I was reading this book in my bed with Maggie and Daniel alongside building a fort for dolls and stuffed dogs under my covers. So I will have to skim over this first two chapters and a bit again, to pick up what was missed.
I must just say that reading this book is very much like running in subzero weather with an injured hip. I will continue with it, I will complete it, I will benefit from it, and there will be moments as I go along where I realize the great genius of the work in my hand. And as I move through this piece of work, there will be times when it feels like an assignment.
Assignments are good. I'm glad to have one, here.
Girard has written here a book which reinterprets Shakespeare's plays within the context of his theory of mimetic desire. "Mimetic desire" describes our human tendency to desire a particular thing simply because we see that someone else desires that thing.
It is a real human trait, no doubt.
I think of how we all will choose any number of things....shoes, vacation destinations, hobbies, dog breeds, educational tracks....and our choice of these items was inspired or even provoked by the fact that someone else, or many other individuals, demonstrated a desire for the same item.....or menu choice, or funky new phrase, or inessential technology.
Isn't the success of Twitter proof of this?
I can just see Girard shaking his head and moaning "THAT's not what I meant...." But it's helpful to dumb it down for my better comprehension.
So, Girard makes some excellent arguments in this book that Shakespeare's characters were inexorably driven by mimetic desire.
I have not read every Shakespeare play, but I think I had four Shakespeare courses in college. Not one of them covered his plays from this narrow perspective.
As I think through the plays I do retain in my old brain, I can see that his idea that any of Shakespeare's protagonists, upon seeing desire in the eyes of another, will predictably respond with an outsized display of envy.
This then brings the life of the envier into a downward spiral from which there is no redemption.
Think of Troilus and Cressida. I have not gotten to his treatment of this one, but I almost feel like I know what he's going to say. In T and C, it's going on everywhere, with Cressida observing Troilus's neglect of her and then trying to reignite his affection through jealousy. And the various manipulations of Ajax, Ulysses, Achilles.....all just responses to their jealous need for what his held or desired by another.
Anyway, Girard certainly gave a good argument for it in The Two Gentlemen from Verona and The Rape of Lucrece. How could The Rape of Lucrece be read as anything else, though.
2 comments:
If mimetic desire is a pervasive, common human trait, then I would think Shakespeare's characters would naturally reflect that phenomenon inasmuch as they are involved in drama concerned with humanity's issues - whatever the plot-line might be - with redemption being the question in the end, as for all of us.
Lori, don't you think though that just leafing through the Shakespeare plays that we are all familiar with, there are characters in virtually every play I can think of who place themselves beyond redemption (within the framework of the play) because they make one poor choice after another, each one bringing their destruction closer and closer.
I am thankful that I do not live within the confines of a Shakespeare play, and that I have a saviour who redeems even after I have made an appalling chain of destructive choices.
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