Reaching the peaks - literally and figuratively

So last week I had an afternoon off and went to London for the launch of the new Norton Shakespeare. It's 3500 pages long and 7.3cm thick (3 inches). In case that's not enough, there's an awful lot more online: more variants, facsimiles, renditions of the various songs). The overall editor is Stephen Greenblatt, the eminence grise of New Historicism, a mode of analysis that I find fascinating though with some reservations. To do extreme violence to its subtlety, it holds that texts should be examined alongside almost any kind of other contemporary texts from shopping lists to diaries, because they'll all feature in some way the cultural and social anxieties which can be found in the texts (even if they're detected through their studied absence).

I'd received a desk inspection copy of the Norton volume and received an invitation, so I decided to go along. I'd be an idiot to miss a lecture by one of the world's greatest living Renaissance scholars. Besides, I could sneak off to the Shard  - that monument to speculative plutocracy - and fulfil my ambition of doing some photography from Europe's highest tower.

Both experiences were fun, but also a bit disappointing. The Shard first, as it doesn't matter in any meaningful way. I'm no architect, but I do think that if I'd built the highest photography spot in Europe, overlooking one of the world's greatest cities, I might just have spent a little extra on non-reflective glass. Just a suggestion. Anyway, I bought a Day and Night ticket for £35, allowing me up the monstrosity in the early afternoon and again at night (Greenblatt was speaking at sunset).

The view is just astonishing - the flat geography of the London region is laid out in front of you and you can see the weather changing from miles away. From this height (much like a tower in Jacksonville, I was informed by a fellow visitor) you can see the city as a system: transport, topography and infrastructure, rather than as a habitat. It was a bit of a dull day so the light wasn't great but the place still looked good. Click these to enlarge, and the rest of the photos are here.

A patch of sun

The open bit at the top of the Shard

Sun over IKEA

Decorative strip reflected on the windows

The Globe Theatre from the Shard

St. Paul's from outside the Globe

Perhaps my favourite picture of all

The night-time shots are a bit clichéd perhaps, but still stunning – mostly for the amount of light pollution.

As to the Greenblatt event, it was fun but a bit of a missed opportunity. Beforehand I had a pint of beer and a piece of cake in the theatre as a Shakespearian homage – I'm sure you'll remember these lines from Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night (apologies for the weird formatting - Blogger won't let me fix it):

Out o' tune, sir: ye lie. Art any more than a
steward? Dost thou think, because thou art
virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Thou'rt a scholar; let us therefore eat and drink.
Marian, I say! a stoup of wine!

Then it was on to free prosecco surrounded by the most eminent Shakespeareans in the world and their impossibly hip PhD students (all of whom appeared to be auditioning for the role of Fey Quirky Belle and Sebastian LP Cover Star).

I knew I was in trouble when Greenblatt asked for a show of hands from those who had like him edited Shakespeare for publication. A veritable forest went up - I haven't edited so much as a limerick. Anyway, Greenblatt was very funny ('why is my edition 3500 pages long? Because you physically can't make books any bigger') and informative about the volume, as was Gordon McMullan, the other editor present. But what didn't happen was a full-on reflection from his critical perspective of the demands and purposes of editing, or anything like it. 30 minutes between the two and it was back to the fizz. Entertaining enough, but rather more lightweight than I'd expected.

What did the Romans ever do for bloggers?

I'm currently reading Stephen Greenblatt's new book, The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began. I always enjoy new historicist work, though I'm not entirely convinced that anecdotes or unnoticed events can be made to bear the weight of era-defining cultural change (don't write in: I know it's more complicated than that). The event in this book is the rediscovery in 1417 of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura, a Roman text which discards God for an atomic vision of the universe (and much else besides).

I'm also suspicious of Greenblatt's sympathy for the Renaissance scholars' view that the period between the fall of Rome and their own period was one of cultural and social misery. I actually resent the term 'medieval' as cringeworthy, implying as it does that nothing much happened in-between the Romans and the Renaissance. But I digress…

Anyway, this hugely erudite book has a lot to say about literary and book culture in the Roman and early Renaissance periods, and no doubt I'll be presenting you with further choice tidbits in the near future. But one section caught my eye - Greenblatt's opposition between the isolated, individualist scholarship of the ecclesiastical scriptors and theologians, and the conversational academia of the Roman philosophers.

Ancient Greeks and Romans did not share our idealization of isolated geniuses, working alone to think through the knottiest problems… this vision of proper intellectual pursuits rested on a profound shift in cultural prestige, one that began with the early Christian hermits who deliberately withdrew from whatever it was that pagans valued… the dominant cultural image that they fashioned - or that was fashioned around them - was of radical isolation.

Not so the Greeks and Romans… their poets and philosophers must have periodically pulled away from the noise and business of the world in order to accomplish what they did. But the image that they projected was social… philosophers depicted themselves engaged in long conversation, often stretching out over several days. The pulling away… was figured not as a retreat to a solitary cell but as a quiet exchange of words among friends in a garden… the activity of choice, for cultivated Romans, as for the Greeks before them, was discourse. 

Greenblatt goes on to quote Cicero recalling the way in which long, thoughtful conversations between his friends, adherents to different philosophical schools, helped him determine his own position, though never definitively:

'inconclusiveness' was 'a strategy of civilised openness among friends. The exchange itself, not its final conclusions, carries much of the meaning. The discussion itself is what most matters, the fact that we can reason together easily, with a blend of wit and seriousness, never descending into gossip or slander, and always allowing room for alternative views. "The one who engages in conversation", Cicero wrote, "should not debar others from participating in it, as if he were entering upon a private monopoly; but, as in other things, so in a general conversation he should think it not unfair for each to have his turn"'.

I think we've a lot to learn from this, as students, academics and - yes - as bloggers, academic or not. The vision of the classroom as a civilised, open-minded conversation is one of vanishing perfection: the cultural context, the architecture, the class-sizes, the timings, the curriculum, the cash-up-front nature of modern education renders the easy-going examination of ideas more and more difficult in all but a few élite institutions, and their version is a self-conscious revival. I'm always looking for this exchange of ideas, but reality intervenes: too much teaching cuts down on my preparation time, students tired from holding down jobs aren't ready for the hard work, while others text or surf their way through class. But as an ideal, it's unbeatable.

This Roman model (building on the Greek Symposium, which had wine at its heart) is also very attractive. For academics, our careers are built (or not) on the output of scholarly papers published in obscure and expensive journals, destined to be read by the ten or twenty people in the world who share our specific interests. We make a cult of working on research in silent libraries or home offices, emerging blinking into the light with an article: our culture is clearly and explicitly modelled on those of the monks, constrained to unquestioning silence and obedience by - in their case -  the whip and - in our's - the REF and the whims of a know-nothing, care-less government.

Perhaps it's time to consciously shift our models. Certainly in the arts, we should work more collaboratively, as scientists do all the time. I'm convinced that we should share our ideas much more publicly and much more freely, in economic and social terms. Rather than being monks in cells, we should be Romans, inviting all interested parties to the conversation and becoming far less precious about individual genius and ownership. One outlet is the web: a blog is a perfect site for reaching out to colleagues and interested parties, for sharing ideas and testing work in progress. The peer-reviewed article or chapter is excellent as a filter and mark of esteem, but it's also an exclusive and limiting space. The speed and accessibility of the blog are hugely advantageous… as long as we heed Cicero's words and maintain what Greenblatt calls the 'civilised openness of friends'.

All this applies, of course, to non-academic blogging and my own brand of somewhere-in-between, which is why I'd love to get more comments and debate going. Join me!

Mmmmeetings

Despite actually not being able to speak, I'm spending most of this week attending meetings: a departmental one that's bound to be fractious, an open meeting with the Lords and Masters tomorrow which (I hope) is going to be interesting - damn having lost my voice - then a Union meeting on Thursday, which should feature a lot of the old-time religion to boost our spirits.

Oh well - in case I'm better by Thursday, I'm reading a load of Greenblatt for my Othello lecture, which is always fun.

I'm also listening to Pantera, over and over again. It suits my mood.

Collateral damage

I'm slowly unpacking. Very little is damaged, but I have lost some of my favourite CDs - several Nick Drake and all but one of my Damon and Naomi albums, which is very strange. If you don't know them, they make a darker version of dreampop. They used to be in Galaxie 500: the other bloke, Dean Wareham, founded Luna subsequently. Highly recommended for the wee hours. Gotta love bands with songs like 'The New Historicism', which is funny because I'm currently reading that movement's founding text, Greenblatt's Learning to Curse.

It's been a long, weird trip…

I'm now exhausted - written several lectures (another one to write tonight), attended a stressful departmental meeting, gone to some introductory lectures and went for a swim. For a peaceful moment, I have to retreat to the loo - currently with Stephen Greenblatt's Learning to Curse, which I really should have read years ago.

I also got my Shazam t-shirt, in honour of the mighty Spaced.

Teaching teaching teaching

Last night I taught Twelfth Night, using lots of Sinfield, Greenblatt, Butler and Blackadder (to which they took rather well). This morning was a lecture on semiotics, followed by my poetry class - 'The Seafarer', Petrarch, Spenser and Shakespeare. It's quite exciting covering such big themes - but I'm quite tired, and have lots of marking to do!