Jane Hwang Degenhardt (University of Massachusetts Amherst) will give a paper titled “Dreaming Worlds: Living with “Things Unknown” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream." We hope that you will be able to join us.
Abstract:
This talk proceeds from the premise that Shakespeare’s plays provide a radical alternative to accounts of the singularity and knowability of the world that are usually associated with Renaissance humanism, with the Cartesian cogito, or with the empiricism of scientific method. More particularly, I consider Shakespeare’s plays as explorations of pluralistic cosmologies that often elude the capacities of human reason, perception, and experience. Focusing on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I demonstrate how Shakespeare sets forth a theory of poet invention that embraces the poet’s creative potential to “borrow nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be,” as Sidney put it in his Defense, so as to give presence to worlds that exists beyond what can be known. In Shakespeare’s play, the transformative effects of otherworldly phenomena are attributed to the “fierce vexation of a dream”—dismissed by Theseus as the “untrue” stuff of fiction and the “fantasies” of madmen, lovers, and poets. By exploring early modern theories of dreaming, I consider how dreams were understood to function as thresholds to other worlds that expand the horizon of the possible and provide access to a form of knowledge freed from the confines of embodied consciousness. Ultimately, I demonstrate how Shakespeare’s identification of poetic imagination with dreaming theorizes theatrical invention as a consciousness-altering portal that provides access to the unknown and the impossible. In stripping away the illusory limitations of body, mind, and world, Shakespeare’s play demonstrates how the veil that divides us from other worlds and cosmologies is much thinner than we presume. At the same time, A Midsummer Night’s Dream urges us to confront questions about consent and coercion that pertain to movements between worlds. I conclude by examining some connections between early modern theatrical invention and present-day speculative fiction that draw our attention to the ethics of crossing between worlds.
This event will be held online via Zoom. You can access the meeting using this link: https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/j/4855059036. Please find the full Zoom invitation below.
The meeting will be held from 7-8:30pm EST, with announcements from 7-7:15pm, the talk 7:15-8:00pm and Q&A from 8-8:30pm. We will also host a casual social/cocktail half hour after the meeting. Since there won't be a dinner and we have no space constraints, an RSVP is not required. But I am still circulating the Evite for the sake of consistency and to preserve our sense of community.
