/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18550964]

According to modern scholarship, Shakespeare's sonnets were addressed to a man, most likely expressing homosexual love, though platonic love is not ruled out.

Is this actually true, or is it just woke leftie academics trying to shoehorn LGBT into classic literature?

[Anonymous No.18550986]

>>18550964
It's obvious
You retard
He uses the word "boy" and describes boy as beautiful in many sonnets. Shit thread and you are a shit person OP

[Anonymous No.18551000]

>>18550964
It's pretty arbitrary. I'd believe Shakespeare (de Vere) was bisexual, but the erotic double entendres are largely a red herring for encrypted juridical & political messaging.

[Anonymous No.18551025]

>>18550964
>Is this actually true, or is it just woke leftie academics trying to shoehorn LGBT into classic literature?
it's pretty undeniable from an attentive reading of the sonnets, especially the one at the end where he calls him 'O thou, my lovely boy'
>>18551000
pay the schizo oxfordian no mind

[Anonymous No.18551039]

He was just complimenting his bro. There’s no chance anyone was gay before 2001. Homosexuality was invented by the scientist Satan M. Lucifer, a colleague of Yakub, in a lab in the center of the Earth.

[Anonymous No.18551115]

>>18550964
>According to modern scholarship
Stopped reading there.

[Anonymous No.18551126]

>>18550964
he was a paid poet and wrote sonnets for the wealthy to send to their lovers on commission. this is the true explanation. pretty simple as well

[Anonymous No.18551132]

>>18550964
There is no modern scholarship.
Nobody knows what Shakespeare was or wasn't.

[Anonymous No.18551143]

>>18551126
>he was a paid poet
source?

[Anonymous No.18551417]

>>18550964
You don't need "modern scholarship" for that. Some of the sonnets are clearly addressed to a woman, some are towards a man (boy), it was clear to any reader from the past as well. Now, the latter has been a matter of dispute with regards to how that address is actually meant, is it romantic or just platonic, but IMO it's kind of difficult to boil it down to the latter, considering the intensity of some of the sonnets.
Maybe you could, God forbid, read the sonnets and the scholarship, and judge for yourself?

[Anonymous No.18552241]

>>18551039
>Satan M. Lucifer
What does the 'M' stand for? Mephistopheles?

[Anonymous No.18552271]

>>18550964
I’m sick of the liberal elite trying to insert identity politics into everything. It’s entirely possible that Shakespeare just misspelled girl and wrote boy instead. Next they’re gonna try to convince us that Proust was gay

[Anonymous No.18552519]

>>18552241
Yes.

[Anonymous No.18552556]

>>18550964
>According to modern scholarship

[Anonymous No.18552569]

>According to modern scholarship, [fag gay black woman fag gay oppression homo gaysex fagget homo gay gay women black people FAGGOTS]

[Anonymous No.18552619]

>>18550964
According to modern scholarship, massive bodies curve spacetime, most likely causing gravity, though gravitons are not ruled out.

Is this actually true, or is it just woke leftie academics trying to shoehorn relativity into classical physics?

[Anonymous No.18552712]

>>18552619
That was an accusation Einstein received at the time.

[Anonymous No.18552789]

>>18550964
>According to modern scholarship
kek

[Anonymous No.18552820]

>>18552712
and they were right to point it out

[Anonymous No.18552923]

>>18550964
According to modern scholarship, Jane Austen was female, most likely an adult woman, though little girl is not ruled out.

Is this actually true, or is it just woke leftie academics trying to shoehorn women into classic literature?

[Anonymous No.18552936]

>>18552923
He was a closeted FtM man.

[Anonymous No.18553075]

>>18551039
This, but unironically

[Anonymous No.18553092]

>>18552923
But she's not coloured. She's clearly white.

[Anonymous No.18553102]

>>18550964
Why can't homosexuals leave shit alone? They won't be happy until they put a skirt and lipstick on everything that exists so they can feel more comfortable with their own filthy lifestyle.

[Anonymous No.18553110]

>>18552923
She was a bourgeois splatterhouse. She'll be a man by 2030 - romance is inherently sexist, after all.

[Anonymous No.18553149]

>modern scholarship

You lost me there man. These are almost definitely the same useless degree critical theorist faggots who call Moby Dick "queer literature." Hard pass.

[Anonymous No.18553159]

>>18551039

You should go post this on Reddit. You would get SO many upvotes! Then stay there.

[Anonymous No.18553833]

>>18550964
I can't speak for Shakespeare, but modern scholarship is going full "we wuz kangs!" Over lgbt history revisionism. Every famous recluse is now considered to be a closeted gay. And gays are now supposedly the leaders of every major positive movement in history (but never involved in any of the negative events). I would be less skeptical, but the lack of counterbalance representation in negative events is telling. If gays were powerful enough to be meaningfully contributing to "progress" they would be cropping up meaningfully contributing to atrocity as well. Also fuck agoraphobia/hikikomori gay washing. That shit is just insulting.

[Anonymous No.18553854]

>>18553833
>but modern scholarship is going full "we wuz kangs
True for both liberals and right wingers. Rightiods do we wuz brahminz and shiet

[Anonymous No.18553896]

>>18553833
You know how women are not as good at sports? Heteros are not that good at art. Every great artistic figure that is fondly remembered centuries after their death is usually a queer man; and academics have known this for a while now and even covered up Lord Byron's sexuality in the early XX century, just go get an office job and a tradwife.

t. breeder

[Anonymous No.18553920]

>>18553896
name a single good fag writer.

[Anonymous No.18553971]

>>18553920
Capote, Rimbaud, Byron, Proust, Wilde, Auden, Francis Bacon, Plato, Foucault...Only the most important ones I guess

And there's queer women too! Woolf, Sappho, George Sand, Katherine Mansfield, Sapphire.

Embrace who you are, not everyone has to be great at things, hell, most queer people aren't remembered by history either, just like how most men would lose against pro female athletes.

[Anonymous No.18553978]

>>18553971
>Sappho
What bullshit.

[Anonymous No.18553987]

>>18553978
I surely missed many...

[Anonymous No.18553997]

>>18550964
Yes, Shakespeare is gay. Read Cervantes instead.

[Anonymous No.18554009]

>>18553971
Woolf had a husband.

[Anonymous No.18554017]

>>18553997
South Americans are really insecure. Like do your own thing fags and stop caring about comparing everything with Europe.

[Anonymous No.18554031]

>>18554009
Wilde had a wife, make your point. Woolf had a thing with Vita Sackville-West (another writer) who was in an open marriage with sir Harold Nicolson, diplomat of the United Kingdom in Iran who was also bisexual. Fucking who you want doesn't mean you can't do other things you like btw...

[Anonymous No.18554034]

>>18553978
>>18553987
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/16/girl-interrupted/amp

[Anonymous No.18554052]

>>18550964
>According to modern scholarship
>>18551126
/fucking thread

[Anonymous No.18554064]

>>18554052
Why are you in denial for other people?

[Anonymous No.18554067]

>>18554064
huh?

[Anonymous No.18554081]

>>18550964
>According to modern scholarship
So a position that will be lucky to last 5 years. Good to know I don’t need to pay it any attention.

[Anonymous No.18554102]

>>18553896
Dante wrote the greatest work of literature of all time and he was a heterosexual Catholic.

[Anonymous No.18554110]

>>18554102
What the fuck I was literally going to reply with this. He was also a top tier bro that wrote explicitly about friendship.

[Anonymous No.18554148]

>>18553896
Artists are born from stress. The stress of living in a culture that would kill or harm you for your sexual activity is significant. That's now gone so modern day fag artists have lost their adaptive advantage.

[Anonymous No.18554151]

>>18553896
You can name massively more same tiered writers who are heterosexual. This doesn't prove your point in the slightest.

[Anonymous No.18554166]

>>18554148
The greater portion of human existence up until the 20th century was plenty stressful enough for everyone. And either your argument is not a necessary condition for one to be creative nor is it sufficient condition to say that they will be.

[Anonymous No.18554167]

>>18554151
>we wuz kangs intensifies

[Anonymous No.18554174]

>>18554102
>>18554110
I said usually they're queer, not always.

[Anonymous No.18554184]

>>18554166
Baseline is what you are adjusted to. Fags had the added anxiety of death from strangers. At least try to hide that you are retarded.

[Anonymous No.18554195]

>>18554166
The XX century fucking sucked for everyone and it gave us Joyce and Oriana Falaci, both straight as an arrow as far as we know, at the same time I don't know if their work will be remembered for as long as we will surely remember Freddie Mercury

[Anonymous No.18554210]

>>18554174
You're just a retarded fag. Sorry anon.

[Anonymous No.18554224]

>>18554184
Umm, I don't think that stress motivates an artistic vocation, regardless of sexual orientation; if that were the case then the poorest countries would be more influential in the arts; lotta' people go through shitty things and they ain't tell me about their equivalent to Raphaello

[Anonymous No.18554264]

Most likely the answer is banal, he wrote from perspectives other than his own, we can see this in his plays. Might as well say that Desdamona is proof he wanted BBC. No one knows, it does not matter, who cares.

[Anonymous No.18554270]

>>18554184
Again, not a necessary or sufficient condition for creativity (do you know what these words mean?) nor is there any suggestion that hyper-oppressive stress is less ideal than hyper-oppressive stress but you are also mentally ill and can't freely degen it up sexually. Lol What kind of argument is that?

[Anonymous No.18554290]

>>18554264
SEPARATE ART FROM THE ARTIST, YES!

[Anonymous No.18554299]

>>18552271
>Next they’re gonna try to convince us that Proust was gay
Perish the thought. He even fought a duel against a straight critic who accused him of being a homosexual.

[Anonymous No.18554351]

>>18554195
From XX alone: Hemingway, Faulkner, Gaddis (seemingly), Pynchon, DFW, Steinbeck, Delillo, Fitzgerald, McCarthy, (seemingly) Salinger, Bellow, Kesey, etc.
And this is just offhand.

[Anonymous No.18554377]

Ask yourself if, without the modern context and political climate, "modern scholarship" would've gotten to the same conclusion.

[Anonymous No.18554438]

ITT: people who haven't read the sonnets

[Anonymous No.18554610]

>>18554174
They aren't even usually.

>>18554438
t. seething fag who needs to project his mind virus onto everything in history

[Anonymous No.18554725]

>>18554610
>doesn't even try to prove that he has read the sonnets
lmao, as expected

[Anonymous No.18554793]

>>18554725
How would that be an expected response to your post? And how do you think your most recent post proved his gayness? This shit is, again, like cringey blue haireds claiming Melville is gay because he uses words like erect to describe Ahab. Please stop making killing art to feed ideology.

[Anonymous No.18554833]

Meanwhile the CHAD Ibn Arabi was writing poems to teen girl and got plagiarized hard by what euros consider the 2nd best after Shakesqueer.

Ibn Arabi >>> Shakesqueer, Dante

[Anonymous No.18554971]

>>18554725
Man, I guess Wordsworth must really want to fuck daffodils

[Anonymous No.18555010]

>>18554793
>How would that be an expected response to your post?
Well, you know, when discussing a work of literature and its ideas, usually discussion is conducted by referring to the text, which shouldn't be difficult if both are familiar with the text.
Screaming "that's not gay" is not much of an argument.
I don't even think Shakespeare was gay, bi at most, but many sonnets are definitely homoerotic.
>This shit is, again, like cringey blue haireds claiming Melville is gay because he uses words like erect to describe Ahab.
Nice job moving the discussion to a completely different topic. (And again your knowledge of the text is questionable, if the most homoerotic implications you could think of are stuff like calling Ahab "erect" instead of, for example, "The Counterpane" chapter.)
>Please stop making killing art to feed ideology.
I haven't killed any art here. Shakespeare's art is as valuable when it is about a man as when it is about a woman; the question is how these poems were meant to be read and how they would've been perceived by the originally intended audience. What sort of feeling towards the object is expressed here?

>>18554971
Wordsworth called the daffodils the "Master Mistress of his passion"? I don't remember that part, is it from some lesser known redaction?

You niggers ever done those "close readings" of poetry in school?

[Anonymous No.18555158]

He was a theatre-man
It would only he a revelation if he was straight

[Anonymous No.18555172]

>>18550964
>Is this actually true

Read Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World. He offers the most plausible and convincing explanation of the available evidence as to Shakespeare's purposes in his sonnets. I think Greenblatt also has the most plausible take on Shake's Catholicism, vel non, and the deer poaching legend.

[Anonymous No.18555421]

>>18555010
Lol You made a strange statement about "proving we read the sonnets," prior to anyone even challenging that anyone had read it. This is an extremely strange thing to say that seems extremely apparently to be coming from a place of butthurt (probably to some degree literal). Who the fuck would see this thread and think, "Oh, I know. Time to take on the weird burden of unpromptedly proving I've read it rather than voice my opinion like any other normal person in a forum about the topic, just because I spoke out in opposition to the one clearly biased guy who wrote a trite little insubstantive nothing dismissing the substantial majority opinion. I was not shifting the subject, I was providing parallel. The two are alike in many ways-and the fact remains you seem to be challenging that it is fair to construe it as queer literature? Lmfao I guess the deep metaphorical symbolism of him and Quequeg being bedfellows beneath the blanket of smoke was just super homo fun times and it really was all just about a whale. I think you were missing the point of the Wordsworth post. The point that you, and those like you, are the ones who lack deep reading skills, choosing instead to default to your own pet self-validating critical theory whenever even marginally coherently possible. Ffs

[Anonymous No.18555435]

>>18555172
Greenblatt, you say?

[Anonymous No.18555635]

>>18555421
>prior to anyone even challenging that anyone had read
>>18554438
>ITT: people who haven't read the sonnets

>Time to take on the weird burden of unpromptedly proving I've read it rather than voice my opinion like any other normal person in a forum about the topic
I've actually replied here early on in the thread with my own opinions, I'm not going to repeat them every time I post again in the same thread. Your attempts at psychoanalysis are becoming pretty obsessive, from calling me gay to assuming which posts I have and haven't written - so much for "weird burdens" here. I would be glad if you actually explained what the sonnet no.20 is meant to express, for example, with meaningful references to the lines and to the known literary and cultural norms of the era, rather than (what the people I suspect haven't read the collection are doing) vaguely dismissing the whole idea because muh sjws.

>you seem to be challenging that it is fair to construe it as queer literature
I don't even know what queer literature would be, I'm just saying that we should try to better understand how the text was meant to function with regards to the norms of that era. Was it meant to be and read as purely platonic? Or could some readers find it more erotic? I'm asking you, I'm only working with the texts themselves and my modern knowledge of the world and its history, maybe it was different in the past in ways that I don't know of and would be glad to learn about.

>I guess the deep metaphorical symbolism of him and Quequeg being bedfellows beneath the blanket of smoke was just super homo fun times
One meaning does not replace the other, they can coexist. Sure, you can read the chapter as a purely "deep metaphorical symbolism" (why would the potential sexual act between the two characters necessarily be deprived of symbolism anyway? why is all this even in contradiction?), but can that erase the physical affection displayed between the two, openly and repeatedly compared to a marriage?
("I found Queequeg’s arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife." ... "his bridegroom clasp" ... "he still hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us twain" ... "Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage’s side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby.")
Offer us your reading if you have the time. M-D is fascinating to me precisely because it offers many meanings, every passage presents so many interpretative hooks that it becomes dizzying. I do not want to deny any of those hooks.

>I think you were missing the point of the Wordsworth post.
I think you were missing the point of my reply to the Wordsworth post. You're unable to discuss the text without jumping to caricatures and other texts that have no bearing on the issue at hand.

[Anonymous No.18555731]

>>18554174
What do you mean usually? The vast majority are as far as we know, straight lmao.

[Anonymous No.18557202]

>>18550964
>homosexual
Homosexuality is a modern concept. Back then nobody made sexuality their core personality. They didn’t make a fuss just because they like to take it in the ass every once in a while.

[Anonymous No.18558488]

>>18557202
Yes, but you have all these christcucks thinking its equivalent to raping a preschooler, plus all the molested autists who identify as two spirit fagqueers.
Though one has to wonder, if they wouldn't have been hated on so much in the past, would they still have made sodomy the core of their identity today.