Elisabeth Waugaman — French Cultural Influences on Shakespeare скачать в хорошем качестве

Elisabeth Waugaman — French Cultural Influences on Shakespeare

Shakespearen scholars have largely repudiated early scholarly work on the influence of French literature on Shakespeare, resulting in a near-total denial of any French influence except though translation. Recent scholarship is beginning to change that traditional stance. Travis Williams proves that Shakespeare read Montaigne in French, and Richard Hillman studies the influence of the French tragedies on Shakespeare. Their work was published by mainstream academic presses. The key is writing persuasive arguments that avoid the authorship question. This puts traditional scholarship in the awkward position of having to dumb down Shakespeare if a rejection is based solely on what Shaksper could have known, as opposed to the knowledge or the influence the work actually exhibits. This is the tactic Georges Lambin described in 1962. As the overwhelming importance of French language, literature, and politics is increasingly understood, the role of Shaksper will continue to diminish as we see happening already with the multiple authorship theory. The latter was developed, consciously or unconsciously, as a means of explaining the vast knowledge the Shakespeare oeuvre exhibits. The French/English linguistic, historical, and political relationship reverberates throughout Shakespeare’s works, and is the core of its inspiration in creating a new language, a new literature, and a new political reality. Dr. Waugaman believes a much needed study of the influence of the French language on Shakespeare is yet another important though mostly unexplored key in the authorship discussion. The French also have the answer for the “conspiracy theory” of a single “unknown” author—Molière is a nom de plume. This talk was presented on October 15, 2017, at the SOF Annual Conference in Chicago. Elisabeth Pearson Waugaman, Ph.D., received a B.A. from Newcomb College of Tulane University. She did graduate studies at Princeton and Duke, and received a Ph.D. in Medieval French literature from Duke University. She taught at Duke and Johns Hopkins Universities. She is the author of "The Multiple Meanings of Mora, the Flagship of William the Conqueror"; "Follow Your Dreams: The Story of Alberto Santos-Dumont," for which she received the Alberto Santos-Dumont Medal from the Brazilian government; and "Women, Their Names, and the Stories They Tell." She blogs for Psychology Today, Nameberry, The Freelance History Writer, and Atlas Obscura. Thanks to promptings by Richard Waugaman, Roger Stritmatter, and Robert Meyers, she has begun researching the French influence on Shakespeare’s works, centering on that of the French language. For more on the Shakespeare Authorship Question, visit ShakespeareOxfordFellowship.org.