From the Daily Pennsylvanian:
http://www.thedp.com/article/2016/12/shakespeare-portrait-removed
Fantastic. I agree with exposing students in the hallways to more than the old standbys. It also was both faculty and students who supported the change.
Sorry but some writers have had so much more impact on the world than others. I cannot think of a single writer who has had more impact than Shakespeare. So many of the words and phrases we use today he invented. His characters are iconic. He changed the English language. His stories have been told and retold for 400 years and are still fresh and relevant. To remove his picture is like removing the Washington monument and replacing it with a monument to James Buchanan.
@TatinG -
Replacing a statue of Washington with one of Bobby Seale is more like it.
Good. I like some diversity and I’ve seen way too many pictures of Shakespeare in my life. Those old portraits creep me out anyway.
As long as Shakespeare is still taught, I’m OK with that. Especially since I’d never heard of Audre Lorde. I looked her up. Reserved a book by her in the library.
I learned something. Isn’t that what college is all about?
Nobody really knows what Shakespeare looked like, anyway, right?
re post # 2. Disagree totally. This is a picture in a hallway, not a national monument. Changing the wall hanging shows the school is more about literature than just one author. In fact, rotating pictures every month or semester may be even better in exposing students to the wider world. Plus get more notice.
Diversity is important and literature majors should read all kinds of literature. That being said–I can think of many black authors whose works have had a great impact on the readers everywhere–Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Maya Angelou are just a few. Why not one of them? Why not rotate pictures and be more inclusive?
While true, much of the reason for Shakespeare’s impact beyond the UK/US wasn’t necessarily due to Shakespeare’s literary merit, however great it is.
Rather, it was due to the impact of British Imperialistic colonialism worldwide to the point that at one point, the sun literally never set on the British empire.
And that’s largely due to the fact the British were far better armed, industrialized, and fighting societies which weren’t sufficiently united against an empire which was willing to used exceedingly violent coercive means to invade countries/societies outside the British Isles.
The satirical British comedy Blackadder IV made a reference to this when Captain Blackadder mentioned something about how fighting the colonial wars in the late 19th/early 20th centuries were much easier because the natives were armed with fruit, not modern combat arms like the Imperial Germans he was tasked with fighting in WWI.
It looks like they had space on that staircase for only one portrait. They took down the portrait of the greatest author or all time. Sad. No other author, other than the ‘authors’ of the Bible has had more impact on world literature, art, and Western culture in general than Shakespeare. You simply cannot claim to know literature unless you also know and understand King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet and on and on. Without looking it up, quick, can anyone name any character or story by Audre Lordre. I could argue that Tom Clancy has had more impact than she.
But- that picture of Shakespeare was likely ignored while different authors will cause people to notice. Colleges should be dynamic, not staid.
Maybe they’ll change the name of Pennsylvania to Susan B Anthonyville, and then change the name of the school to U of Susan.
I should also add that the current perception of Shakespeare as “high literature” wasn’t always the case even within England. In fact, back when he was alive and even some decades afterwards, his plays/works were considered “low-brow” by some elites of the day and at one point religiously objectionable to the point performing or sometimes even possessing his works was considered a felonious offense*.
- During period of Cromwell's Commonwealth which ended in 1660 with the restoration of Charles II.
- I think the nod to women, African Americans and the LGBTQ community, and all the authors laboring in obscurity is good.
- Not sure why they highlight Shakespeare is coming down instead of making the pics of authors more diverse? Maybe to make it more sensational and get some press. Okay. That seems fine, but seems to undermine the diversity concept a bit. idk
They couldn’t hang another portrait somewhere? I get being inclusive, but inclusion doesn’t mean removing and replacing, it means including. Additive vs zero-sum, to me anyway.
This is a petty gesture. Would they have taken his portrait down if he was not white? Political correctness gone too far. I am super liberal and 100 percent in favor of diversity and celebrating all walks of life, but we are not talking about an ordinary person.
He continues to influence many aspects of life in the English speaking world to this day. He created 1500 of our 25,000 commonly used words. His quotations and neologisms are part of everyday English. His works are performed all over the world, in many different languages. He has even been translated into ZULU! His stories are referred to on a daily basis. His body of work influences many aspects of life in the English-speaking world, not just in English classes.
If this school is going to rotate pictures of famous authors, no problem. But sorry, no one else can hold a candle to Shakespeare. (I think he might have coined that phrase too.) No offense at all to Audre Lorde, who has no doubt earned a good reputation, but I have never heard of that person. And I am guessing even some of the illustrious students at Penn might not have heard of this person either.
Now they, and you, have heard of her. African-American lesbian feminist poet and essayist. Quite a good writer; her essays are really beautiful and powerful. Died of cancer relatively young a while back. Probably a big name in Gender Studies curriculums.
She’s not going to replace Shakespeare in the canon, now or ever. But she’s worth paying attention to, so I’m glad she’s getting a little press.
I disagree that Shakespeare should have come down but I understand the space limitations in that particular area. Perhaps a collage of numerous authors of different backgrounds - Shakespeare, this Lorde person (of whom I had never heard either), Sholom Aleichem, Victor Hugo, Maya Angelou, Dante, etc. That would be a cross section of diverse writers.
I did look up Ms. Lorde. Her work is not to my taste but, then again, I can’t profess to be a true Shakespeare afficionado, either. I believe that our children should be exposed to literature of many types, not just white male, but that white male literature shouldn’t be discounted just because that is what it is.
Would his portrait have been up on the wall for all these years if he had NOT been white?
I really don’t think Shakespeare is in any danger of being neglected or being dropped from the canon of English literature, for heaven’s sake. The Bard can spare a stairwell wall here and there to other authors.
Also, for those who didn’t actually click through and see the photograph, that portrait was freaking huge – it took up the entire wall of the stairway landing. And it was obviously just a reproduction of that one portrait that we’ve all seen a hundred times. It’s about as useful, from the point of view of educating students about English literature, as sticking a photocopy of a five dollar bill up on the wall of the History building as a way to teach students about Abraham Lincoln. Why not use that space for a display about some aspect of English literature that people don’t actually know about? No need to have a giant portrait of anybody.