Naming Thy Name
Cross Talk in Shakespeare's Sonnets
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A fascinating case for the identity of Shakespeare’s beautiful young man
SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS ARE indisputably the most enigmatic and enduring love poems written in English. They also may be the most often argued-over sequence of love poems in any language. But what is it that continues to elude us? While it is in part the spellbinding incantations, the hide-and-seek of sound and meaning, it is also the mystery of the noble youth to whom Shakespeare makes a promise—the promise that the youth will survive in the breath and speech and minds of all those who read these sonnets. “How can such promises be fulfilled if no name is actually given?” Elaine Scarry asks.
This book is the answer. Naming Thy Name lays bare William Shakespeare’s devotion to a beloved whom he not only names but names repeatedly in the microtexture of the sonnets, in their architecture, and in their deep fabric, immortalizing a love affair. By naming his name, Scarry enables us to hear clearly, for the very first time, a lover’s call and the beloved’s response. Here, over the course of many poems, are two poets in conversation, in love, speaking and listening, writing and writing back.
In a true work of alchemy, Scarry, one of America’s most innovative and passionate thinkers, brilliantly synthesizes textual analysis, literary criticism, and historiography in pursuit of the haunting call and recall of Shakespeare’s verse and that of his (now at last named) beloved friend.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Scarry (The Body in Pain) poses a surprising answer to a question that has puzzled readers of Shakespeare's sonnets for 400 years: the "lovely boy" of the poems is Henry Constable, fellow poet, diplomat, and, after his conversion to Catholicism in 1591, a religious exile in France. Scarry pulls her evidence from their poetry, examining shared images, incident, language, and the names of the beloved "smuggled" into the lines of the other's to suggest a relationship recorded in verse. She also makes a fresh suggestion identifying the "rival poet" of Shakespeare's sonnets as King James I, in whose court Constable briefly served. Incorporating much speculation on authorial intentions, acrobatic feats of interpretation, and in some cases wild surmise, Scarry's conclusions nevertheless invite a close reading of the sonnets and a pure enjoyment of the metaphorical power and linguistic intricacy of each line. Her approach regards each poem as a direct and truthful expression of deeply felt experience, an assessment easily doubted by readers familiar with the sophisticated rhetorical strategies found in poetry at the time. Scholars of this most studied author of English literature may remain unpersuaded based on the lack of supporting biographical matter, but skepticism needn't bother Scarry; in her highly detailed, attentive reading, the poetry speaks for itself.
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