Prospero's Books

Stories and Systems

I've just added to this site one of the first pieces of writing I did on stories and systems, a lecture I gave in 1995 to the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Nonlinear Systems Group.

Systems, Shakespeare, and Intertextuality: Premise 5

Most systems are components of larger systems.

Literary works, like other artworks, exist in and create communities of discourse, "conversations." Shakespeare’s plays have created among the largest and most enduring communities of discourse.

Systems, Shakespeare, and Intertextuality: Premise 4

Most systems are composed of smaller systems.

Literary texts can be composed of smaller texts, with their own system properties. The acts, scenes, imagery patterns, speeches of a play can have their own integrity.

"The right language to complete the journey homeward"

One relationship among signs, stories, and spirit is defined by Stephen Sicari in his book Joyce's Modernist Allegory (see What I've Been Reading for more information on this book):

Joyce's Ulysses is a sustained and profound meditation on the very same problem Dante presents in canto 26 of Inferno and meditates upon throughout the Divina Commedia: the potential for language to be used fraudulently and the extraordinary difficulty of finding the right language to complete the journey homeward, the journey toward a fundamental truth on which we can base our lives. (x)

Systems, Shakespeare, and Intertextuality: Premise 3

Connections among parts of systems are not always obvious.

Connections within, and among, literary texts are not always obvious. In some of Shakespeare’s plays, magic works by making non-obvious connections among parts of natural and social systems.

Systems, Shakespeare, and Intertextuality: Premise 2

Systems are "integrated," indivisible.

Successful literary texts, like other artworks, are integrated, indivisible. For tragedies, Aristotle called this integration "unity of action."

Systems, Shakespeare, and Intertextuality: Premise 1

This posting is the first of a series of premises I've developed as a basis for my course "Conversations with Shakespeare."

The universe is composed of systems: physical, chemical, biological, cultural. Stars, starfish, star chambers, starships are all systems.

Artworks can be seen as systems: cultural systems that emerge from, and reflect, biological systems, social systems, and other cultural systems. As Hamlet says, art holds "a mirror up to nature."

Nonverbal language in Lear

This month's production of King Lear at the Indiana Repertory Theatre, directed by Michael Donald Edwards, included three striking moments when gestures and visual effects carried a meaning beyond the spoken word:

• In Act 1, Lear, after hearing the commanded protestations of love from his two older daughters, turns to his youngest daughter, Cordelia. At this point actor Kenneth Albers, playing Lear, kissed his fingertips, then placed them on tenderly on actor Catherine Lynn Davis's cheeks. She returned the gesture, completing what was clearly a private Lear-Cordelia ritual. Then in Act 5, when Lear wakes in Cordelia's headquarters, he at first recognizes her only as a spirit, then comes to realize her as his daughter. This Lear again began the private ritual, but only absent-mindedly, as if his subconscious mind was aware of what his conscious mind did not yet know. Only when Cordelia completed the ritual did Lear become conscious of who she was.
• Later in Act 5, when Lear imagines seeing movement on the dead Cordelia's face, this Lear did not follow the practice of the dozen or so other Lears I've seen, looking at the motionless face of his daughter. Instead, actor Albers looked into the air above the first rows of the audience, where he clearly did see the smile of his daugter's departing spirit.
• Finally, over the closing lines of the play, snowflakes silently fell, visually illustrating what critic Northrop Frye knew, that tragedy is the mythos of winter.

What is this blog about?

Prospero's Books is a blog about

• signs, especially the relationships between signs and what they signify
• stories, especially myths and the works of Shakespeare and Joyce
• systems, especially complex, nonlinear systems
• spirit, especially as understood by the Christian and Western esoteric traditions

Although I admire Peter Greenaway's film Prospero's Books, this blog is not about that film. Rather, the titles of both that film and this blog allude to the library cherished by Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Helpful comments about this blog are welcome.

Who, and Some of What, I Am

Kenneth W. Davis

Author. Bibliophile. Brother. Consultant. Episcopalian. Father. Freemason. Hawkeye. Hoosier. Husband. Learner. Playgoer. Professor. Sexagenarian. Son.  Trainer. Traveler. Uncle. Veteran.

The LibraryThing catalog of my home library.

My other blog, Manage Your Writing.

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