is himself one
of the most intelligent of modern fairly young
UK politicians (and that is a common opinion).
He took over the lead of the Tory party after
its landslide defeat 8 years ago, and took it
into another one 4 years ago. But that would
have been its fate no matter who was leader.
Many expect him to be a UK premier at some
point in the future.
> He could not have. His need for mental
> stimulation would have forced him to study works of art and make his
> own.
Pitt the Younger was responsible for
major changes in the UK administration
of government. He found a near-medieval
system and completely reformed it, almost
entirely by himself. Without him, the
resistance to Napoleon would have been
ineffective, and the whole of Europe and
America would have fallen under a French
tyranny and remained there for a century
or more.
> Only someone as lacking in creative imagination and
> self-reliance as you could not know this, Paul.
Only someone as ignorant as you belittles
politics. Without Pitt the Younger, you
would probably not have been born.
Or, if you were, it would have been into
a very different world.
Paul.
Spam Scone
John W. Kennedy wrote:
> Spam Scone wrote:
>
> > I've always considered antiStratfordian "thought" as Bardolatry run
> > mad. Scratch any antiStrat here; they'll all claim some sort of
> > elevated status for the Shakespeare canon above and beyond all
other
> > human works.
>
> And to complete the circle, most of them really don't much like
theatre,
> and therefore don't actually much like Shakespeare; their bardolatry
not
> only overrates Shakespeare, it focuses on things that are not to be
> found in Shakespeare at all.
Good point. That explains why Crowley et al view the plays as some sort
of road-map to the politics of Elizabeth's court.
John W. Kennedy
--
John W. Kennedy
Read the remains of Shakespeare's lost play, now annotated!
http://pws.prserv.net/jwkennedy/Double%20Falshood/index.html
Tom Veal
Other Kennedy lives in a different universe. "Stratfordians" have
devoted almost no attention to John Shakespeare's literacy, most taking
it for granted (on the basis of very thin evidence) that he could not
read or write. It was Mr. Crowley who raised the question here. But I
suppose that, in the RKennedyverse, responding to silly Crowleyisms
counts as "knawing".
(Now that I think of it, maybe "knaw" is a word that in fact means "to
engage in useless banter with people who make up facts to suit their
preconceptions". If so, it is a useful addition to the lexicon.)
Elizabeth
"'Stratfordians' have devoted almost no attention to John Shakespeare's
literacy, most taking it for granted (on the basis of very thin
evidence) that he could not read or write."
That's a variation on Sagan's 'appeal to ignorance.'
'Just because there's an absence of evidence doesn't mean
that there is evidence of absence.'
I realize that you're arguing that Strats should spend more time
looking for evidence of John Shakespeare's literacy but they've been
looking for nearly 400 years.
If there is an 'absence of evidence,' there's no way to determine that
the phenomenon exists or that it once existed, that it never existed
at all, that exists in another dimension or exists on a planet far,
far away.
In the absence of an example of John Shakespeare's handwriting scholars
cannot conclude that 'an example exists' but it's 'somewhere else' or
that it 'did exist' but has been 'lost.'
If Strats were not put in the position of defending an untenable myth
they would conclude the same about the six dissimilar and so far
unverified signatures which may or may
not (in lieu of expert forensics) have been written by the Stratford
player, his law clerk, his lawyer or some literate person who could
guide his hand.
At least two of the signatures are probably not his at all. I read that
the names (not the signatures) of the parties that made the Blackfriar
deed were written on the outside of the deed by the clerks, after the
deeds were folded and sealed. The deed must still be sealed since
we've never seen a copy of the text.
Cordially,
Elizabeth
Tom Veal
Elizabeth wrote:
> Tom Veal wrote:
>
> "'Stratfordians' have devoted almost no attention to John
Shakespeare's
> literacy, most taking it for granted (on the basis of very thin
> evidence) that he could not read or write."
>
> That's a variation on Sagan's 'appeal to ignorance.'
>
> 'Just because there's an absence of evidence doesn't mean
> that there is evidence of absence.'
>
> I realize that you're arguing that Strats should spend more time
> looking for evidence of John Shakespeare's literacy but they've been
> looking for nearly 400 years.
>
literate. My point was simply that, contrary to Other Kennedy's
illusions, Stratfordians have not been "knawing" at that question.
> If there is an 'absence of evidence,' there's no way to determine
that
> the phenomenon exists or that it once existed, that it never existed
> at all, that exists in another dimension or exists on a planet far,
> far away.
>
> In the absence of an example of John Shakespeare's handwriting
scholars
> cannot conclude that 'an example exists' but it's 'somewhere else' or
> that it 'did exist' but has been 'lost.'
>
> If Strats were not put in the position of defending an untenable myth
> they would conclude the same about the six dissimilar and so far
> unverified signatures which may or may
> not (in lieu of expert forensics) have been written by the Stratford
> player, his law clerk, his lawyer or some literate person who could
> guide his hand.
>
> At least two of the signatures are probably not his at all. I read
that
> the names (not the signatures) of the parties that made the
Blackfriar
> deed were written on the outside of the deed by the clerks, after the
> deeds were folded and sealed. The deed must still be sealed since
> we've never seen a copy of the text.
>
If one is satisfied, as I am, by the evidence that William Shakespeare
of Stratford wrote poems and plays, it isn't necessary to find other
evidence of his literacy. If we consider the matter without reference
to his auctorial activities, the fact that he worked as an actor, a
profession that demanded literacy, is solid evidence. The signatures
support the same conclusion but are not essential to it.
Chess One
"Richard Kennedy" <kenn...@charter.net> wrote in message
news:1115703130.6...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
It is interesting to note that Young Bill would have spent about 7 hours a
day with his tutor, and perhaps only one hour with his parents?
Thomas Jenkin taught him between the ages of twelve and fifteen - and Jenkin
was Welsh, and a product of the tradition Celtic institution of the poetic
schools, where the corpus of myth (a giant body of material) was the
required reading, and still alive. Jenkin would certainly be familiar with
some of it, if not a great deal of it, as is many a Welsh schoolmaster even
today.
If Jenkin knew the myth of Llyr for example, it is suggestive that our
author had early access to those riches - Jenkin could hardly fail to impart
it to an upstart lyric prodigy, as well as another, from the same
provenance, situation, plot and characters, as in the Tempest, a myth which
is closely related to the Llyr myth, and partly duplicates the Cordelia
figure.
Phil Innes
Spam Scone
Chess One wrote:
>
> If Jenkin knew the myth of Llyr for example, it is suggestive that
our
> author had early access to those riches - Jenkin could hardly fail to
impart
> it to an upstart lyric prodigy, as well as another, from the same
> provenance, situation, plot and characters, as in the Tempest, a myth
which
> is closely related to the Llyr myth, and partly duplicates the
Cordelia
> figure.
>
> Phil Innes
I was unaware that there is a "Cordelia" in the Tempest. The things one
learns from Mr. Innes!
Tom Veal
I think that he is trying to say that Miranda partly duplicates
Cordelia, which is true on some level, I suppose. Both have fathers
whom they love. And their fathers are former rulers who no longer
exercise power. And both of their names end in vowels. Isn't that
enough duplication for you?
Chess One
> Spam Scone wrote:
>> Chess One wrote:
>> >
>> > If Jenkin knew the myth of Llyr for example, it is suggestive that
>> our
>> > author had early access to those riches - Jenkin could hardly fail
> to
>> impart
>> > it to an upstart lyric prodigy, as well as another, from the same
>> > provenance, situation, plot and characters, as in the Tempest, a
> myth
>> which
>> > is closely related to the Llyr myth, and partly duplicates the
>> Cordelia
>> > figure.
>> >
>> > Phil Innes
>>
>> I was unaware that there is a "Cordelia" in the Tempest. The things
> one
>> learns from Mr. Innes!
>
> I think that he is trying to say
Ted Hughes, poet laureate, is trying to say...
> that Miranda partly duplicates
> Cordelia, which is true on some level, I suppose. Both have fathers
> whom they love. And their fathers are former rulers who no longer
> exercise power.
Yes - that's a fair gloss. Ted says it in 7,000 words, and with a few other
associations.
Cordially, Phil
Spam Scone
As always with Philth, it would be better if he would actually say what
he means.