Lee Wrote:
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> Sue,
>
> Well, here I part ways with Mr. Swilley. While I
> certainly agree that knowing that "S" wasn't
> really "S" adds nothing to an appreciation of the
> plays themselves, the biographical and historical
> data -- there is such a thing, after all as a
> history of literature quite apart from lit crit.
> -- are perfectly interesting and worth having in
> their own right.

Actually, I think Mr. Swilley would agree with you here, with one caveat.. that the two modalities be kept separate.

A study of an author's life or
> the history of work of literature, including who
> may or may not have written it, needs no defense
> from anyone. I want to know who wrote the
> interpolations in Macbeth.

What do you mean by the -interpolations- in Macbeth?
Are you saying that two authors wrote that play?

As we all know, much of older English lit had multiple authorship, and some of that did not always have the most fortunate outcome. Here I'm thinking of the Old English works like Beowulf and The Wanderer, where the Christian monks worked their interpolative magick.

Which translation of
> Dr. Faustus are you using, by the way? I think
> Lowe-Porter's butchering of the book is about as
> bad as bad can be.

I'm not sure because the book's at home, but it read great to me.
Have you read the book in German? Is that how you know L-P's is
that bad?

There is a new translation by
> John Wood, but I haven't looked at it. The novel
> in the original is an absolute marvel, but it does
> present monstrous difficulties for someone trying
> to render it into anything close to idiomatic
> English.

I can imagine because of what Mann did with all the versions of German, which must be rather daunting even for a native German. Oh well... I'm not hard to please, even in translation I guess. ;-)

Sue

(edited for additional content)





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2005 02:11PM by Sue.