“They are ways of passing off ignorance as truth” Wrong, the author used the example of Shakespeare being true. That is not ignorance, that is understanding the importance of a priceless work of art. Not just it’s nature as an artifact of history of drama/literature/psychology/etc, but the stories and poetry themselves are “true” in pretty much every sense that matters. Maybe there wasn’t really a Romeo and Juliet tween blood sacrifice that helped solidify the postfeudalistic sociopolitical strucuture in Verona, but that play is still an excellent portrayal of that time and place.
Maybe there wasn’t really a Romeo and Juliet tween blood sacrifice that helped solidify the postfeudalistic sociopolitical strucuture in Verona, but that play is still an excellent portrayal of that time and place.
You are talking there about simple truth, “empirical” truth, not the stuff I criticised as passing off ignorance.
BTW, the relationship of the play to historical Veronese politics is at best indirect. Tenuous, even. Shakespeare’s major source was Arthur Brooke’s poem “The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet” (1562), which was a free paraphrase of Matteo Bandello’s “Giuletta e Romeo” (1551), which was based on Luigi da Porto’s “Giulietta e Romeo” (1530), which was an adaptation of Masuccio Salernitano’s “Mariotto and Ganozza” (1476), the earliest known source for the tale. All of these were written as fiction.
“They are ways of passing off ignorance as truth” Wrong, the author used the example of Shakespeare being true. That is not ignorance, that is understanding the importance of a priceless work of art. Not just it’s nature as an artifact of history of drama/literature/psychology/etc, but the stories and poetry themselves are “true” in pretty much every sense that matters. Maybe there wasn’t really a Romeo and Juliet tween blood sacrifice that helped solidify the postfeudalistic sociopolitical strucuture in Verona, but that play is still an excellent portrayal of that time and place.
You are talking there about simple truth, “empirical” truth, not the stuff I criticised as passing off ignorance.
BTW, the relationship of the play to historical Veronese politics is at best indirect. Tenuous, even. Shakespeare’s major source was Arthur Brooke’s poem “The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet” (1562), which was a free paraphrase of Matteo Bandello’s “Giuletta e Romeo” (1551), which was based on Luigi da Porto’s “Giulietta e Romeo” (1530), which was an adaptation of Masuccio Salernitano’s “Mariotto and Ganozza” (1476), the earliest known source for the tale. All of these were written as fiction.