"Wherefore Art Thou Meaning?"Many times while reading Shakespeare this is the main question on my mind. Through my own pondering & writing and hopefully some comments from others, I hope to find some answers.
When asked to deliver letters for Armado and Berowne, Costard receives payments from each of these men. When Armado gives remuneration, Costard decides that must be Latin for three farthings. When Berowne gives Costard guerdon, Costard also takes this to describe the particular amount of money.
Costard does not quite understand the level of language used by some of the other characters, which is a language of metaphoric discourse. Costard believes that the amount of money has the particular names of remuneration and guerdon. Costard's poor understanding of language is used as a foil to Berowne, who has impressive language skills. This play highlights the importance of language, which is one of the reasons I am loving reading the work.
I love the language of this play. I have seen Love's Labour's Lost performed by Idaho State University during my senior year of high school. The characters' clever use of language (or not) keep the play moving and entertaining. When the King of Navarre and his three lords, Berowne, Longaville, and Dumaine make an oath to study for the next three years and fast, while getting little sleep and avoiding women. Longaville and Dumaine agree to enter the pact with the King of Navarre, but Berowne does not think he can handle it.
BEROWNE: O, these are barren tasks, too hard to keep,
Not to see ladies, study, fast, not sleep! (1.1.4)
Berowne thinks that it is wrong to put a man up against his natural instincts.
Then, we learn that the daughter of the French king is about to visit. When Berowne asks the King of Nevarre how he is going to handle this visit, the king says that their interaction will be out of necessity. Berowne catches this loophole, realizing that they will all just break their vow and call it necessity.
BEROWNE: Necessity will make us all forsworn
Three thousand times within this three years' space; (1.1.38)
I have never read this play before, but so far, I am really enjoying it.
Who would have thought that Shakespeare's personal pronoun usage would vary for his comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances? I certainly never thought about it. Way to go, Kaleigh, for exploring this idea through the means of digital humanities! I love how in addition to looking at Shakespeare in a new light, she incorporated work done at Brigham Young University. My Linguistics class has spoken frequently about the Corpora of British and American English or COCA/COHA, and I have to use a similar corpus for my research paper in that class. These corpuses allow us to research words and grammar in a new way, being able to quickly see how many times a certain word is used either throughout history or in the modern world.
Kaleigh argues that a marriage is needed between the two methods of study, traditional methods and the digital humanities movement. They truly do enhance the other. As I mentioned in a previous post, my research paper did not make my argument come alive as well as my blog did with the usage of pictures, videos, etc. I feel this is true for many research papers. They are well written and have a good point, but they lack the energy to really engage the reader in the work. With the use of both text-analytic techniques and the incorporation of digital media, not only would the paper be more engaging to a scholastic audience, but also to many non-scholastic audiences. With Kaleigh's paper, I see her paper being applicable to any person trying to teach or learn. There is something special added when a visual aid is used; the learner is allowed another experience with the idea, allowing more of their own ideas to be formed because they have more information to form them with.
One idea I had for Kaleigh would be to connect Shakespeare's process with the process of a modern writer such as Salman Rushdie, who recently spoke about donating his personal papers to the university archives at Emory. He speaks about how computers and other technology have affected his writing and creative process. It then turns to how archival science and archival access have changed the way he uses his own archives. How would it be to cite a YouTube video in your research paper, or better yet, have that video as a part of your research paper?
As the picture above says, digital humanities are allowing the writing process to transform through technology. We have so much information at our fingertips in multiple formats. Why would we limit ourselves to the written word when so much more is available? That is not to say that traditional writing is not important; this format has been the source of the spread of academic knowledge for years and still has a place in society today. However, the process and format does not need to be set in stone. With the technology available, some bending of the rules should now be allowed to connect with an audience used to getting answers quickly. By incorporating a simple 30 second movie clip of Hamlet, with the scene of Ophelia coming to the water, I feel I would be able to better convey the emotion and psychological processes behind her actions. Kaleigh states in her paper, "Digital humanities allow for an expansion beyond traditional textual analysis, taking the foundation built by good old-fashioned research and broadening the scope of comprehension through new mediums. In this way, digital studies are an essential tool to furthering the research of humanities and texts in the modern age and should not be seen as an unusual and unscholarly, no matter how unconventional the methods of research may appear."
Does this not just say iPad to you? How amazing would it be to pick up a 20 page academic paper in the form of a computer or iPad that allows you to explore the pictures, videos, Powerpoints, etc. that inspired the ideas of the author! This would allow the reader to better understand the thought process of the author and help them to have a stronger basis on which they can form their own ideas on the subject. Another way to show the power of digital humanities would be to discuss the new digital books which are interactive with pictures, videos, and data visualizations.
I do not know if this is where Kaleigh wishes to take her research, but if she wanted a more narrow topic, she could pick a specific area of the digital humanities to explore how the use of digital books or/and archival science would change how people read and experience Shakespeare and his grammar. Great job, Kaleigh! I am excited to see your research and learn more about the digital humanities with Shakespeare's grammar.
Many of us probably recognize Helena Bonham Carter for her unique and dramatic roles, and the scenes I have seen of her as Ophelia in Hamlet are just as well done. Ophelia went through a lot in her young short life, just as a traditional research paper does. They are both used, abused, and confused in different ways. Ophelia had multiple authors, if you will, shaping her every word and idea to rigidly fit their ideal. Traditional research papers have a standard and rigid format as well, where little freedom can be taken to express new ideas.
While meeting with Dr. Burton, he asked me to consider ways to apply my paper to an audience outside of the scholarly realm and challenged me to think of new ways to present my paper to incorporate different media types in both the presentation and application. I believe my paper expressed my ideas well, but they just did not come to life as they would have with the help of supplementary media material.
As I have begun exploring applications for my research during the writing process, I have considered studying Ophelia's loss of identity experience with the loss of her father, brother, and lover to the fear of loss of identity through Internet usage. While meeting with Dr. Burton, we also discussed how the rigid format expected of traditional research papers are the Poloniuses of the scholastic world. They leave little room for expression and femininity. This presented the opportunity to argue that the old way of writing papers is the masculine form, where the new form, allowing writers to present their works in a new creative format, is the free and feminine form of expression. The idea of being able to present your information in a form such as a Prezi presentation, would allow me to show the artwork that has supported my arguments in my blog, along with movie clips and other media to truly show the nature, psychology, and life of Ophelia.
When it comes to an audience, a very realistic one would be young girls experiencing Ophelia Syndrome. I feel that a way to do this might be to create an appealing and interactive Prezi presentation that teaches about the dangers of this problem through the experiences of Ophelia.
