National Poets, the Status of the Epic and the Strange Case of Master William Shakespeare

Authors

  • Paul Innes University of Gloucestershire

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1515/mstap-2016-0004

Keywords:

Shakespeare, national poets, comparative literature, romanticism, nationalism, conceptual grid, empire

Abstract

This essay contextualises Shakespeare as product of a field of forces encapsulating national identity and relative cultural status. It begins by historicising the production of national poets in Romantic and Nationalist terms. Lefevere’s conceptual grid is then used to characterise the system that underpins the production of Shakespeare as British national poet, and his place within the canon of world literature. The article defines this context first before moving onto the figure of Shakespeare, by referring to various high status texts such as the Kalevala, the Aeneid, The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost. The position accorded Shakespeare at the apex is therefore contingent upon a series of prior operations on other texts, and their writers. Shakespeare is not conceived as attaining pre-eminence because of his own innate literary qualities. Rather, a process of elimination occurs by which the common ascription of the position of national poet to a writer of epic is shown to be a cultural impossibility for the British. Instead, via Aristotle’s privileging of tragedy over epic, the rise of Shakespeare is seen as almost a second choice because of the inappropriateness of Spenser and Milton for the position.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Aristotle. “On the Art of Poetry.” Aristotle, Horace, Longinus: Classical Literary Criticism. Trans. T.S. Dorsch. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983.
Google Scholar

Bate, Jonathan, ed. The Romantics on Shakespeare. London: Penguin Books, 1997. 128-163.
Google Scholar

Belsey, Catherine. Why Shakespeare? Basinsgtoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 1-20.
Google Scholar

Bush, Douglas, ed. Milton: Poetical Works. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Google Scholar

Goldsworthy, Adrian. Antony and Cleopatra. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2010.
Google Scholar

Hawkes, Terence. Meaning by Shakespeare. London: Routledge, 1992. 141-153
Google Scholar

Holderness, Graham. “An Arabian in My Room: Shakespeare and the Canon.” Critical Survey 26.2 (2014): 73-89.
Google Scholar

Innes, Paul. Epic. London and New York: Routledge, 2013.
Google Scholar

Lefevere, André. “The Gates of Analogy: The Kalevala in English.” Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation. Eds. Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 1998. 76-89.
Google Scholar

Le Guin, Usula K. Lavinia. London: Orion, 2010.
Google Scholar

Nemoianu, Virgil. “National Poets in the Romantic Age: Emergence and Importance.” Romantic Poetry. Vol. 7. Ed. Angela Esterhammer. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2002. 249-256.
Google Scholar

Roche, P., ed. Edmund Spenser: The Faerie Queene. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1984.
Google Scholar

Vickers, Brian. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
Google Scholar

Virgil. “Aeneid.” Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form From Virgil to Milton. Trans. David Quint. Princeton: Princeton University Press, Princeton 1993.
Google Scholar

Downloads

Published

2016-04-22

How to Cite

Innes, P. (2016). National Poets, the Status of the Epic and the Strange Case of Master William Shakespeare. Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 13(28), 35–50. https://doi.org/10.1515/mstap-2016-0004

Issue

Section

Articles