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Afloat in Thick Deeps: Shakespeare's Sonnets on Certainty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Lars Engle
Lars Engle*
Affiliation:
University of Tulsa Tulsa, Oklahoma
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Abstract

Instead of being essentially Platonic, as generations of critics have contended, Shakespeare's sonnets embrace a fundamentally economic idea of value. Their claims to certainty and to permanence refer to human systems rather than to transcendent absolutes. In this respect they resemble Wittgenstein's final writings, collected as On Certainty. Basing their own predicted endurance on their continued utility through time and social change, the sonnets sketch a pragmatic account of human continuity and a nonessentialist idea of human nature. This description of their literary process also suggests why they now seem peculiarly canonical.

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Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 104 , Issue 5 , October 1989, pp. 832 - 843
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1989

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