Although it was Quitslund's response to my initial query that prompted
the ensuing conversation, I will thank those who contributed.
For what it is worth, I realize now that my "memory" of another
comment by Miller regarding the "dead body of Tudor ideology" was
nothing more than what I imagined the comment to imply.
Thanks again,
Jim Broaddus
On 7/15/12, Susanne Woods <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Nice comments, Peter and David. Don't you think a retroview of Tillyard
> should also include Lewis, Discarded Image, and maybe The Great Chain of
> Being?
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jul 15, 2012, at 10:50 AM, Peter Herman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I think it was Anne Lake Prescott who said that Tillyard used the wrong
>> article: the book should have been titled An Elizabethan World Picture,
>> not The Elizabethan World Picture.
>>
>> pch
>>
>>
>> On 7/15/12 7:17 AM, "Hannibal Hamlin" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Yes, indeed. Ulysses's "degree" speech in Troilus and Cressida is a
>> notable case in point. It surely does depend upon and express a "world
>> view," but it can't be taken seriously in context since Ulysses is simply
>> using it rhetorically in order to manipulate Agamemnon. But this doesn't
>> mean the idea isn't valid or available to Shakespeare's contemporaries,
>> just that he doesn't seem to subscribe to it (or perhaps not even that).
>> One might say the same about various theological ideas or aspects of the
>> Christian "world view" that Shakespeare plays around with. They are
>> obviously used in complex, sometime ironic, ways, but that doesn't mean
>> Shakespeare didn't believe them, and certainly not that his contemporaries
>> didn't.
>>
>> Anyway, I also like the idea of a retroreview of Tillyard.
>>
>> Hannibal
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 9:58 PM, Harry Berger Jr <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>> One of the standard arguments about Tillyard is that he praises what the
>> text he's writing about critiques. I.e., he's not a very good close
>> reader. This doesn't mean he should have been a good close reader at the
>> time he was writing. It just means he wasn't; he was trying to do
>> something else.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jul 14, 2012, at 6:52 PM, Herron, Thomas wrote:
>>
>> Hmmm... a criticism of Tillyard, I take it? I wonder could we have a
>> re-appraisal of Tillyard in one of the SpR's promised "retro-reviews"?
>> The more I see "cosmic" structural patterns in Shakespeare (and Sp, too)
>> the more I think T's gotten a bad name in the last two generations. Not
>> that I've been thinking properly (or at all) for more than one.
>>
>> Because you're reductive doesn't mean you're wrong. Part of the reason
>> structural patterns are in Shakespeare is because of Spenser, I suspect.
>> Is Tillyard relevant for Sp Studies?
>>
>> Regards, --Tom
>> From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List [[log in to unmask]] on
>> behalf of Dennis Moore [[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2012 6:15 PM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: a comment by David Miller
>>
>> "Put Away the World-Picture" is the final chapter of Herbert Howarth's The
>> Tiger's Heart: Eight Essays on Shakespeare (Oxford 1970). I owned the book
>> back then as a student, but that's the only chapter I remember. I haven't
>> seen it for a long time, but it struck me then as an excellent critique of
>> a certain reductive style of historicism.
>>
>> Dennis Moore
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Harry Berger Jr <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>> What, specifically, is the "Tudor ideology"? If it's the far-fetched
>> legendary stuff that was used to add legitimacy to the Tudor royal line,
>> then I agree with David [Miller] that it's not something I want to see
>> resuscitated in interpretation. -Jon Quitslund
>>
>> Jon, what about this phrase: "contemporary critiques of Tudor ideology."
>> Are there such critiques? If so, don't they constitute what they critique
>> by critiquing it???
>>
>> Well, it's the weekend and the sun is out.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Jul 14, 2012, at 12:40 PM, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>>
>> Jim and All,
>>
>> I hope this query galvanizes some members of the list, so we can have a
>> lively discussion of the basic issue that Jim B. touches upon.
>>
>> What, specifically, is the "Tudor ideology"? If it's the far-fetched
>> legendary stuff that was used to add legitimacy to the Tudor royal line,
>> then I agree with David that it's not something I want to see resuscitated
>> in interpretation. I do, however, see perennial value in many aspects of
>> the historical contexts for Tudor literature. I think we each have to
>> work with what makes sense to us as we write within our present-day
>> contexts, and some of what we might see, or want to see, in Spenser (for
>> example) is refutable, or rendered unlikely, by what was demonstrably part
>> of the world as Spenser knew it.
>>
>> Alas, I haven't seen Dreams of the Burning Child, and I have no memory of
>> the phrasing that Jim is looking for. But perhaps there is something else
>> that would suit Jim's purpose. I have a vague memory of a polemical
>> article published, I think, late in the 60s: the title, I think, is "Put
>> Away Your World Picture." Maybe others on the list can provide more than
>> the title, and offer an opinion on its relevance. (Perhaps, in the light
>> of later developments, it's not only dead but rotten.)
>>
>> Jon Quitslund
>>
>> From: James Broaddus <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Fri, July 13, 2012 11:04:52 AM
>> Subject: a comment by David Miller
>>
>> I remember that David Miller commented somewhere or other that he was
>> not interested in The Faerie Queene as a reflection of the decayed
>> body of what in the sixteenth century were dominant discourses.
>>
>> I emailed David about where I could find such a comment—I am engaged
>> in one of my 1960-ish projects and would like to quote him.
>>
>> David responded that he had said something on that order at different
>> times and referred me to the phrase, “dead body of Tudor ideology” on
>> pp. 13-14 in Dreams of the Burning Child.
>>
>> But my memory is of a more graphic phrase, something more suggestive
>> of decay and perhaps even rotten.
>>
>> David said it would be ok if I queried the discussion list about the
>> matter.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Jim Broaddus
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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