I also did some research online, specifically I spent some time looking through the forest of rhetoric website and looking at other online Shakespeare blogs. While the blogs have yet to prove beneficial, I did find some information on the rhetoric website that's promising. I've decided to stick with a thesis based around time (a more specific, articulated thesis is yet to come) and so I looked through the website specifically for rhetorical terms and devices concerning rhythm and time. I found some, and if I could find any of the rhetorical devices I was reading about applied within The Winter's Tale it would definitely give me a surer foundation for my time analysis. Question though: I don't think I have the time to sit down and reread the entire play looking for these devices. Any advice on a more efficient way of finding rhetorical devices in my play? Maybe I should focus in on a few critical scenes?
Yeah, I would go to a few key scenes, but then also go to Shakespeare Searched and see if you can find any references to the word time. Maybe those scattered references would really pull the paper together.
ReplyDeleteAnd isn't Evernote great? I use it for basically everything.
Stating the obvious, though, but you should make sure to go back and look at the scene with Time, especially.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I found hilarious about that particular scene that might help with your analysis thereof is Shakespeare's consciousness of the Unities.
To make a longer story shorter, Aristotle wrote about three suggestions or trends in Greek theater, which, by Elizabethan times, had turned into hard rules called the capital-U Unities. The three Unities were Unity of Place (the play must take place in a single location), the Unity of Action (the play must consist of a single plot, with no subplots), and, the most important for our purposes, the Unity of Time (the action of the play must take place over less than twenty-four hours, and, ideally, take only as long as the play itself runs).
One of the things I found funniest about the scene with Time is that, if I recall correctly, he spends a fair amount of time saying, basically, "Yes, I know I'm violating a Unity here, but it's important so strop whining." That might be something to look at--see how Shakespeare uses rhetoric to violate the Unities.
THANK YOU MUCHLY! :)
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