SAA conference 2023 in Minneapolis, MN

Next week I will be part of a seminar at a conference: the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, which will be held this year in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.[1]

I’ve attended before:
2018:
I attended the 2018 meeting in Los Angeles, California, where I met Gayle Gaskill, editor of the New Kitteridge edition of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, as well as other scholars, young and old, with interesting tales to tell.[2] Gayle and I went on to present papers at the SCSC conference in the fall of 2018.[3]

2020:
I was part of a seminar on “Mind, Cognition, and Affect” in 2020,[4] held on Zoom due to the pandemic. My paper was about labors of gratitude

and regret in Hamlet, exploring how these emotions were instrumental in character arcs. See my series on that topic. [5]

2023:
This year, I am taking part in the seminar, “Reconsidering Science and Religion,” on Thursday, 30 March, 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. CST.

My paper is called “Kuhnian Paradigm Shifts and Emmaus Untethered in Elsinore & Venice.” It is about how Shakespeare alludes to scientific and religious paradigm shifts in Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice. These involve astronomy (as in Hamlet’s love letter to Ophelia: “Doubt that the sun doth move…”), with possible references to Copernicus and Giordano Bruno [6], and also shifts in Christ-figures.

In Merchant, the Christ figure shifts from the self-pitying victim, Antonio, to Portia (whose appearance disguised in the courtroom is like that of the stranger on the road to Emmaus in the Christian scriptures).

In Hamlet, the Christ-figure shifts from the murdered King Hamlet (early in the play) to another Emmaus-like stranger, the gravedigger-clown, who embodies the spirit of Yorick the fool, a man with the divine quality of “infinite jest.”

These Emmaus echoes in the plays are “untethered” from accepted, official interpretations of the Emmaus tale in Luke.

On the Emmaus echoes in Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice, see my previous blog posts. [7]

Shakespeare wrote at a time when many paradigms were shifting: Religious, scientific, political, artistic, literary, economic, and more. I believe these were related, and not just a coincidental collection of unrelated paradigm shifts that happened to be taking place at approximately the same time.

My seminar group has an impressive list of participants whose paper’s I’ve enjoyed reading in advance of the conference.

When I received word that I was accepted to be in it, I was sitting near a bookshelf that contained books by two of the seminar participants: Jennifer Rust of St. Louis University, author of The Body in Mystery, and Rhodri Lewis, formerly of Oxford, now of Princeton University, author of Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness. A happy coincidence.

NOTES:
[1] SAA 2023 program: https://shakespeareassociation.org/annual-meetings/2023-schedule/

[2] See my post about my favorite things about the 2018 SAA meeting in Los Angeles:

https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2018/04/favorite-exps-at-saa-2018.html
[3] https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2018/04/cfp-scsc-nov2018-albuquerque-links-to.html

[4] See my post on the 2020 SAA seminar:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2020/06/saa-sem-shax-mind-cognition-affect.html

[5] Labors of Gratitude and Regret in Hamlet:

1 (Introduction) https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/08/lewis-hyde-on-labor-of-gratitude.html
2: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/08/labors-of-gratitude-and-regret-in-hamlet.html
3: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/08/polonius-his-labor-of-regret.html
4: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/09/into-dads-circle-of-fear-flattery.html
5: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/09/laertes-labors-of-gratitude-regret13.html
6: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/09/laertes-labors-gratitude-regret45.html
7: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/09/toxic-masculinity-distracts-while-ophelia-drowns.html
8: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/10/laertes-hamlet-fight-at-ophelias-grave.html
9: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/10/gertrude-as-recipient-giver-of-gifts.html
10: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/10/laertes-turns-only-facing-death.html
11: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/10/does-hamlet-ophelias-love-change-them.html
For parts 12-15, see the index at the bottom of each of the posts.
16: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/why-gift-dynamics-matter-hamlet-bible.html
[6] For more on Giordano Bruno and Shakespeare, see my blog post on Hilary Gatti on Bruno and Hamlet:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/07/hillary-gatti-on-bruno-and-shakespeare.html

[7] Emmaus in The Merchant of Venice: https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/01/emmaus-in-merchant-of-venice-in.html

Series on Emmaus in Hamlet, Introduction:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2018/05/emmaus-in-hamlet-in-emmaus-story-1.html

Series on Emmaus in Hamlet, Part 1:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/05/blasphemy-and-heresy-in-hamlets-emmaus.html
Emmaus Series, Part 2:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/05/heresy-in-hamlet-51-emmaus-figures-part.html

Emmaus Series, Part 3:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/05/from-fear-power-to-fools-affection.html

Emmaus Series, Part 4:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/05/why-rhenish-not-bread-emmaus-in-hamlet.html

Emmaus Series, Part 5:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/05/hamlet-emmaus-eucharistic-controversy.html

Emmaus Series, Part 6:
https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2022/05/emmaus-key-change-in-hamlet-merchant-of.html


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Disclaimer: If and when I quote or paraphrase bible passages or mention religion in many of my blog posts, I do not intend to promote any religion over another, nor am I attempting to promote religious belief in general; only to explore how the Bible and religion influenced Shakespeare, his plays, and his age.
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Thanks for reading!
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My current project is a book tentatively titled Hamlet’s Bible, about biblical allusions and plot echoes in Hamlet.

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https://pauladrianfried.blogspot.com/2019/12/top-20-hamlet-bible-posts.html

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