Shakespearean Genre: A Practice of Historical Poetics

Replete with multiple historic and literary references, the book offers a conceptual view on Shakespeare’s generic innovations with applications to Aleksandr Veselovsky’s Historical Poetics first introduced by Igor Shaytanov at the International Conference in 1998 (organized by Ralph Kohen). In the introduction, Shaytanov recollects that after receiving an invitation from the conference organizers to speak on genre in either Formalists’ or Bakhtin’s work, he offered a speech on a less known but no less significant Russian scholar, Alexandr Veselovsky, whose name was unfamiliar at that time to English-speaking scholars. After Shaytanov pointed out that any discourse regarding the Russian philological school would fall apart without Veselovsky’s name, his proposal was accepted, and the presentation was met with great interest. As a result, an article was published in the New Literary History (2001). That very publication became a starting point for the current monograph.In the introduction it is specified that the book was not originally conceived or written according to a certain plan, though “a unifying plan that would combine the study of Shakespeare and the method” appeared in the early stages of working on this project (9). The book was formed from articles and papers published by Russian and foreign journals over a period of more than 25 years. The main focus of the book is on the evolution of Shakespeare as a poet and dramatist whose evolving generic thinking stems from his gradual mastery of the art of the sonnet.Chapters on Veselovsky’s Historical Poetics precede chapters on Shakespeare’s drama, which is not merely a way of paying tribute to the memory of the great scholar but a way of defining his main concepts to substantiate methodology applied to the study of Shakespeare’s genre. In the beginning, Shaytanov familiarizes a reader with Veselovsky’s original vision, revealing the basic difference in approach between him and Aristotle. In short, unlike Veselovsky’s poetics, Aristotle’s old “piitika” ‘poetics’ “was not historical” (18). To be more precise, here we talk about a perception of “piitika” by classicists–interpreters, whose apprehension led the foundation for textbooks. Chapter 1, “Genre in Historical Poetics,” introduces the notion of historical poetics as well as Veselovsky’s innovative views that later formed the basis for all known philological schools in Russia, including Formalists and Bakhtin. Shaytanov explains that the final, fourth part of Historical Poetics was supposed to be dedicated to the problems of genre. The plan, however, had never been realized due to Veselovsky’s demise. Nevertheless, “generic problematics literally girdles Historical Poetics” (30).Though the book is called Shakesperean Genre, it should not be considered another monograph on the repertoire of Elizabethan drama. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” Shaytanov states (165), specifying that the focus of his research is on generic thinking, rather than the dramatic repertoire of Elizabethan times. Unlike Shakespeare’s contemporary biographers, who tend to separate Shakespeare’s biography from his works, Shaytanov insists on the necessity to consider both biography and poetics as a “set of conditions and circumstances accompanying” the appearance of new generic forms (13). Emphasizing the importance of academic discourse upon Elizabethan drama, Shaytanov nevertheless focuses on the competition of genres in the Bakhtinian sense. “His genre theory conveys not a concept of confrontation, but rather a concept of dialogue,” he says (47). This immediately makes one think about Veselovsky’s concept of countercurrent formed in a much earlier study of interaction between the foreign and the native as a collaboration on the way of finding common ground.Analogously, Shaytanov approaches the formation of the Shakespearean genre as an interaction between sonnet and drama. According to Shaytanov, the sonnet “had a crucial impact on Shakespeare’s development as a dramatist” (14). The reason for Shakespeare’s switching to the sonnet is explained by a plague in 1592–1594, which caused the pause in theatrical life. Three major plays written for the new company right after the epidemic, Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream “marked a fundamental renewal of not only the Elizabethan, but the world repertoire for centuries to come” (14).Discussing Shakespeare’s technique of incorporating the sonnet into tragedy and comedy, Shaytanov engages a reader in a truly captivating analytical journey. Through close reading he reveals a collaboration between the foreign and the native, where the native would be drama and the foreign would be the sonnet as belonging to a nondramatic genre. According to Veselovsky, the native does not reject but rather acquires some foreign features, creatively incorporating and synthesizing them in a new whole to become enriched with possibilities for further development. We observe exactly that as Shaytanov examines the way the sonnet gets incorporated into the body of drama. Referring to an early Shakespearean comedy, Love’s Labour’s Lost, a comedy that had been pronounced a failure due to the characters’ violation of love oaths and unhappy ending, Shaytanov advances a hypothesis that here we rather observe Shakespeare’s critical views on the sonnet’s “labour’s lost” in its attempts to penetrate drama. At this point, the play should be judged as a parody of such comedy, not a failed comedy. His observations and conclusions are clear and reasonable. He claims that what is fine for the sonnet turns artificial in drama. Drama reflects life and is directed toward human psychology, including desires and ambitions generating various conflicts, while the sonnet represents a rather idealistic picture of human relationships. Love’s Labour’s Lost appears to be a sentence to “the Petrarchist conventionality: to praise and swear, to swear again and to praise again” (265). The sonnet’s conventional logic is rejected by the logic of drama, where all those conventional nonstop praises and oaths mark a false way to true love.A curious thing about love oath in the sonnet comes to light as Shaytanov discusses Petrarchist’s traditions. Regardless of the common assumption that love oath is a necessary element of Petrarchist’s sonnet, “Italian sonnet never takes the form of an oath. It appears among the Stilnovisti before Petrarch as a scientific or philosophical argument about nature of poetry, where the praise of Donna becomes an increasingly heavenly feeling, and the poet’s love is increasingly subjected to the heavenly Amor” (265). Petrarchists do not discuss the sincerity of love, but the “cruel power of Amor, which the poet cannot resist, tormented by sweet torment (dolce pena) and having no strength to escape it . . . But what about the oath? Petrarchists do not vow love and do not vow fidelity; their lyrical hero is doomed for love and praise of Donna, experiencing the vicissitudes of passion” (265). Donna represents an ideal, iconic figure, distant and unattainable. Oath appears as “the pragmatics of conventionality changes and the poet’s lonely confession, even if addressed to Donna, does not expect to be answered” (265). The appearance of oath “marks a change in style, when intimate recognition and reflection are voiced (externalized, Bakhtin would say), giving rise to a parody, i.e. anti-Petrarchism” (265).Supporting his concept with other historical and textual proofs, Shaytanov shows how relationships elaborated in the sonnet die out in drama due to the simplistic nature of sonnetic standards.In Romeo and Juliet, discourse on the sonnet is carried through Romeo’s monologues. Juliet, who tries to change his attempts to love “by book” and insists on a more natural and personal way of expressing feelings, represents requirements of drama. The scene on the balcony is constantly interrupted by Juliet’s clever remarks which are intended to switch Romeo’s outpourings of love to normal speech. “Romeo of the first act is a parody of Petrarchist hero,” Shaytanov writes. This changes later just as Chorus’s introductory in Prologues which “are reminiscent of sonnet only because they fit into 14 lines” (89). Shaytanov humorously notices that both Chorus’s sonnet-like monologues are immature in nature, as if Romeo himself taught him how to write, though the second time “14 lines (which no longer seem random) appear to be quite a passable sonnet” (89).Thus, at the metalevel assigned to generic thinking, the plot could be described as the incompatibility (“feud”) of sonnet and drama (two genres as “two households both alike in dignity”) with subsequent attempts of single works (“children”) to find common ground regardless of the obstacles.Generic thinking offered in the book sheds light on the hidden design and meaning of Shakespearean plays, changing the traditional view of them. There are many innovative perspectives, remarks, and concepts that indulge in speculations by providing new ways of approaching known texts. A combination of historical, theoretical, and poetic interpretations unfolding in captivating dynamic narration (at the end of the book, Shaytanov’s new translations of some Shakespear’s sonnets are offered) creates a unique genre that looms at the intersection of historical poetics, literary criticism, mystery, and suspense. I hope that the book will be translated into English and becomes accessible to an English-speaking audience.