Writer's Block Daily

Nrj, I think you may have parsed that wrong.

How so? I haven't paid that much attention, but the impression I had was certainly that the debate is over whether Romeo and Juliet's "love" was meant to be taken seriously or not, not over whether the play is a comedy or tragedy.

Heh. This is awesome. There's a reason that Shakespear is considered one of the greatest writers in the history of English- and this thread is showing me why. There are many layers to his writing- it contains elements of both straight drama and parody, tragedy and comedy. Foreigners are funny, the young are foolish, life is love, sometimes we lose the very thing we treasure the most... it's all there.

Romantic tragedy is a thing, if written with sufficient skill, a work can contain contrary elements and still have integrity as art, still make sense in a meaningful way. A work of art is not to be judged by the degree to which readers approve of it, but by how much passion and emotion it engenders. If Shakespear's depiction of unconditional love at first sight resulting in suicide by misunderstanding offends you, if someone's effort to make tragedy look romantic (which is what "romantic tragedy" actually means) causes you to react against it, then that only shows how effective it is- it managed to get under your skin, and inspired you to clarify just what you think "real" love ought to be. An attempt to depict a doomed relationship and suicide in a life-affirming manner may seem "right" or it may seem "wrong", but I don't think anyone can deny that it is a legitimate genre.

Exactly that. What I find amusing is that the different interpretations of everyone involved reflects how deep Shakespeare's writing is. There are so many different takeaways.

So Twilight is the ultimate example of art? Very, very few things get people talking as much as that, and it certainly engenders very much passion and emotion.

I failed to mention that the complexity of the emotional response it engenders also matters.

Roleplaying Partner: I'm not killing him [one of my characters], Alex.

Me: Damn. You should. >C

Because you hate him, or...?

Incidentally, I've been coming to think lately that one of the biggest reasons giving a character a Freudian Excuse tends to not work that well is the word "a".

Hm.

I really think it has to do with age, as Limyaael once said about writing older adult characters. If you have a 15-year-old, you can get away with saying that a one or two defining tragedies happened in their lives that have shaped them significantly. If you're writing a 30 year old and they're still working off that defining tragedy when they were 10, you're stretching the suspension of disbelief.

Unless the 30 year old's lack of maturity is part of the plot.

Ah yes, as it is in Hamlet, as long as we're stuck on Shakespeare.

Well, to be fair, discovering that your uncle murdered your father to marry your mother would be a tough one to get over.

I think Hamlet was having issues with it before he found that out.

Depending on the severity of the issue no amount of age/time will heal that wound.

There aren't a lot of schools that have creative writing as a major and that makes me kind of sad. :/

To just say one last thing about the last page's subject: I would just like to point out here that what Shakespeare nails in Romeo & Juliet is not mature, lasting love, but a very intense crush. When sucked into that kind of infatuation, who a person really is and what kind of relationship you will have in the future does not come into your mind, only that you are suddenly deeply attracted to this person and the whole world seems to have stopped for that. To conflate that with "true love" strikes me as a highly destructive, and it appears that Shakespeare felt the same way: While he indicts the parents for their petty viciousness, he also highlights the fatuity of untempered young love through farce and the ironic use of tropes and platitudes. But by the same token, the joke is gentle until the horror of the situation sinks in: These innocents have been lead to think that they should die over limerance.

Hence, with the end of the play, the true fault always comes back to the parents' selfishness and failure to understand their children's needs: Had they not been so stubborn and hard-hearted, and raised their children to be sensible rather than brought them into houses full of anger and mistrust, such mistakes could have been avoided. Perhaps they would have fallen in love, even a lasting romance, but they would not have been so confused and misguided as to kill themselves for a fleeting affection.

All in all, as I read it, the real tragedy is that of the failure of the older generation to guide the young and the death of innocence, not one of "true love" being lost.

"...he also highlights the fatuity of untempered young love through farce and the ironic use of tropes and platitudes."

Can you provide some examples? Because I cant think of any other critics who argue that Shakespeare meant for the audience to take R & J's relationship as less than perfectly sincere.

To quote Nocturna:

I do not know whether or not you are familiar with Petrarch, but there are a lot of shout-outs to his style in Romeo's dialogue. Saying that this cannot be ironic because he portrays it through a dramatic lens is absurd considering the intent: That to an innocent, clueless young couple that have fallen into a strong infatuation that is disapproved of by families that they have only recently come to realise are deeply flawed and worth rebelling against—classic teenage angst, yadda yadda yadda—the silliness is going to seem deadly serious. So he plays it that way. He is still critiquing the form, just not through comedy. Consider it a kind of low-grade deconstruction.

I'm still not hearing a complaint that would count against Twilight given the detailed dissections of it that have been engaged in, many of which are far more well-considered than those usually leveled in Shakespeare's direction.

On Creative writing:

Keep in mind when those schools say creative writing they usually mean "proper literature writing." Anything remotely resembling genre writing is likely not taught.

For the most part, good writing is good writing no matter what sort of style or setting you are writing in. Whether a given teacher or curriculum will guide a young writer in the direction of actually improving their craft is another question.

You know what I kind of wish would happen?

My English class will be struggling over a poem. The teacher is intensely debating with a student over the theme of a poem. All of a sudden, the moldering corpse of the poet springs into the classroom and screams "NO! YOU'RE ALL WRONG! ALL OF YOU!"

We just finished our poetry unit and I have never been so happy.

Does anyone have dreams where they're their protagonists? I keep on having these dreams where I'm Sigurd and Richard Armitage is Regin and he's trying to get me to kill Fafnir by guilt-tripping me.

edited 23rd May '13 11:27:41 PM by MorwenEdhelwen

Realized a lynching scene would be more frightening if the mob didn't have such a hammy leader. Axed a few lines of speciesist monologuing.

I was the star of my own John Woo movie once... best night of my life...