Stanford Humanities Center
Literary need from Spenser to Blanchot: 1. The art of our necessities
the erotic maskWorn the world over by illusionTo weddings of itself and simple need.
Shakespeare and the social network
I was intrigued by this (abstract) mathematical analysis of structural balance in social groups because I was teaching Richard II all week, and thinking about my favorite book on Shakespeare, Richard Decker's Anatomy of the Screenplay.
Where did you die?
But it was all a mystery. Here we are,And there we go:--but where? (Byron, Don Juan V.39)Look there, look there, King Lear implores, pointing to the dead Cordelia. We know she's dead, but he wants her to "stay a little," which is so much less to ask, in this final scene, than his icy, impossible demand in the first scene that she "mend her speech a little."
Two queries
Sometimes you notice an aesthetic effect or technique and assume that there must be a name for it. But how can you look it up? Maybe you can just ask.
