It's the Sentence that Never Ends
From "Reading The Tempest" by Russ McDonald in Contexts for Criticism by Donald Keesey:
"The hieratic style suggested by Prospero's repetitions is clearly appropriate to his vatic persona and elegiac frame of mind, it is a commonplace that some of his poetically knotted reiterations attest to his agitation at narratively re-creating his deposition, and Caliban's exultant 'Freedom, high-day! High-day, freedom. Freedom, high-day, freedom!' ironically establishes his persona entrapment, his exchange of one master for another" (McDonald 105).
Did you ever notice that when people are trying to sound intellegent they forget the basic rules of grammar? I do sometimes. I can't even believe how l-o-n-g this sentence is. You would think that his editors would have decided to at least put in a semicolon. I challenge anyone who reads this to go back to the sentence about and read it in one breath. My bet is that you cannot do it. I tried and practically passed out and still didn't make it through.
However, I do like how McDonald points out that Shakespeare perfectly aligned his character with his character's actions, with the way that his character spoke. It's classic. McDonald is definately on to a good observation.
Did anyone else find McDonald long-winded and convoluted? Why? Do you have any examples? Or did you find it easy to understand?
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Greta Carroll on It's the Sentence that Never Ends: Angela, I don’t think any of t
Angela, I don’t think any of these literary criticism articles are easy to understand. I find the ones in this textbook to be even harder than the ones I’ve read for research papers before. However, I didn’t really think McDonald was any more long-winded or convoluted than any of the other ones. In fact, there were parts of his essay I liked. For example, I really liked when he observed, “most listeners find themselves beguiled by the musical repetition of vowels and consonants, reduplication of words, echoing of metrical forms, and incantatory effect of this musical design” (McDonald 102). I could really see these things present in the text, although I never really associated them with being “incantatory” or “musical.” But once he made this point, I could definitely see it. I also found McDonald’s essay to be a lot more enjoyable to read and understandable than Yachnin’s.
Angela,
I have also noticed that when people are trying to sound intelligent, they use big words that really don't make any sense. It would make so much more sense to write something in layman's terms so that people could understand and appreciate what the author is trying to proove.