Thinking Makes It So: Book-ing and Movie-ing and Think-ing

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Book-ing and Movie-ing and Think-ing

As I've mentioned before, I'm searching into sounds in Shakespeare's texts. I don't know which aspect to take, really, so I've just been exploring these past few days. How narrow should I be getting, anyway?

So in my adventures, I found some fun toys to play with.

The Sound of Shakespeare, Wes Folkerth. This book talks about "listening as Shakespeare listened," which is something that fascinates me. Shakespeare, according to Folkerth, listened to sounds uncommon, common, and everything in between, and then used his knowledge of people's expectations in his plays to work on people's emotions. I want to get more into this book for sure.

Author's Pen and Actor's Voice: Playing and Writing in Shakespeare's Theater, Robert Weimann. "This study redefines relations between writing and playing... as marked by difference as well as integration in... the production of early modern stages." That's what the back of the book says. I'm trying to see how sound focuses the text, and how it can help interpret the play. There is a section on "Pen and Voice" and the difference between the visual and the auditory. I wish to investigate that aspect.

Shakespeare's Use of Song, Richmond Noble. What is more sound-y than music? What got me started on this focus was reading The Tempest, and seeing all of Ariel's songs. This book has a section that is all about Ariel's songs in that play. Good find? I think so.

I haven't read all of these texts yet, but I'm getting started on them. All three of these books were written by intelligent people at universities like Oxford and Stanford. AND I found all of them in our library. Did you know that there are tons of books on Shakespeare up there? I got distracted with all of the topics, and actually took note of a few because I knew some of my classmates had related topics.

Anyway, those are some texts that I'm diving into to get some grasp on where to go from here. Also, this weekend, I plan to be watching some adaptations of either Taming of the Shrew (ie, 10 Things I Hate About You, Kiss Me, Kate), or Twelfth Night (ie, She's the Man). If anyone wants to have a party, or owns one of those movies, let me know.

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dteeps 28p · 736 weeks ago

So, you're dealing with the sound of Shakespeare? As in what it would have sounded like to hear Shakespeare performed? Then it might be interesting for you to also look into something called the Great Vowel Shift, which was a shift in how vowel sounds were pronounced that occurred between the mid1400s and the mid1700s. I have done a little research on that as part of my Germanic and Linguistics courses, it really is interesting that words had completely different sounds.
You can tell a bit of that (and one of the ways that scholars know this sound shift happened) by looking at the text, especially at passages that are supposed to rhyme, but with our modern pronunciation don't.
Also, since printing became widespread during this time we have spelling becoming standardized, which helps explain why there are so many different ways of spelling the same vowel sound, and also why the same spelling can have multiple pronunciations (-ough, for example).
If you are really interested in the sound of words, you might want to look, at least a bit, into linguistics and especially phonetics.

1 reply · active 736 weeks ago

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NatashyaC 34p · 736 weeks ago

Thank you! I knew that there was a difference in speaking/pronunciation that occurred since his day, but I didn't know what it was called or where to start looking. :) I am interested in the aspect of maybe what puns were lost because we don't pronounce words as he did anymore, like how Much Ado About Nothing would have been said Much Ado About NOTING. Thanks so much!

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Lindsay Brock 42p · 736 weeks ago

I am excited to see how your topic/s develop! The newer version we were talking about in class appears to have come out in November of 2010, so I am going to see if I can get a hold of it. I will let you know. If so, we should get together with whoever else wants to and watch it.

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Gideon Burton 56p · 736 weeks ago

Natashya - A good exploration of your topic of sound using some critical sources. Please don't forget to give full details of texts so we can situate them better knowing their dates, publishers, etc.

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Thursday, March 3, 2011

Book-ing and Movie-ing and Think-ing

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