Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-g7rbq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-29T04:02:03.875Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Afloat in Thick Deeps: Shakespeare's Sonnets on Certainty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Lars Engle
Lars Engle*
Affiliation:
University of TulsaTulsa, Oklahoma
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Instead of being essentially Platonic, as generations of critics have contended, Shakespeare's sonnets embrace a fundamentally economic idea of value. Their claims to certainty and to permanence refer to human systems rather than to transcendent absolutes. In this respect they resemble Wittgenstein's final writings, collected as On Certainty. Basing their own predicted endurance on their continued utility through time and social change, the sonnets sketch a pragmatic account of human continuity and a nonessentialist idea of human nature. This description of their literary process also suggests why they now seem peculiarly canonical.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 104 , Issue 5 , October 1989 , pp. 832 - 843
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Bernard, John. “To Constancie Confin'de': The Poetics of Shakespeare's Sonnets.” PMLA 94 (1979): 77–90.10.2307/461802CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Booth, Stephen. An Essay on Shakespeare's Sonnets. New Haven: Yale UP, 1969.Google Scholar
Booth, ed. Shakespeare's Sonnets. New Haven: Yale UP, 1977.Google Scholar
Dollimore, Jonathan. Radical Tragedy: Religion, Ideology and Power in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. Brighton: Harvester, 1984.Google Scholar
Donne, John. Poetical Works. Ed. Grierson, Herbert J. C. London: Oxford UP, 1971.Google Scholar
Dubrow, Heather. Captive Victors: Shakespeare's Narrative Poems and Sonnets. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Engle, Lars. “‘Thrift is Blessing’: Exchange and Explanation in The Merchant of Venice.” Shakespeare Quarterly 37 (1986): 20–37.10.2307/2870189CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferry, Anne. All in War with Time: Love Poetry of Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, Marvell. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1975.Google Scholar
Ferry, Anne. The “Inward” Language. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983.Google Scholar
Fineman, Joel. Shakespeare's Perjured Eye: The Invention of Poetic Subjectivity in the Sonnets. Berkeley: U of California P, 1986.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, Donald W. “Master W. H., R.I.P.” PMLA 102 (1987): 42–54.10.2307/462491CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. “On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love.” Trans. Tyson, Alan. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. and trans. Strachey, James. Vol. 11. New York: Norton, 1976. 179–17.Google Scholar
Futagawa, Yukio, and Pawley, Martin. Frank Lloyd Wright: Public Buildings. New York: Simon, 1970.Google Scholar
Greene, Thomas M. “Pitiful Thrivers: Failed Husbandry in the Sonnets.” Shakespeare and the Question of Theory. Ed. Parker, Patricia and Hartman, Geoffrey. New York: Methuen, 1985. 230–23.Google Scholar
Ingram, W. A., and Redpath, Theodore, eds. Shakespeare's Sonnets. London: U of London P, 1964.Google Scholar
Knight, G. Wilson. The Mutual Flame: On Shakespeare's Sonnets and The Phoenix and the Turtle. London: Methuen, 1955.Google Scholar
Krieger, Murray. A Window to Criticism: Shakespeare's Sonnets and Modern Poetics. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1964.10.1515/9781400879519CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Trans. Cunnison, I. New York: Norton, 1967.Google Scholar
Martin, Philip. Shakespeare's Sonnets: Self, Love, and Art. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1972.Google Scholar
Onions, C. T. A Shakespeare Glossary. Rev. Robert Eagleson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986.Google Scholar
Petrarch. Petrarch's Lyric Poems. Ed. and trans. Durling, Robert M. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1976.Google Scholar
Quigley, Austin. “Wittgenstein's Philosophizing and Literary Theorizing.” New Literary History 19 (1988): 209–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Richard. Consequences of Pragmatism. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1982.Google Scholar
Rosmarin, Adena. “Hermeneutics versus Erotics: Shakespeare's Sonnets and Interpretive History.” PMLA 100 (1985): 20–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, David. “Literary Criticism and the Return to ‘History.‘” Critical Inquiry 14 (1988): 721–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. “Fixed Marks and Variable Constancies: A Parable of Literary Value.” Poetics Today 1 (1979): 7–22.10.2307/1772038CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheeler, Samuel C., iii. “Wittgenstein as Conservative Deconstructor.” New Literary History 19 (1988): 239–23.Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. On Certainty. Ed. Anscombe, G. E. M. and von Wright, G. H. Trans. Paul, Denis and Anscombe, G. E. M. New York: Harper, 1969.Google Scholar