Love's Labor's Lost and Folklore in the Digital Age

We live in a remix culture. This is extraordinarily problematic when considering current copyright laws, but that is a discussion for another day. In our culture, we take things we've heard, seen, read, or experienced and incorporate them and remix them for our own purposes. In academia, this is as simple as quoting someone and expanding upon that quote to support your argument (and then citing them so as to protect their intellectual property). On Facebook, this could be taking a movie still and commenting on it with your own words to make a witty point. On YouTube, this is taking clips from several different romantic period movies and putting music over it to make a romantic music video.

There are a billion and a half ways we remix, but this concept of remixing wasn't born of the digital age. Authors have always borrowed from others authors, reference popular culture works to make a joke, and taken age-old fairy tales and made them their own (a nod to Mr. Disney).

If Only Ophelia had had a Social Network

Throughout this post, I've included images of Ophelia I've found on Flickr that were creative-commons licensed. I've linked back to the artists page in the captions underneath. 

  photo courtesy of  Woflgangfoto

Gosh, I've gotten distracted looking at artwork (and movie clips) of Ophelia for at least an hour! Ashley's blog gave me a spring board and I dived right in. These portraits of Ophelia are absolutely mesmerizing! And how disturbing is that!? What is it about a suicidal girl that has so captured the imagination of artists for centuries that they cannot stop recreating her?

  photo courtesy of  andypowe11

I think Ashley's paper is very significant in this respect and boy does she ever have an audience to draw upon! Ashley does great character analysis of Ophelia, a character who's personality is not her own but is made up of the intents and wishes of others. Ashley quotes an article in her paper that sums it up rather well: “Indeed with her identity constructed always in reference to another, Ophelia is, in essence, nothing, an empty cipher patiently waiting to be infused with whatever meaning the particular mathematician should require.  Lacking personal ego boundaries of her own, Ophelia seems compelled to absorb whatever psychic identity is thrust upon her (Dane 410-411).”

  photo courtesy of  Ло

But Ashley, I don't think you need to draw stretched allusions to identity theft on the Internet to find an authentic audience for your ideas. You have one! Our culture is obviously obsessed with the idea of dead females (or I might argue the loss of the feminine). Just take a look at some popular movies that have captured the public imagination in the last few years: Inception (dead wife), The Dark Knight (dead fiance), Harry Potter (dead mom)... In just the last year, Hugo (dead parents), The Descendants (seriously injured wife), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (missing woman), Breaking Dawn (girl who essentially dies/ gives up life? by becoming a vampire - ok maybe that's a stretch), etc.  People are really obsessed with this idea of the missing or dead feminine. "Frailty, woman is thy name!" - yes, but only because we keep killing her off!

  photo courtesy of  Kevin H

It might be interesting for you to look into this idea more - is the loss of Ophelia's identity significant for the other characters in the play. Music and flowers are feminine-infused objects and so the fact that Ophelia uses them once there is no hold or pressure on her is interesting. Also, in folklore and mythology, the ocean and water is associated with the womb and so the mother or the feminine. So Ophelia dying in water is like returning to the feminine because the world was too masculine and violent for her to remain there.

  photo courtesy of  mydearDelilah

I think Ashley is absolutely correct that this paper is incomplete without artwork and movie clips to back it up. There are hundreds of paintings, photographs, etc that have been created around Ophelia and they say so much more than you can in a ten page paper! Ashley, I think you could have the most impact on potential audiences by creating your own artwork perhaps and writing short blurbs about it.

photo courtesy of Temari 09

Wouldn't it be wonderful to show Ophelia's loss of identity through artistically set up photographs that suggest Ophelia's loss of identy by either not having her whole self in the frame or just having items that suggest her floating on water or something? How eerie would that be?! Or show how she is just a cipher into which others pour their own identities by a photo of Ophelia looking into a mirror and seeing the men in her life or a basin with a woman painted on it with men inside.  I've been just obsessed with checking your blog just to see the photos of Ophelia that you post. They are positively chilling. I think you could really make an impact by creating your own artwork and linking back to what you've written. You can find audiences on flickr and other photo sharing sites. There are social networks for artists like SANe and artists2artists.

DONE!

Finally finished my rough draft! 

If anyone has time today before my interview at 2 p.m to edit, I'd be happy to exchange for taking a look at your's as well! 

More Tweethis Results

Conversation about my original Tweethis on Facebook:

Reactions to my "Outline" / Elaborated Thesis on Facebook:

New Facebook Tweethis

Now I've gone the complete opposite direction (too long) and prolly no one will post on this either. LOL. 

I also posted a link to facebook of my rough rough draft. How brave is that?!

Tweethis Succes

So, I connected my Facebook and Twitter feeds so that when I posted my tweethis to Twitter, it posted automatically to Facebook. 

I got two likes on Facebook. It was a little encouraging, but something about one being my mother-in-law and one being a close friend, didn't make it feel like any big success. I'm thinking that 140 characters is just not enough to invite attention on Facebook. Not enough at all. I'm going to post a much longer thesis on Facebook as well as an invitation for others to comment on my post following Ellie's example. 

BUT!!!

I did have something amazing happen with my Tweethis on Twitter!! Someone retweeted me! Someone I don't even know and who doesn't follow me... so I'm hypothesizing they must have found me in a search. Well, you better believe I started following them! I retweet! I'm so honored! sniff* Thank you GallowayNightSky!

And you better believe I thanked him:

Tweethis

Be honest, does this make any sense out of context?

The power of #Shakespeare’s plays to popularize #folklore frightened institutions much like modern fear of tech’s power to quickly share unvalidated knowledge

I'm sending it out into the twitterverse in a few seconds and I just feel like it seriously weakened my thesis to shorten it to so few characters. #anxiety!

Update:

Just kidding - the earlier tweethis was less than 140 characters without spaces. I hate the 140 character rule so much. Here is the actual tweet i'm sending out:

#Shakespeare’s power to popularize #folklore scared institutions much like modern fear of tech’s power 2 quickly share unvalidated knowledge


In case you didn't see the link earlier,


Here is my rough draft so far. It is a beautiful mess.

Books and Blogs: Research in the Digital Age

Books I'm Using

My "Research Station" pre-apocolyptic writing stage

The Fear of Folk

I can't find the embed feature I once used to embed a Google document into a blog post but my outline is up at this link and commenting is enabled. I'd love your feedback there. It's very rough at the moment but will update as I work on it.

Still working on my thesis/ tweethis because I'm changing tack a little here. I'm excited to get it up and out there though!

Wooden O Symposium - Cedar City, Utah

One of my contacts encouraged me in my thesis and mentioned the possibility of submitting my paper to the Wooden O Symposium in Cedar City this summer as part of the Shakespeare Festival. The call for papers deadline has been extended to May 1st. This is something some of us could totally consider if it appeals to you!

Progress Report: Phases 1 and 2 of Research Paper

I'm required to document my research and writing process for the Shakespeare research paper I'm doing this month. According to the assignment instructions, here are the components I must include. If I have met those requirements, I have included a link to a post or posts that document my efforts for that component:

Phase 1

Exploration - 

I did a couple of posts to explore my topic. I first found interest when I wrote this post about Jews in England and the folklore surrounding them in Shakespeare's time. Then I did a Twitter search and found THE leading work on the topic by Thiselton Dyer. Then I found both an essay and a Cardiff University course on my topic. Then I really started to explore a thesis for my topic. Then I settled on my paper topic and solidified what my thesis was by talking about it out loud. 

Textual Analysis - 

I didn't do this post till later, but I finally figured out what I wanted to do with my textual analysis post and performed digital analysis. 

Social Proof (finding) - 

I found a ton of people to contact and did a sort of annotated contact list. I did a google blog search and found a Shakespeare troupe, Shakespeare in the Ruins, the vice-chair of whom I wrote about my thesis. He wrote me back!

Phase 2

Performance Analysis -

 I skipped this one, for lack of time in catching up from being sick. Sorry!

Annotated Bibliography - 

Here it is!

Digital media and online resources - 

I found a youtube video of a folktale behind Hamlet and posted about it. I had success with a google alert.

Social Proof (contacting) - 

I contacted two more people. Patrick Ryan who is a storyteller that wrote a picture book about Shakespeare and Folklore and Susan Nyikos who is a professor of English at Utah State University and teaches about Shakespeare and folklore. 

Phase 3

"Tweethis" statement - I think I've almost got my thesis down to a tweetable statement but it is difficult because there are so many components of my argument that build upon one another. 

Posted draft with peer interaction

Evaluation of a peer's draft

Scholarly Sources: Shakespeare and Folklore

I thought I had posted this already. I did this a while back!

Found at JSTOR:

Folklore and Shakespeare
Author(s): Kenneth MuirReviewed work(s):Source: Folklore, Vol. 92, No. 2 (1981), pp. 231-240Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1259478 .Accessed: 07/02/2012 14:51


The Folklore of Shakespeare
Author(s): Henry B. WheatleyReviewed work(s):Source: Folklore, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Dec. 31, 1916), pp. 378-407Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1255592 .Accessed: 07/02/2012 14:58


Some Folklore Incidents in Shakespeare
Author(s): H. Coote LakeReviewed work(s):Source: Folklore, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Dec. 31, 1928), pp. 307-328Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1255967 .Accessed: 07/02/2012 15:07

Books (at our library):

This is the pioneering work on the Folklore of Shakespeare written over a century ago by T.F. Thiselton Dyer

My favorite find. A children's picture book about folk tales that Shakespeare drew on. An excellent way to introduce yourself to the topic.

A book about folklore in Elizabethen times, recommended for study by author Kenneth Muir who wrote one of the articles I found. 

No way: Google Alert Success!

Most of the stuff my Google alert on "Shakespeare AND Folklore" turns up for me is useless. A surprising amount of it is obituaries... no really. But I had a very happy find the other day! It may have just found me my next contact about my paper, someone who might be really interested to read what I have to say, an audience for my topic. 

Google sent me a bio article about a Hungarian English professor at USU who studies and teaches both Shakespeare and folklore! No way, right?! An English. professor. from Utah. IN Utah. Who knows about BOTH Shakespeare and folklore! Well, I thought it was cool. 

Her name is Susan Nyikos. From the article about her, she sounds like a delightful person and an excellent professor. So I hopped on over to the USU site and found her contact information in the English department directory. I promptly shot her off an email similar to the one I sent Mr. Ryan so that I had as much time as possible to hear back from her. 

Digital "Close" Reading

So I'm testing out a theory. I recently read Stanley Fish's article on The Digital Humanities and interpretation entitled Mind Your P's and B's. If you haven't read his three article series on the Digital Humanities, you are seriously missing out. Major kudos to my classmate Kaleigh for getting in touch with him about her project!

Anywho, in this article he asserts that we can begin our interpretation by using the tools of the digital age (i.e. a simple computer search for the number of p's and b's in a passage) as the spring board for our interpretation, by doing some very quick text mining, seeing what the numbers reveal, and interpreting those numbers. In Fish's reply to Kaleigh's email, he says the reverse might also be possible, which is what I've always considered text mining useful for: "If you had formulated a reading of Shakespeare and wanted to know whether certain formal patterns would lend it support , it might well be useful to run the numbers."

Might nothing, Mr. Fish. I say we come to the text with our interpretation pretty much already in our heads according to our life experience. Certain things are going to jump out at us and we're just mining the text for more support for our position. Hence, the digital tools we have just speed up that process.

Shakespeare in the Ruins Reply

Yes!!!! It worked! I'm now excited to look for evidence of scholarly scorn towards A Midsummer Night's Dream and to take a look at The Striker (see below). This social proof thing is kind of exhilarating when it works. I've been in several of Dr. Burton's classes and this has always been the aspect of his teaching that intimidates me most and always seems to fall by the wayside, but not so this time!

Here's Kevin's response:

Hi Bri!

How great to receive your e-mail! It's always a relief to know that someone is reading those things...

I love your thesis, and I definitely concur. As a matter of coincidence, the next show that SIR will be "stripping down" for this fall's tour is A Midsummer Night's Dream which, as I'm sure you know, is bubbling over with folklore and fairy tale references, and is almost certainly Shakespeare's most popular and most produced comedy. In my experience, it also tends to be the subject of a certain level of scorn among "serious" scholars as well as actors, which, as you appear to be suggesting, is likely no coincidence.

I would be thrilled if you decided to reference my story, particularly if it in any way helps to promote Shakespeare in the Ruins (perhaps a link to the website...)

Let me know if there's anything you need me to do!

Thanks Again,

Kevin
Artistic Co-Chair, SIR

---

Hi Bri,

As a bit of a sidebar, I wonder if you're familiar with Caryl Churchill's play "The Skriker"? It's an incredibly complex, fascinating treatment of traditional English folklore for adult contemporary audiences. If you haven't already read it, I highly recommend it.

Cheers,

Kevin

Settling on a Paper Topic

I seriously love the thumbnail Youtube chose for this video ... oh so flattering. 

This is a 3 min video of me brainstorming my paper topic. I think I've finally landed on something. 

So because of the research I've done today, I have a few people I can talk to for my "social proof" - finding an audience who is invested in what I'm talking about already and talking with them about my ideas/ getting feedback. I'm super nervous to even approach these people, but here's the reasons why I think each of them might work and as soon as I can think of interesting questions to ask them and write what I consider a worthy email about my ideas, I will.

Give-n-Take

After pondering my posts about possible paper topics, I came to realize I was much more enthused about the folklore topic than the Jungian one. Which is really awesome cause Elle emailed me this morning and let me know she is super into the idea of analyzing Hamlet and Jungian's concept of the persona. Because I'd already done a little research and found some critical articles on Hamlet that may have to do with Jungian philosophy, I decided to pass them on to Elle and also share here! 

http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/philnotes.html - down to philosophy goes to the movies

mythic criticism of hamlet http://www.hamlethaven.com/mythiccriticism.html

psychoanalytic critcism of hamlet - http://www.hamlethaven.com/psychoanalytic.html

Let me know if they end up helping you out at all! 

Hamlet, Inception, and Jungian Philosophy

In another class, we're reading the script for Christopher Nolan's Inception from a Jungian/ archetypal perspective. Since I'm so entrenched in this process, I started to wonder about Hamlet through this lens. I wonder if it would be interesting to analyze and compare the two ... what universal themes and archetypes as expressed in Hamlet does Nolan carry forward into contemporary film?

I thought I'd do some preliminary study on Hamlet through archetypal or cultural criticism. Here are two articles I found: One is about the scapegoat archetype of Polonius and one about the universal disappointment in imperfect parents.  It also brought me to a resource that many of you might find particularly useful, an online annotated bibliography to Hamlet research called Hamlet Haven.

Performance Review: The Merchant of Stratford

This weekend, my sister and I attended a children's performance of The Merchant of Venice - set at the PurpleTurtleYogurtLand in Stratford and Andelasia -- So cute! The performance, which included children coming up to play the roles of certain characters, was darling and made the play wonderfully accessible.

Venue
The theater in the round was interesting to me. I really with I had the experience of sitting on the floor as I mentioned in class because I wanted to be more in on the action and see the different characters faces at different times. I also thought it'd be fun to be in different characters' "boxes". I was in Shylock's corner and he never broke character. It was an unnerving corner to be in.

Casting

As for the casting of Shylock, I had imagined him being a shorter, smaller, weaker and bitter character. It was interesting to see such a large intimidating character instead. But what was even more interesting was that the character hunched the entire play. I thought it made him slightly more sympathetic, but his bigness made him hard to identify with because he seemed like such a bully.

The actor who played Bassanio was so earnest. It's hard to see Antonio/Antonia as the main protagonist because Bassanio really stole the lead with how easy he was to sympathize with (even with his blue hair).

The Folks

I found some more folklore and Shakespeare resources that I am super excited about:

First is a long essay by Kristen McDermott about folklore and the English Holiday Cycle as represented in Shakespeare's work. A nod to all her scholarship in looking into this. What a great resource!

The other is the one I'm most thrilled with. It is a course description for a class being taught right now through Cardiff University entitled Folklore and Magic in the Age of Shakespeare. There's a whole list of books I can use of resources, a Cardiff Shakespeare blog full of useful information, a Cardiff Shakespeare facebook page, a Cardiff Shakespeare twitter account, and like a zillion useful links to Shakespeare conferences and symposia, libraries, open access journals, projects, Shakespeare facsimiles, Shakespeare tools, societies, theater companies, and theaters! What a treasure trove of resources! Not to mention all the people I could connect with through this blog and course! I'm literally quivering with excitement! I'll let you know when I've dug in a little more!