Posited Points:
1. To gain significant insight from the Commedia, a reader must
have significant knowledge of historical and political issues in
Italy during Dante's lifetime.
2. To gain significant insight from the Faerie Queene, a reader
must have significant knowledge of historical and political
issues in England/Britain during Spenser's lifetime.
3. To gain significant insight from Ulysses, a reader must have
significant knowledge of historical and political issues in
Ireland during Joyce's lifetime, and also have knowledge of the
Odyssey and Hamlet.
Question:
1. To gain significant insight from MacBeth, MUST a reader have
significant knowledge of historical and political issues in
England during Shakespeare's lifetime, and also have knowledge
of the historical King MacBeth?
Conditional Questions:
IF the posited points are accepted, and the answer to the
question is "no" or "to a much lesser extent than is the case
with Dante, Spenser, and Joyce", is it true that MacBeth is a
more effective vehicle for communicating the artist's insight to
a broad spectrum of potential readers, who may live during the
artist's lifetime or centuries or millennia thereafter?
Posited Point:
A benefit of art is communication of "light" or "vision" or
"knowledge" or "insight" or "wisdom" from one who has been
gifted with ability to "see" / understand aspects of human
reality (the artist) to those who may not readily "see" without
being taught (the "common" reader).
Conditional Question:
IF the posited point is accepted, isn't it true that the more
highly "fettered" a work of art is with detailed local political
and historical references, the less effective the art is at
accomplishing the posited "benefit"?
Question and Conditional Question:
Is it likely that 400 years from now MacBeth will be much more
widely read and studied by "common" readers than will be the
Commedia, the Faerie Queene, and Ulysses?
IF "yes", is this because MacBeth is referential not to the
issues of a specific locality at a specific point in history,
but rather to the same type of issues, but embedded within a
mythology that allows the reader to "see" MacBeth as discussing
political, moral, intellectual, and social issues that exist
within his/her own specific locality and lifetime, because the
issues elaborated in the play have existed and will exist in all
localities throughout all of human history?
Questions:
Is art that is "fettered" with issues of specific concern in a
specific locality at a specific time in history less valuable
and less significant and less important as a tool for
transmitting human knowledge and "wisdom" than art that not
"fettered" by temporal and geographic locality?
Is it correct to attribute "the invention of the human" to
Shakespeare in part because his works can be read and understood
as archetypal myths that are self-referential and referential to
all times and all localities? Such that each reader ("common" or
academic) can witness the invention of humanity within his/her
own locality and time by studying Shakespearean text?
Conditional Question:
IF the answer to the last two questions is "yes", is
"unfettered" art superior to "fettered" art because it is
ultimately more beneficial to the entirety ("common" as well as
academic) of humankind?
Apologies:
1. for being obsessed with these issues
2. for breaking my vow of silence and, in general, talking too much
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