Vladimir

Voilà.
Thema wie gesagt:
"I cannot heave my heart into my mouth" - Limits of speech dealt with in Shakespear's sonnets
Es wäre etwas zu lang, die hier noch im Beitrag ganz einzufügen, oder? Also erstmal "nur" als pdf!

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Auf Anregung doch die Einführung hier als Beitrag:


Introduction

In scene one of the first act of William Shakespeare’s play “King Lear”, Cordelia, Lear's youngest daughter, says the following sentence in response to Lear's demand to express her love towards him: “I cannot heave my heart into my mouth”. This phrase shall be the headline of my Facharbeit.
Cordelia expresses it in an existential situation: Her father wants to divide his kingdom in order to distribute it to his three daughters. Before doing so he arranges a test: all his daughters shall express their love towards him and the size of the land which they are going to inherit shall answer the “size” of their love. The two elder daughters answer the way, they are expected to: They declare their love in artificial language full of ornaments and common metaphors,. But Cordelia, although she is the only one who really loves her father, refuses to speak.
It is this refusal which initiates the dramatic action: her father disowns Cordelia whereas her two sisters inherit Lear's kingdom. The subject of the play, then, is Lear's painful correction of his error: In the beginning he believes that the feelings of his daughters and their expression in speech are identical; in the end he understands that he was wrong, that only the one who refused to express her true feelings towards him in words really loved him. But then it is too late.
But why did Cordelia refuse to speak? Could she not simply find the right words for her love? Can one generally express feelings by using words? Can one “put one's heart into one's mouth”? Where are the limits of speech? What can speech achieve, and what not? In what situations does one meet the limits of speech? These are the questions coming to my mind, when I read King Lear.
Therefore I want to find out in my Facharbeit: did Shakespeare dealt with this subject in other works, too? As I only have limited space, I decided to limit my investigation to the sonnets. I am looking for the sonnets dealing with the incapacity of speech, even the sonnets describing a situation similar to Cordelia's, or some, which go in a different direction and reveal different aspects of the subject. Further I am looking for sonnets which might be seen as opposed to these ones and deal with the potency of speech instead of its incapacity.
Having found these sonnets I am going to analyse the statements concerning the incapacity or potency of speech.
Another aspect of my investigation will be the situation making the speaker refuse to speak and his intention to do so.
What makes these questions interesting is that Shakespeare having in an extraordinary way the skills to express human feelings in words seems to lack even them. Where does someone abut against the limits of speech, who is more than anyone else able to tap the full potential out of it?
I hope to find some answers.

      Vladimir²

Ich stehe etwas auf dem trockenen, augustine - je le confesse: Lese-Zeit? die, die ihr zum lesen braucht? Gelbes Blatt? Ist das akademischer Usus?
Ach und: am Ende den "Report" etc. - das könnt ihr natürlich überspringen - da hab ich auch ein bisschen rumgesponnen, public library und so, das musste natürlich drinstehen.
Gruß,
Vladimir

      Elise

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augustine, auch an Dich die Bitte, mit Offtopic-Kommentaren doch möglichst zu knausern. Elise
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