Shakespeare and the law - sequel

Ένα άλλο καταπληκτικό βιβλίο που αγόρασα πρόσφατα είναι αυτό:

Ξεκινά στον πρόλογο με την πρόταση:

"This book is a study of the intersection of the English legal and literary imaginations from Skelton to Webster."(p. 1)

Ο τίτλος της ανάρτησης είναι και δεν είναι ακριβής. Δεν αναφέρεται, προφανώς, ο συγγραφέας μόνο στον Shakespeare. Όμως εγώ διάλεξα να σας δείξω δύο ελάχιστα - πολύ ενδιαφέροντα, αφού αγνοούμε οι περισσότεροι όσα περιγράφουν - κομμάτια από ένα κεφάλαιο του βιβλίου το οποίο αναφέρεται σε έργα του Shakespeare, προκειμένου να μιλήσει για τον σχηματισμό της ταυτότητας του Αγγλικού δικαίου, μέσα από την αντιπαράθεση της Αγγλικής και της Νορμανδικής (Γαλλικής) γλώσσας, αντιπαράθεση που αντανακλούσε και την αντιπαράθεση των λαών. Ενδιαφέρον είναι και το ότι ο Cormack αναρωτιέται αδιόρατα (ή όχι) κάποιες στιγμές για το αν επρόκειτο καθαρά για ουσιαστική αντιπαράθεση. Ίσως κάνω λάθος, αφού δεν έχω προλάβει να το διαβάσω σε όλες (τις άπειρες!) λεπτομέρειές του, αλλά έχω την αίσθηση ότι δεν κάνω λάθος.


CHAPTER FOUR
"If We Be Conquered": Legal Nationalism and the France of Shakespeare's English Histories (p. 177-223)

   In the sixteenth century the written languages of English law were three: Latin for the formulaic writ book and the final transcription of the plea roll; English for the statute; French for the legal report. The emergence across the previous five hundred years of these three idioms speaks more to a tension between Latin and the vernacular than to any battle waged between the "native" English and Norman French vernaculars. Indeed, the impact in 1066 of the French language on the written law was minimal: until the thirteenth century Latin was the sole language of record - for statute as for writ and the plea roll. French entered English law as a written language only in the mid-thirteenth century, when the first collections of reports appeared, precursors to the so-called year books, which first appear at the end of the century. The reports, professional records of oral argument before the bench, would continue to be written in French for the next 450 years. At the same time as the reports emerged, French began to replace Latin as the language of the statute rolls, an association fully in place by the reign of Edward III and continuous until the time of Richard III and Henry VII, when English finally replaced French as the language of enacted law.
   Left implicit in this sketch of linguistic change is the impact on the written law, and thus on the evidence of past practice, of the language spoken in courtroom pleading. The history of the spoken language is inevitably more obscure than that of the written, not least because formal records such as the Latin plea roll were translated from the language of oral proceeding. .... (p. 183)


    Henry V and Richard III both respond to the Conquest through the representation of conquest as a reiterative structure, one of the plays uses to enact identity, at the moment of its performance, as a relational form. At issue, first, is the surface continuity between Shakespeare's reading of Anglo-French conquest in Henry V, where Agincourt in 1415 replays Edward III's victory at Crécy in 1346, and Coke's use in 1602 of Edward's claims in France as a way to counter the implications of the Norman Conquest for English law. As at law, the dramatic iteration of conquest as a formal and narrative structure points to an important ripple in how England's relation to France was coded. If these conquests are structurally the same event, that is so because as versions of 1066 they also define that formative moment as exemplary of a fully hybrid Englishness. (p. 200)



Όσο ετοίμαζα την ανάρτηση άκουγα αυτό το μαγικό, σήμερα το αγόρασα:

Valentina Lisitsa, "Chasing pianos", Music of Michael Nyman

Από το cd αυτό, ακούστε το:

"The heart asks pleasure"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-Zcc-OvzA8

Και ένα βιντεάκι για το πώς έγινε αυτή η συνεργασία/ηχογράφηση:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mucPPCx02aU


Υ.Γ. Συχνά ανησυχώ ότι τα βιβλία και τα cd μου κάποια στιγμή θα μου πουν: "Έξω από το σπίτι! Πιάνεις χώρο και τον χρειαζόμαστε!"