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No Exit – A Paper About Black Holes January 15, 2009

Posted by Bethany Kesler in Writing, original.
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Black holes are one of the universe’s great mysteries.  We know they’re out there, yet no astronomer has ever seen one.  What are black holes?  What are the common misconceptions surrounding them?  What is some of the latest research on them?   These are a few of the questions we will be exploring in this paper.

To begin with, what is a black hole?  According to astronomers, a black hole is defined as a “region in space where the gravity is so high that the fabric of space and time has curved back in on itself, taking the exit doors with it” (Tyson, 282).  Another description of them comes from the Encarta Dictionary, “areas in space with such a strong gravitational pull that no matter or energy can escape from it.”

Black holes are formed when a star dies.   A star is a massive fusion reactor, its size determined by the balance between the gravitational forces and the explosive forces.  When that delicate balance gets disrupted and the star starts to die, the nuclear fusion reactions stop and the gravitational forces pull material inward, which compresses the core.  This causes the core to heat up, triggering a supernova explosion.  The explosion propels the material and radiation far out into space.  The only thing that remains is the highly compressed and massive core.   The gravitational forces are so strong that not even light can escape and the black hole literally disappears from sight.   The force of the gravity is also enough to cause the black hole to slip through the fabric of space-time, creating a hole in space-time.  This is why they’re given the name of “Black Holes” (Freudenrich, 2).

The core becomes the central part of the black hole called the ’singularity.’ The edge of the beginning of the black hole is called the event horizon. It is the point of no return, the boundary between the isolated volumes of space-time and the rest of the universe.  Once across the event horizon, there is no coming back.  What happens inside of a black hole is unknown to us, because our current theories about physics don’t apply to a singularity such as the one at the core of a black hole.  An accretion disk is formed from the gas and dust and other matter that is drawn towards the black hole.  It lies before the event horizon; the matter making up the accretion disk heats up as it is drawn to the event horizon and will radiate x-rays which reveal to us the black hole’s location and mass (Smithsonian).

By convention, the size of the event horizon is seen as the size of the black hole.  This is a clean quantity in which to calculate and measure (Tyson, 284).     The radius is called the Schwarzschild radius after Karl Schwarzschild, whose work led to the initial theories about black holes.

There are two types of black holes, Schwarzschild black holes and Kerr black holes.  The difference between the two of them lies in their cores.   Schwarzschild black holes have cores that do not rotate and consist only of an event horizon and singularity (and sometimes an accretion disk).  Kerr black holes, named for Roy P. Kerr are black holes whose cores rotate because the stars they formed from rotated and the law of conservation of angular momentum carries over the rotation from the dying star to the final stage as a black hole (Freudenrich, 3).   Because of the difference in the core, a Kerr black hole has more parts to it than a Schwarzschild black hole.

In addition to the event horizon and the singularity, a Kerr black hole consists of an ergosphere and a static limit.   The ergosphere is defined as “An egg-shaped region of distorted space around the event horizon” (Freudenrich, 3).  The distortion is caused by the rotation.  The static limit is the boundary between the ergosphere and normal space.  The difference between the ergosphere and the event horizon is that something can still escape from the ergosphere, provided that it could gain enough energy from the rotation to propel itself clear.

What would happen to someone or something that wandered too close to a black hole?   Say for example that you are falling feet first towards the black hole.   As you get closer to it, its force of gravity grows astronomically.  You would not feel this at all, because you are weightless.  What you do feel is far more ominous.  The black hole’s gravity force is accelerating your feet faster than your head, because your feet are closer than your head to the center of the black hole.  The difference between the gravity at your feet and the gravity at your head is called the tidal force.   The tidal force grows sharply as you get nearer to the center.   Your body would stay whole until the moment that the tidal force grew larger than your body’s molecular bonds.  Your body then breaks apart into segments that also break apart and divide until you are nothing but a stream of unrecognizable particles.  But that’s not the end of it, because the tidal forces are all moving you towards the exact same spot (the black hole’s center), you are not only getting ripped apart, but you are also getting squeezed through the fabric of space-time like toothpaste from a tube  (Tyson, 285).

There are several common misconceptions about black holes.  To use one example, black holes are not universal vacuum cleaners that will eventually suck up the entire universe.  A black hole is, put simply, a gravitational field and at a reasonable distance away, its pull is no more than a normal object of similar mass.  The black hole’s gravity only gets extreme when you come close to it.   Another common misconception about black holes is that black holes are not funnels.  They are often graphed as curvatures on a flat sheet, giving the appearance of a funnel (this is to show the strength of the gravity surrounding it), but black holes themselves are not funnels (Horizons, 239).

It is also a misconception that since light cannot escape from a black hole, it is impossible to get any energy out of it.   Matter flowing into the gravitational field accelerates inward and to help preserve angular momentum, it flows onto the accretion disk.   The accretion disk is so hot that it can emit x-ray and gamma ray bursts and as it spins, it also can spit out some very powerful beams of gas and radiation from the disk’s axis of rotation (Horizons, 243).

This history of black holes began two centuries ago with an English geologist, John Mitchell. Mitchell theorized that gravity could become so strong that not even light (which travels at 299,792,458 meters per second in a vacuum) would be able to escape. He also theorized that if such a thing were possible, the object would have to be incredibly dense as well as massive.  He called such objects, “dark stars.”  His ideas were published briefly, but then discarded out of hand (University of Illinois). Simon Pierre LePlace predicted the existence of black holes in his work, Le Système du Monde, “… [It] is therefore possible that the largest luminous bodies in the universe may, through this cause, be invisible” (Amazing Space).

Then came Albert Einstein.   In 1916, he published a mathematical theory about space and time that became known as the general theory of relativity. He treated space and time as if they were one entity.  His equations showed that gravity could be described as a sort of curvature of space-time.   On the heels of this groundbreaking theory comes Karl Schwarzschild, who using Einstein’s theory, almost immediately found a solution to the equations that described the gravitational field around this nonmoving, electrically neutral lump of some matter. This was the first actual scientific description of a black hole.   His solution showed that if matter was packed together tightly enough, into a small enough volume, then space-time would curve back into itself.  Objects could still follow various paths into the black hole but nothing could escape, not even light, thus leaving the inside of the black hole completely beyond the observation of an outside viewer (Horizons, 238).

After Schwarzschild, came Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, a pioneer in the study of white dwarf stars. This lead to a further understanding of the limits of mass, which would determine whether a star dies a white dwarf, a neutron star, or a black hole.  Roy P. Kerr uncovered the solution to charged black holes with rotating cores in 1963.  In 1964, John Wheeler coined the term, “black hole.”   That same year, neutron stars were discovered by Jocelyn Bell-Burnell.

In 1970, Stephen Hawking defined the modern theory of black holes and Cygnus X-1 was found. Cygnus X-1 was the first decent black hole candidate located by astronomers.  It emitted x-rays and has a companion that has a mass greater than a neutron star, but is actually smaller than Earth is (Amazing Space).

Astronomers at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii are currently studying the black hole in the center of the Milky Way; in hopes that the data they gather from their experiments will give them a greater insight into what is still one of the universe’s biggest mysteries.  One of the huge Keck telescopes has been equipped with an incredible new tool that increases its power.  A laser guide has been added to the telescope, making it possible for the telescope to capture pictures clear as any taken from actual satellites in space.  The astronomers at the Keck Observatory have aimed the laser guide directly at the black hole located near the Sagittarius constellation at the center of the galaxy (Smithsonian).

The laser fires into what appears to be the heart of the black hole (actually ending some 55 miles above the surface of the Earth), the signal there allowing the telescope to compensate for the blur of Earth’s atmosphere.  The telescope will stay locked on to the same part of the sky for a period of four hours while a camera takes one 15 minute exposure after another.    The astronomers and graduate students working there are hoping that some of the new data they are collecting will put them one step closer to finding out how stars close to these black holes are born and how the black holes distort the fabric of space itself. (Smithsonian)

The team at Keck is using the laser as an artificial guide light, allowing them to explore more of the sky than they’ve previously been able to.  Erasing the distortions that come with air currents and the Earth’s atmosphere is possible with technology called adaptive optics.  Adaptive optics sharpens up the pictures and gets rid of the distortions, but it has one serious drawback.  The technology requires a strong and clear guiding light to use as a reference point.   So it would only truly work if pointed at something close to a bright star or planet, effectively limiting the scope of the astronomers’ work.    That barrier has been removed thanks to the laser’s artificial guide light (Smithsonian).

Andrea Ghez of UCLA, one of the astronomers at the Keck Observatory and leader of this particular team, describes the black hole and the area around it as “the thriving city center of the galaxy, compared to the suburbs where we are. Stars are moving at tremendous speeds. You’d see things change on a time scale of tens of minutes” (Smithsonian).   She and another UCLA astronomer, Mark Morris, hope to gather the first evidence that the stars do indeed travel along the weird orbital paths predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity.  If this is so, then the stars would trace out something like a Spirograph pattern over time, gradually altering the points of their closest approaches to the black hole. Andrea Ghez and her colleagues are about eight years away from spotting that shift, according to an article about black holes in the Smithsonian magazine.

As the research progresses, some of the newest findings are quite startling to the teams of astronomers observing them.  One of them is the discovery of scores of massive young stars in the same neighborhood as the black hole.  Only five to ten million years old and roughly ten times more massive than our sun, no one can quite explain what they are doing there.  Normally, new stars are birthed in clouds of gas and dust, in a calm environment.  This place, the black hole’s neighborhood is anything but.   There’s no real reason to explain why these stars are there. The astronomers are baffled by this finding (Smithsonian).

It is theorized that these young stars will self-destruct in a few million years, leaving behind small black holes of their own.   These small black holes (only about 20 miles wide) would then swarm around the central super massive black hole.  Mark Morris stipulates that “You’ll have black holes swing past each other in the night, and stars moving through this demolition derby.  A near miss between one of these black holes and a star could scatter the star into the supermassive black hole or out of the galactic center entirely” (Smithsonian).

The new findings about black holes are helping astrophysicists and theorists to develop new models for how the universe was created and how it has evolved since then.  Avi Loeb, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, believes that all galaxies started with “seed” black holes (as of yet unexplained) and that these black holes were tens to thousands of times more massive than our sun.  These seed black holes collided more often and grew exponentially.  As they grew, they formed raging quasars which blasted gas out of the galaxy entirely.  After the gas was depleted, the supermassive black holes sat “dormant and starved,” says Loeb (Smithsonian).

Our Milky Way galaxy has never fueled a quasar and only absorbed some few, small galaxies.  But on the horizon, there lies a terrifying collision.  The Andromeda galaxy is squarely set on a collision path with the Milky Way.  Loeb and a colleague, T.J. Cox, believe the two will start to merge in about two billion years from now, forming what they call, “Milkomeda.”  The two galaxies’ supermassive black hole will collide and ignite a new quasar (Smithsonian).

Andrea Ghez says that “it’s hard to believe that black holes really exist, because it’s such an exotic state of the universe.”  She’s content with the data pulled from the three days of her planned observations.  They’ve got more than enough to keep busy and they’ve identified a few more big young stars to add to their analysis (Smithsonian).

Black holes are as deadly as they are fascinating and there is still much that we don’t know about them. Recent research, as evidenced by the efforts of Ghez and Loeb, have shown us that black holes can be used to explain parts of how the universe works, but largely they remain a mystery.

Bibliography:

Freudenrich, Ph.D., Craig.  “How Black Holes Work.”  26 November 2006.  HowStuffWorks.com. <http://science.howstuffworks.com/black-hole.htm> 04 April 2008.

Board of Trustees. “A Brief History of Black Holes”. University of Illinois. 04/04/2008 <http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/BlackHoleHistory.html>.

Amazing Space. “Pathway to Discovery”. Space Telescope Science Institute. 04/04/2008 <http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/BlackHoleHistory.html>.

Irion, Robert. “Homing In On Black Holes”. Smithsonian April 2008: 45-53.

Seeds, Michael A. Horizons: Exploring the Universe. Belmont, CA: Thomson-Brooks/Cole, 2008.

Tyson, Neil DeGrasse. Death by Black Hole. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2007.

Shakespeare or Bacon? A Look at the History of the Baconian Theory. January 14, 2009

Posted by Bethany Kesler in English Papers, Writing, original.
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The Baconian Theory is a theory postulating that Shakespeare’s works were in fact written by Sir Francis Bacon.   This is a hotly contended point amongst some Shakespearean scholars, who believe that the plays were in fact written by the man Shakespeare from Stratford.

The history of this topic stretches back to 1781-1785 to the Reverend James Wilmot, the rector of Barton-on-the-Heath in Warwickshire, which is near Stratford. The Reverend Wilmot was a scholar of sorts and finding little evidence in the Stratford district that related to Shakespeare’s authorship, suspected that Shakespeare could not be the author of the works that bear his name.  He was also familiar with the works of Francis Bacon and formed the opinion that he was the most likely author of the plays attributed to Shakespeare. (“James Wilmot” )

The theory died down for several years, but was revived by Dr. William Henry Smith in 1856.  He wrote a letter to Lord Ellesmere, essentially a pamphlet expounding upon his reasons for believing that Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays. (Smith) Smith used several of Bacon’s letters, both to and from, that hinted of his authorship.   A year later, he published a book expounding this theory, entitled, Bacon and Shakespeare: An Inquiry Touching Players, Playhouses, and Play-writers in the Days of Elizabeth.

Smith’s book was not the only book expounding this theory to be published that year.   Delia Bacon also published a book on the Baconian theories.  In her book, however, she postulated that Shakespeare was in fact represented as a group of writers, a group that included Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser.  The group’s agenda, according to Bacon, was to transmit an anti-monarchial system of philosophy by concealing it in the text of the plays.

The issue lay buried for another few years, until 1867, when a bundle of bound documents were found in Northumberland House.  Some of the sheets had been forcibly removed, but among the contents of the bundle were several oratories and disquisitions written by Bacon.  The manuscripts of Richard II and Richard III were among the sheets that had removed.  Bacon and Shakespeare’s names had also been repeatedly scrawled on the outermost sheet.  The bundle had been found by John Bruce and the Earl of Northumberland had it sent to James Spedding, an author and the chief editor of Bacon’s works.

Spedding wrote a thesis on the bundle of documents, it was here that he cautiously appraised the date of the documents to be somewhere around 1592, making it the earliest mention of Shakespeare (or as Ben Jonson christened him, “The Swan of Avon”).   The Northumberland bundle shows us that Bacon had possession of the manuscripts of the plays, but it does not prove that Bacon himself wrote the plays. There is still no information on either how he came to possess the manuscripts or how they came to be removed from the bundle.

Constance Mary Fearon Pott was the first to notice that several of the ideas and turns of phrases in Bacon’s book, Promus of Formularies and Elegancies, were similar to some of those used in Shakespeare’s plays.  In 1891, she published her Baconian theory, developing an idea that another author, W.F.C. Wigston had believed, that Francis Bacon was the founding member of a society called the Rosicrucians.   The Rosicrucians were a secret sect of occult philosophers.  They claimed that they had invented literature, art, and drama (including the entire Shakespearean canon) before affixing the symbols of the rose and cross to their work.

The theme that Bacon had left encoded messages inside of the plays was a constant one throughout the late 19′Th century and early 20′Th century.   Elizabeth Wells Gallup claimed to have found evidence not only that Bacon had written the plays but that he was also the son of Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester through a secret marriage, through the use of what Bacon had called a “bi-lateral cipher.”   This cipher used two fonts as a way of encoding messages in binary code.

Ignatius L. Donnolly, Congressman and author also published a book with his ideas of ciphers in The Great Cryptogram.   No one else has been able to find these hidden messages and cryptographers, William and Elizabeth Friedman, in their 1957 book, The Shakespearian ciphers examined, showed that the use of such a cipher was unlikely to have been actually employed by Bacon. (Friedman)

Friedrich Nietzsche and mathematician Georg Cantor were both supporters of the Baconian Theory.    Cantor published two pamphlets in 1896 and 1897 supporting the theory.    American physician Orville Ward Owen was so convinced that he’d solved the ciphers, that he began excavating the riverbed of the River Wye (near Chepstow Castle) , searching for the original Shakespearean manuscripts. (Friedman)

Walter Conrad Arensberg, art collector and founder of the Francis Bacon Foundation (founded in California in 1937) believed that Bacon had concealed messages in not only one but a variety of different ciphers.  The encoded messages all related to a secret history of the Rosicrucians and some of their more esoteric secrets. He published an assortment of decipherments from 1922 and 1930; his final conclusion was that there were definitely concealed messages, even if he had failed to find them.  He left his collection of Baconiana to the foundation after his death.

More recent Baconian theorists tend to ignore the rather esoteric following that the theory had attracted in earlier years.  Bacon’s main reason for secrecy had been held that he desired high office and being publically known for a dramatist would have impeded  his efforts in that arena. However, this modern theory, made popular by Nigel Cockburn in his 1998 self-published book, The Bacon-Shakespeare Question, instead posits that Bacon desired secrecy because of the completion of his Great Instauration project.   In order to advance the scientific component of the project, he intended to set up new schools of instruction and experimentation to gather the data required (the scientific “Histories”) to which Bacon would then apply his inductive method to them.  To fully realize all of this, he needed to attain a high office, thereby garnering enough influence to make it workable.

Bacon also supposedly is claimed to have set out the otherwise-unpublished moral philosophical component of his project in the Shakespearean canon (the moral “Histories”). In this way, he believed he could influence the nobility through dramatic performance with his observations on what constitutes “good” government (a good example of this is seen in the relationship between Prince Hal and the Chief Justice in Henry IV, Part 2). He modeled this after the ancient idea of instructing through play-acting. (Cockburn)

In 2008, Barry R. Clarke self-published his theory, inspired by no small part by Cockburn’s book.  The Shakespeare Puzzle – A Non-Esoteric Baconian Theory, takes some of Cockburn’s conclusions and goes a step farther with them.  Exploring further into Bacon’s authorship of True Declaration (a production done by the Virginia Company and a possible source for The Tempest) and contrary to what Cockburn postulated,  makes the claim that Ben Jonson knew Bacon’s secret as early as December 1609. (Clarke)

The Baconian Theory is taken seriously by some scholars and not at all seriously by others.  We may never actually know who really wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare, whether it was the man from Stratford, Francis Bacon, or someone else entirely.   As long as Shakespeare’s works are widely read and available, there will always be some who doubt the authorship of the plays.

Bibliography

Clarke, Barry R. The Shakespeare Puzzle- A Non-Esoteric Baconian Theory. Barry R. Clarke, 2008.

Cockburn, Nigel. The Bacon-Shakespeare Question. Bacon Book, Inc, 1998 .

Friedman, William and Elizabeth. The Shakespearian ciphers examined. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957.

Smith, William Henry. Bacon and Shakespeare. London : John Russell Smith , 1894.

Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia . “James Wilmot” . 19 September 2008. 10 October 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Wilmot&oldid=239446428>.

Captain America’s “Death” – Sign of the times? January 13, 2009

Posted by Bethany Kesler in English Papers, Writing, original.
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Death in comic books is not generally a big thing.  With all of the resurrections and the alternate timelines and the amount of retconning[1] that goes on in the comic book sphere, fans of a particular superhero generally don’t worry about the hero dying.  At best, it will be just a temporary plot device, serving some greater purpose.  Superman has died before and come back to tell the tale, so have several other major superheroes in the Marvel and DC universes.   The death of Captain America has caused quite a stir both in and out of the comic books world. The timing of Captain America #25 (March 2007) will forever be remembered as a lasting social commentary on post 9/11 events such as the war in Iraq and the Patriot Act (Robinson).

Captain America has long been held as a national icon, a symbol of national pride.   His whole creation has been one long patriotic run.  His first appearance in 1941 was as a super soldier fighting Nazis, a superhero embodying American patriotism.   His red, white, and blue costume was a representation of the ideals America was fighting for in World War II; freedom, justice, democracy, and the American way.   He faded out in the 1960’s when patriotism and the simple truths that Captain America stood for were put on the shelf as Americans started to reevaluate their politics, country, and lifestyles.  The civil rights movement and the Vietnam War caused heroes, as well as the rest of the nation to lose the innocence they’d had before  (Robinson).

Heroes could no longer afford to be squeaky clean good, models of good manners and pure to a certain extent. They all had flaws, in some cases very serious ones (like Tony Stark’s alcoholism) or minor ones (Hank Pym’s (Ant-man) scatterbrained tendencies).  The X-Men were foils for the civil rights movement, Spider-Man worries about finding his own identity, balancing both a normal life and his superhero life.

Captain America was brought back forty years later for the controversial multi-series story arch, Civil War.  He was essentially a man out of time and place.  Many regarded him to be the “perfect superhero.”  This has been seen as his fatal flaw by some.  Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada has been quoted as saying that “He [Captain America] hasn’t been living in the modern world and the world does move” (Holmes, O’Beirne and Perreira). This could partially explain why Captain America was chosen to die at the climax of the Civil War arch.

The Civil War story arch parallels 9/11 and the subsequent events happening afterwards.   Set after the events of House of M[2] and Avengers Disassembled[3], it begins with an accidental explosion in Stamford, Connecticut, an explosion that was caused by superheroes.  Thousands of innocent people were killed, which prompted the government to enact the Superhuman Registration Act.    This act called for the registration of all the superheroes with the government, giving up their anonymity and revealing their secret identities.  The punishment for not registering was imprisonment in the Negative Zone (an alternative dimension where all matter is negatively charged).

It caused a great divide between the superheroes.  The pro-registration side was headed up by Tony Stark (Iron Man), one of Captain America’s best friends.  Their position was that registration was best for everyone’s safety and that the government was correct in their insistence for all superheroes to be registered. He also quietly orchestrated a campaign that created conditions to scare and mislead the public and government officials into supporting the act and all the programs that it entailed.    The anti-registration side, headed up by Captain America, claimed that the Act violated their civil liberties.    He became the leader of a group of now-rogue superheroes after refusing to help Tony Stark and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agency in enforcing the new Patriot Act parallel.   This led to the two sides fighting bitterly against each other.

Captain America ended up surrendering, giving himself up once he realized what it would truly cost to “win” this war.  He was assassinated on the steps of a courthouse on the day of his arraignment.   This highly symbolic move was no accident.    Captain America’s alter ego, Steve Rogers was a super serum enhanced soldier fighting right alongside the common soldiers in World War II.  Even after he’d left the army and joined the Avengers working with S.H.I.E.L.D, he was still identified as a soldier, a hero who’d fought Nazis while protecting the American ideals.   Killing Steve Rogers in the manner that they did (two shots from a sniper rifle), the writers of the comic were making a strong statement.

His death came as something of a shock to one of his co-creators, Joe Simon. “”We really need him now,” the 93 year old told the Associated Press (Holmes, O’Beirne and Perreira). Comic books have long been held as a type of social commentary, but the Civil War story arch took it farther than other comic books have gone before (with the notable exception of Alan Moore’s Watchmen).

Post 9/11 Americans have been faced with the decision whether they value their personal freedoms or their own security more.  Just like the superheroes in the Civil War story arch must choose between keeping their secret identities and heroic intrigue and joining in with the safer, larger, and nameless forces of the government.  Everyday Americans are still weighing the pros and cons of freedom versus security.  Marvel declared a loser with the highly symbolic death of Captain America who embodied the ideals of freedom and civil rights.   His costume and shield have been taken up by another.  So in a sense, Captain America isn’t dead, but what he stood for and the ideals he fought for are.

Bibliography

Holmes, Larry, Jonathan O’Beirne and Glenn Perreira. “Shocking event for Captain America – CNN.com.” 07 March 2007. CNN.com. 28 September 2008 <http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/03/07/captain.america/index.html>.

Robinson, Bryan. “ABC News: What the Death of Captain America Really Means.” 8 March 2007. ABC News. 28 September 2008 <http://abcnews.go.com/US/Story?id=2934283&page=1>.

[1] To retroactively change the continuity of a character or title, often used in comic books.

[2] A follow-up to the events of the Avengers Disassembled storyline, in which the mutant superhero Scarlet Witch suffered a mental breakdown and tried to alter the fabric of reality to recreate her lost children. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_M

[3] Avengers Disassembled, referred to in some participating series as Disassembled, is a crossover event between several Marvel Comics series. The general idea is that the major heroes (the Avengers, Spider-Man, and the Fantastic Four) are assaulted, not just physically, but emotionally. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers_Disassembled

“For Brutus is an Honourable Man” – Language and Rhetoric in Julius Caesar January 12, 2009

Posted by Bethany Kesler in English Papers, Writing, original.
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“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!”  This famous line from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is one that is widely known.  It comes from Mark Antony’s funeral speech and is only one of the several memorable phrases that are still with us today.  Antony’s speech is a very powerful piece of oratory.  It skillfully used both rhetorical patterns and emotive imagery to persuade the crowd to rise up and go after Caesar’s killers. There is more than one funeral speech in Julius Caesar; but Brutus’ speech is neither as readily remembered as Antony’s nor quoted as often.  This can be easily seen merely by examining the first lines of both funeral speeches.

Antony’s first line is highly memorable because it follows the rhetorical convention of the one- two- three syllable progression. It flows off the tongue in a pleasing rhythm as a one syllable word is followed by a two syllable word and then a three syllable word.  It also follows the rhetorical device of asyndeton (Lanham), where commas separate the items in a list without the use of conjunctives.  It shows that each term in the list is equal to the others and it speeds up the flow of the sentence.  Combined with the one- two- three syllable progression and you have a very memorable first line.

Brutus’ first line on the other hand, “Romans, countrymen, and lovers, (3.2.13)” falls flat when spoke aloud because Brutus violated the rhetorical convention that made Antony’s first statement so powerful.  He placed a two syllable word after a three syllable word, making the rhythm of the sentence fall flat.  There are other examples in the two speeches that show the differences and ultimately add to how Antony was able to so easily sway the people from loving the conspirators to hating them.  First examine the two men who gave the speeches.

Marcus Junius Brutus (Wikipedia) was a skilled orator from an old Roman family; his speech is no more reasonable and no less rhetorical than Antony’s is.  Brutus is defending himself and the other conspirators as he explains to the people why they took the action that they did. “… As he was valiant, I honour him: but as he was ambitious, I slew him… (3.2.24-25)” is part of his justification why the conspirators raised their hands against Caesar.    Brutus stakes the belief in his words on the plebeians’ belief in his honor.  “Hear me for my cause…believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe…(3.2.13-15)”   He is casting himself and the other conspirators as true Romans dedicated to Rome above all, “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. (3.2.20-21)”

Marc Antony was the grandson of a famed rhetorician (Marcus Antonius Orator) and while he had proven himself greatly in battle and out, he had not the instruction that Brutus had had.  He was in fact a far greater general than he was a statesman or an administrator.  He did in his youth, for a short time, study rhetoric under the philosophers in Greece but his studies were interrupted by the proconsul of Syria who sent him to take part in military campaigns in Judea (Wikipedia).   He even states in his speech that he is “…no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man…(3.2.208-209)”   Yet his keen mind and his brief study in his youth have enabled him to craft a speech that is personal and emotional and uses rhetorical devices among other things to appeal more to the people.

Antony also has the advantage of speaking after Brutus and therefore from a “deconstructive” point of view.  Even with the specific conditions that Brutus laid upon him in order to allow him the freedom to speak (that he may praise Caesar but not blame the conspirators, that he must tell the crowd that he is speaking with their permission, and that he speaks from the same public pulpit that Brutus did) (Shakespeare), Antony manages to shift the mob’s opinion from hating Caesar to going after Brutus and the other conspirators.

Brutus’ speech, while it is a good example of his oratorical skill, comes off as very cold, rational, and aloof speech. It does not inspire the same sort of passion that Antony’s did.  Moreover, Brutus’ trust that the plebeians will believe his speech because they know him to be an honorable man and without giving them any real sort of proof other than his word is a fatal flaw for him. By doing this he has given Antony the room to sway the mob’s opinion by calling his [Brutus'] honor into question (Baines).     Antony accomplishes this by skillfully refuting Brutus’ unsubstantiated claim that Caesar was ambitious.   Through repetition and recontextualizing the words, “ambitious,”  “honor,” and “honorable,” Antony is able to strip them of their meaning in Brutus’ oration.  He does not denounce Brutus; in fact at no point in his oration does Antony come straight out and say that Brutus and the other conspirators were wrong.   He does the opposite, continually claiming that “…Brutus is an honourable man; so are they all, all honourable men (3.2.79-80).”

Antony cites three specific examples as part of his refutation of Caesar being ambitious, only one of which is truly relevant.   First that “he hath brought many captives home to Rome whose ransoms did the general coffers fill. (3.2.85-86)” Caesar conquered many peoples for Rome, bringing back captives and slaves that were sold or ransomed at great cost; all of that profit was added to Rome’s treasury coffers instead of Caesar’s own pocket.  Antony asks the mob, “Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? (3.2.87)” In fact, this would almost suggest that Caesar deserved a crown, having brought so much wealth to the republic.

Antony’s  second example, that Caesar cried with the poor in their misfortune, and that in his will, left them all his private parks and gardens as well as seventy-five drachmas for every man (Shakespeare). This shows great compassion and generosity in Caesar, but does not refute Brutus’ charge that Caesar was ambitious.  Still Antony states that, “Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. (3.2.89)”

Finally, that “…on the Lupercal, I thrice presented him with a kingly crown, (3.2.92-93)” Antony reminds the mob that they all saw him offer such a thing to Caesar and that “…which thrice he did refuse. (3.2.94)”    This is the only truly relevant piece of information and still it is a bit suspect, if you take into account Casca’s report of the offer and refusal, as though it was a theatrical performance staged to delight and win over the plebeian audience (Shakespeare).  It serves Antony’s purpose well; the mob is starting to shift its opinions.  “Methinks there is much reason in his sayings,(3.2.105)” One citizen states. “…Caesar has had great wrong, (3.2.107)” Another is heard to say.

Antony is fashioning his own words as truth just as he is denying his intention (and ability) to strip Brutus’ words from their meaning. “I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, but here I am to speak what I do know. (3.2.97-98)”   He implies that Brutus only spoke “words” and that they had no real meaning behind them.   He also makes it so that his words, his “truth” seem to echo what the plebeians themselves already know.  “I tell you that which you yourselves already know.  Show you sweet Caesar’s wounds, poor dumb mouths, and bid them speak for me. (3.2.215-217)”   The “truth” is not merely in what he is telling them, but in what he is also about to show them.  A visual sort of proof that will fire up the imaginations and stir up the emotions even more than they have already been stirred up (Baines).

Antony’s greatest strength, his most effective strategy is his sense of theatricality.  His ability to stir up the hearts and minds and emotions of the mob, replaying the assassination in the way that he would want his audience to interpret it. The ultimate irony and triumph of Antony’s accomplishment is when he deconstructs the vision that Brutus and Cassius had created of Caesar’s death, turning their metaphorical vision of Caesar’s death from a ritual sacrifice that had liberated the people to a savage spectacle, killing a benevolent leader.   He then adds to the emotional swell when he breaks off his oration in order to weep for Caesar (Baines).

The combination of the rhetorical devices and Antony’s own charismatic sense of the dramatic all contributed to his being able to sway the mob’s opinion. Manipulating them, and their emotions, so provoking their rage against the assassins and their grief for the lost Caesar, in doing this, he turns the tide of public opinion against Brutus, Cassius, and the other conspirators, and thereby paves the way for the conspirators’ defeat at the close of the play.

Bibliography

Baines, Barbara J. “That every like is not the same, The Vissictudes of Language in Julius Caesar.” Zander, Horst. Julius Caesar: New Critical Essays. New York: Routledge, 2004. 139-155.

Lanham, Richard A. A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms . Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969.

Shakespeare, William. “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.” Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton Shakespeare. London : W.M. Norton & Company Ltd. , 1997. 1525-1589.

Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Marcus Junius Brutus. 28 Nov 2008. 2 Dec 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marcus_Junius_Brutus&oldid=253343629>.

-. Mark Antony. 2 Dec 2008. 3 Dec 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mark_Antony&oldid=255341838>.

Will The Real Shakespeare Please Stand Up? January 12, 2009

Posted by Bethany Kesler in English Papers, Writing, original.
Tags: , , , , ,
1 comment so far

William Shakespeare wrote some of the finest plays ever written. Or did he? There is some controversy whether the man Shakespeare from Stratford actually wrote the plays his name appears on. The Shakespeare authorship debate has been ongoing since the eighteenth century, when it was first recorded (McMichael and Glenn).

Doubters of the man from Stratford’s authorship believe that there is a lack of concrete evidence that the actor/businessman known as Shaksper was responsible for creating the vast body of literary works that bear his name. The man himself is a very enigmatical figure and there is precious little biographical information on him. Much has been inferred from his writing, but the dearth of information that is solid is one of the major reasons for the questions about his identity. Mainstream scholars (also referred to as Stratfordians) do not see this as the critical issue that the non-Stratfordian proponents do (Shakespeare Authorship Coalition ). The Elizabethan and Jacobian periods of England were some of the most well documented periods of history but the majority of it was centered on the gentry and nobility. The lives of the commoners were not as well documented and the documents that did exist would have been unlikely to survive to present day.

The prevailing mainstream view is that the author known as Shakespeare is the same man who was born in Stratford-Upon–Avon in 1564, then traveled to London to be become an actor and part owner of the acting company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford and eventually retired to Stratford somewhere around 1613 before his eventual death in 1616.

Other possible identifying evidence lies in the fact that Shakespeare left gifts to actors from his London company in his will and that the man from Stratford and the author of the plays share a common name. In the 1623 First Folio, there are several commendatory poems that refer to the “Swan of Avon” (a term coined by Ben Jonson, a contemporary of Shakespeare). The poems also refer to a Stratford monument which scholars believe to be the monument set up to Shakespeare at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford (Schoenbaum).

There is further evidence in a 1592 pamphlet by the playwright Robert Greene where he chastises a playwright whom he calls “Shake-scene”, calling him “an upstart crow” and a “Johannes factotum” (a jack of all trades or someone able to feign skills). This indicated that people were aware of a writer named Shakespeare (Anderson). Poet John Davies once referred to Shakespeare as “our English Terence,” (Terence being a famous Roman playwright who was first a slave/commoner). In addition to that, Shakespeare’s grave monument in Stratford, currently features him with a pen in hand, suggesting that he was known as a writer. The monument was built within a decade of his death and compares him to Vergil and his works as being a type of “living art.” The earliest descriptions of this monument go back to the 1630’s (Anderson).

Critics and opponents of the mainstream theory have disputed all of these, claiming that there is absolutely no direct evidence which clearly states that Shakespeare of Stratford was a playwright. They note that the only theatrical references in his will (the gifts to his fellow actors) were inserted between previously written lines almost as an afterthought and therefore subject to a certain amount of doubt. The term “Swan of Avon” can be interpreted in numerous ways, so they claim. The pamphlet could have implied that Shakespeare was in fact, being given credit for the work of other writers. Davies’ mention of “our English Terence” could have been a mixed reference as many contemporary Elizabethan scholars knew Terence to be a front man for one or more Roman aristocratic playwrights. They also state that Shakespeare’s grave monument was altered after its original creation, the original monument merely showing a man holding a grain sack, instead of with the pen in his hand (Anderson).

Another contested point between the Stratfordians and the anti-Stratfordians is about Shakespeare’s education. To have written the plays, one would have required a certain level of higher education, including knowledge of contemporary science and several languages. There are 29,000 different words and word variations in all of the plays (Kernan). That number is five times the number of the different words in the King James Bible (6,000). Henry Stratford Caldecott in one of his lectures had this to say about Shakespeare.

The plays of Shakespeare are so stupendous a monument of learning and genius that, as time passes and they are probed and searched and analyzed by successive generations of scholars and critics of all nations, they seem to loom higher and grander, and their hidden beauties and treasured wisdom to be more and more inexhaustible; and so people have come to ask themselves not only, ‘Is it humanly possible for William Shakespeare, the country lad from Stratford-on-Avon, to have written them?’, but whether it was possible for any one man, whoever he may have been, to have done so (Caldecott).

The Stratfordian position is that Shakespeare was entitled to attend the King’s School where he would have studied the Latin poets and playwrights until the age of fourteen (Whitaker). This cannot be proven since the records of the school’s pupils cannot be found (Greer). Any other schools that he might have attended are all purely speculation since there are no records of a Shakespeare having studied at a university, college, or even a grammar school. Attending university was not a prerequisite however, and traditionally scholars have postulated that Shakespeare was largely self-educated. This was not unusual; a common parallel used by Stratfordians is Shakespeare’s contemporary, Ben Jonson.

Anti-Stratfordians use the claim that Jonson’s self-education is more easily proved than Shakespeare’s. He had an enormous library to partake of as evidenced by the hundreds of books that have been found annotated and signed by Jonson (Ridell and Stewart). There is no such evidence for Shakespeare, no books have ever been found that could be proved to have been owned or borrowed by Shakespeare of Stratford.

The issue of Shakespeare’s class has also been hotly debated. Anti-Stratfordians doubt that a glove maker’s son who didn’t leave Stratford until his early adulthood could have written so convincingly about the activities and lives of the nobility. That the plays show too detailed an understanding of politics, not to mention the law and foreign languages that would have been almost impossible to attain without having an aristocratic or university background (Shakespeare-Oxford Society).

Stratfordians disagree, stating that the glamorous life of the aristocracy was a very popular setting for plays at the time. They cite other Renaissance playwright from humble origins who also used the aristocracy in their plays. Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker are among the playwrights they use. They also assert that Shakespeare’s life was upwardly mobile and that he had several chances to observe courtly life with the several performances his company made at court. His theatrical success made him wealthy to the point that eventually he earned the title of gentleman and acquired his own personal coat of arms (Kathman).

Other candidates for the position of the “real” Shakespeare have been Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford. According to anti-Stratfordians the first indirect murmurs regarding suspicions about Shakespeare’s identity happened in Elizabethan times. As early as 1595 there were allusions to Shakespeare having aristocratic ties though nothing concrete and direct until the eighteenth century. The first published doubts were published in a series of three allegorical stories. They were quickly forgotten (Michell).

Francis Bacon was the popular choice in the nineteenth century when the “authorship question” was popularized. In 1856, William Henry Bryan made the claim that Sir Francis Bacon had to have been the one to write Shakespeare’s plays (Smith). He was supported by several others, Delia Bacon also wrote on this subject. She hypothesized that Shakespeare was actually the pseudonym for a group of writers, a group that included Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser. The group’s agenda, according to her, was to transmit an anti-monarchial system of philosophy by concealing it in the text of the plays (Friedman). Constance Mary Fearon Pott was another supporter of this theory and in 1885; she founded the Francis Bacon society. Stratfordians dispute this strongly, holding up Bacon’s own work as an example. The poems that have been attributed to him are stilted and very abrupt compared to the lyrical flow of Shakespeare’s poetry and prose (Cockburn).

Christopher Marlowe, a poet and playwright and a contemporary of Shakespeare of Stratford was a popular candidate in the twentieth century. Supporters of this theory cite similarities between the styles and vocabularies of both Marlowe and Shakespeare. They also believe that he faked his death and then wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare with the help of friends in higher places (Baker). However, Stratfordian scholars find the argument for faked death unconvincing, citing any similarities as the product of Shakespeare’s having been influenced by some of Marlowe’s work. Apart from that, they find the works of Marlowe and of Shakespeare to be very different.

Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford is the most popular later day candidate (Bryson). Theories about his possible authorship of Shakespeare’s plays arose in 1920, started by J. Thomas Looney. Looney’s theories persuaded several early 20th century intellectuals, Orson Wells and Sigmund Freud among them (Shakespeare-Oxford Society). It became the preferred alternative to the Stratfordian view after the 1984 publication of The Mysterious William Shakespeare written by Charlton Ogburn. The basis for this theory rests in what Oxfordians (the popular names for supporters of this theory) cite to be multiple and striking similarities between events in Shakespeare’s plays and the biography of Oxford himself (Ogburn).

Oxford was an acclaimed poet and playwright; he was also very close to Queen Elizabeth and court life. He had an extensive education and intelligence. Stratfordians dispute these contentions, citing Oxford’s death in 1604 as one of their major examples. They believe a number of Shakespeare’s plays to have been written after 1604, though Oxfordians and other anti-Stratfordians have long claimed that the Stratfordians have dated the plays in order to favor their own candidate. Another point of contention is Oxford’s published poems which bear little stylistic resemblance to the works of Shakespeare. Oxfordians dispute this, citing parallels between the poems and Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare’s early play, claiming that the poems only show that they were written by a young man (Ross).

At this point, the Stratfordian view is the only “accepted” theory taught in universities today. Scholars scoff at most of the alternate candidates and there is a firm refusal to consider even the smallest hint of reasonable doubt. There is presently a group lobbying for a question of reasonable doubt to be recognized so that the alternative theories may also be freely taught in universities and colleges (Shakespeare Authorship Coalition ). Whether they succeed or not, the fact remains that what little evidence we have for any of the candidates is at best circumstantial. We may never know who Shakespeare really was. My personal opinion holds with that of the Stratfordians, that the man Shakespeare from Stratford was the poet and playwright who authored some of the greatest works in the English language.

Bibliography

Anderson, Mark. “Shakespeare” by Another Name. New York: Gotham Books, 2005.

Baker, John. “The Case for Christopher Marlowe’s Authorship of the Works attributed to William Shakespeare.” John Baker’s New and Improved Marlowe/Shakespeare Thought Emporium (2002).

Bryson, Bill. Shakespeare. . London : Harper-Collins , 2008.

Caldecott, Harry Stratford. Our English Homer; or, the Bacon-Shakespeare Controversy. Johannesburg: Johannesburg Times, 1896.

Cockburn, Nigel. The Bacon-Shakespeare Question. Bacon Book, Inc, 1998.

Friedman, William and Elizabeth. The Shakespearian ciphers examined. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957.

Greer, Germaine. Past Masters: Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press , 1986.

Kathman, David. Were Shakespeare’s Plays Written by an Aristocrat? . 28 June 2008. 18 November 2008 <http://www.shakespeareauthorship.com/aristocrat.html>.

Kernan, Alvin B. Shakespeare, the King’s Playwright: Theater in the Stuart Court, 1603-1613. Yale University Press, 1995.

McMichael, George and Edgar M. Glenn. Shakespeare and His Rivals, A Casebook on the Authorship Controversy. New York: Odyssey Press, 1962.

Michell, John. Who Wrote Shakespeare. New York: Thames and Hudson , 1996.

Ogburn, Charlton. The Mysterious William Shakespeare. New York: Dodd, 1984.

Ridell, James and Stanley Stewart. The Ben Jonson Journal, Vol. 1 (1994): 183.

Ross, Terry. The Verse Forms of Shakespeare and Oxford . 28 June 2008. 18 November 2008 <http://www.shakespeareauthorship.com/verform.html>.

Schoenbaum, Samuel. William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life . Oxford University Press, 1987.

Shakespeare Authorship Coalition . The Shakespeare Authorship Coalition. 14 April 2007. 18 November 2008 <http://www.doubtaboutwill.org/>.

Shakespeare-Oxford Society. Shakespeare-Oxford Society. 1995. 18 November 2008 <http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/>.

Smith, William Henry. Bacon and Shakespeare. London: John Russell Smith, 1894.

Whitaker, Virgil. Shakespeare’s Use of Learning. San Marino: Huntington Library Press, 1953.