Twelfth Night and the philology of nonsense

This article argues that nonsense words in Twelfth Night and other early modern English comedies can help us think more clearly about our attempts to explicate difficult language in historical contexts. Focusing in particular on Sir Toby's untranslatable exclamation ‘Castiliano Vulgo’ and other...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inRenaissance studies Vol. 30; no. 1; pp. 88 - 101
Main Author Zucker, Adam
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.02.2016
Wiley (Variant)
Subjects
comedy
Drama
editing
Language
Literary criticism
nonsense
philology
Renaissance period
Shakespeare
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
Twelfth Night
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Summary:This article argues that nonsense words in Twelfth Night and other early modern English comedies can help us think more clearly about our attempts to explicate difficult language in historical contexts. Focusing in particular on Sir Toby's untranslatable exclamation ‘Castiliano Vulgo’ and other meaningless foreign-sounding phrases in a range of plays, the article discusses the social ramifications of miscomprehension or false interpretations, both for imagined characters on stage, and for scholars, editors, teachers, students, and audience members. How does our desire to eliminate confusion in our encounter with historical literature shape our responses to comic texts? Can we imagine a classroom or a Shakespearean theatre in which baffling, incomprehensible nonsense is a productive presence?
Bibliography:istex:5A01605114D9C9949F7CF1AC7A10E06501C1277C
ArticleID:REST12204
ark:/67375/WNG-L75FMNQ8-4
ISSN:0269-1213
1477-4658
DOI:10.1111/rest.12204