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The Destiny of the Work of Art : Causes, Propositions, Shakespeare
Saval, Peter Kishore
Saval, Peter Kishore
Author
Abstract
The categories of cause and effect have falsified our experience of art. To say that Agamemnon caused the anger of Achilles by depriving the hero of Briseis, that reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere caused Paolo and Francesca to fall in love, is not entirely wrong but beside the point. Art discloses a mystery about the unfolding of life and destiny, and the language of causes abstracts from this mystery and impoverishes it. In the legend of Tristan and Iseult, the protagonists mistakenly drink a love potion that is meant for Mark of Cornwall instead. They fall in love (Strassburg 1984, 194–95). Did the love potion cause the lovers to fall in love? The very question is out of place. The Tristan and Iseult legend unfolds a tragedy for which the drinking of the potion is incidental.
I have taken the terms incidental and destiny from Oswald Spengler. Spengler might agree with what I have said above. But Spengler names one artist, above all, as the exemplary dramatist of the "incidental." The artist is Shakespeare
Keywords
William Shakespeare, literary criticism, Early Modern Drama, cause, Proposition, effect
Date
2023
Type
Journal article
Journal
Book
Volume
31
Issue
1-2
Page Range
363-378
Article Number
ACU Department
Faculty of Education and Arts
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Open Access Status
License
All rights reserved
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