I’ve been thinking about this since class last night. We believe that John Webster drew on multiple sources to write his two major plays, The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil.
Those probably include contemporary or near-contemporary sources like Barnabe Rich’s New Description of Ireland, Francois de Rosset’s Histoires tragiques de nostre temps, Thomas Marsh’s Palace of Pleasure, Lady Arbella Stuart’s life, John Florio’s Letter Lately Written from Rome, the Fugger newsletters (German – admittedly, a long shot), a French account of the visit of Virginio Orsini (also a long shot), and definitely Orsini’s contemporary residence in London.
So, a mix of previous authors (including also the Greeks, whom Webster and his age read for models of tragedy in drama) and real life. With, if you like to say, his own particular genius. Genius, by the way, originally meant just one’s residing spirit. Not talent or brilliance, but particularity – so forget for a minute the history of taste, and value judgments.
The point is that Webster was unique; each of his sources was unique (should add the caveat “as far as we know,” since we really don’t know for sure). Although he drew material from them, he put it together in a unique way (he really did; he changed historical events to make them more dramatic).
Voilà the author.
If it’s not about taste or value, it is about money. The publication of a Webster tragedy would make more money than the publication of the Fugger letters (I’m assuming!) and be sold more widely than the account of Virginio Orsini’s visit to France (very rare document; I know because I had to track it down). Of course, selling better / more popularity is a value judgment added to the history of taste right there.
Others since Webster have written this story, Stendhal being probably the best-known now. I am biased because of my focus on Webster, but I’d venture that his version has been the definitive one.
A final comment. Shakespeare may or may not be regarded today as a snooty taste. In point of fact, he was the Anne Rice of his day. The public, the hoi polloi, loved his shows, and he was a major financial success. Webster, though he didn’t have similar success, wrote for the same audience. Webster was probably the Alice Borchardt of his day.
1 comment:
Voila, the Author!
The segue to Foucault is breathless. Whereas you point out (rightly I might add) that an author evolves from former iterations of a story, tale, or epic, Foucault seems to argue that the author mysteriously evaporates in the effluvium of discourse into a "transcendental anonynity." Foucault reduces what we commonly consider the creator of a work and suggests that it is no more a person than a cat is a cat.
One can use Saussure's linguistic claims about the sign and the signified all one wants, but to leave out the salient claim - of a convention - simply means that one is free to make up things as one goes along. I really had the sense that he was making up things as he went along. One example: Near the end of his essay, Foucault creates a false analogy by asserting that Galileo's and Newton's theories are not "discursive" as are Marx's and Freud's. The problem here is, of course, Marx's and Freud's theories are not science (116).
Foucault does this a few times in the essay, which I will point out. (Yes, I hear that collective groan.)
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