Marlowe's Seduction

So, reading Hero and Leander which has had some classic lines, I shall share a few, culminating in potentially one of more egregious arguments for "please have sex with me" i've heard in this kind of literature. though amusing.

Context:

Hero: the most beautiful woman in the world. So much so her blue hem is stained with the blood of wretched lovers slain either by competitors, or their own hands, and occasionally just the knowledge that she is so beautiful and they can't have her...they just die. Though, she does have a "gentle heart" one is told.....

Leander: the most beautiful man in the world, so much so his friends wonder that he too is not enamored of himself since men and women both see his beauty and think he's a sexy beast.

They randomly meet at a celebration of lovers and the worship of Venus where all the lovers come together to be blessed, Hero shows up and it becomes a tragic blood bath of male suitors. Woo romance. then Leander sees her and doesn't immediately die upon sight so woos her.

One statement before his "romantic" monologue is this : "It lies not in our power to love or hate, for will in us is overruled by fate"

Now to the dramatic lovers monologue:

"One is no numbers, maids are nothing then, without the sweet society of men."

well I'm glad I've learned where to find my worth from.

But this, amuses me more.

"This idoll which you terme Virginitie,
Is neither essence subiect to the eie,
No, nor to any one exterior sence,
Nor hath it any place of residence,
Nor is't of earth or mold selestiall,
Or capable of any forme at all.
Of that which hath no being, doe not boast,
Things that are not at all, are neuer lost."

"Please have sex with me, though we use your virginity as a bargaining chip in marriage and its essentially part of your value as a person in our society stop worrying about it. Virginity is a lie its a figment of your imagination, it isn't on earth nor is it celestial in fact it doesn't exist at all, and you can't lose things that aren't real. So...Hero, whatcha doin' tonight?"

Go Marlowe.

Though he continues to argue that men are fools for valuing virginity so highly, these are the lines immediately following the above "Things that are not at all, are never lost:

"Men foolishly doe call it vertuous;
What vertue is it, that is borne vvith vs?
Much lesse can honour bee ascrib'd thereto,
Honour is purchac'd by the deedes vvee do."

I'll allow that one. (btw, dont mind the "double u" and since v/u are interchangeable, the double vv is a w fyi, sorry for those who loathe early printing/medieval/early modern spelling. what can you do? i suppose i could edit it for you but...i'm educating you.... ;))

Minor Tirade against a Lit Theorist

Ronald Barthes wrote an essay entitled the "death of the author" and I'm mildly peeved by his short sighted focus and i realize that it is a dangerous part of lit theory, one takes ones argument by the balls and argues for it with the blind pretensions of a philosopher on a linguistic ego trip but the closed mindedness of said author irritates.

He argues that the Author has no control over his writing, he is merely "pulling from his dictionary" at random and his actions are in fact the murdering of self via writing because you can't exist in the text any longer it is a moment in time and, apparently, the moment stops belonging to the author once he is finished.

He claims that to remove the Author is to take meaning and interpretation out of the text and doing so is "an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostasis--reason, science, law." does that feel like a leap to anyone else? to refuse to allow there to be meaning is to refuse God? please, i know we authors tend to have egos but I don't think anyone attributes a piece of literature to divinity short of religious doctrines like the Bible, Talmud, Koran etc... and refusing to give meaning to the bible doesn't exactly refuse the notion of God it can simply mean you don't feel something as complex as God can be in a book, etc, it doesn't require atheism... but regardless it hardly refutes God to deny a novel complex meaning.

This next quote i can agree with sort of, "The reader is the space on which all quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination"

I'll give him that the reader plays a vital role and that without the reader the Author's acts are moot. however he goes further to say "we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author"

So, I get the "metaphor" the author relinquishes control and the reader takes it up etc, but to assume that the author no longer exists within a text is foolish, he is more than a dictionary. Sure, if I handed webster to you i'll deny the required role of the author but one can't take away the solid and glaring problem with this particular argument. The author wrote something specific. its not like he handed you a jumble of words in a jar and said "play with those sonny, see what you think" he gave you a specific text with specific word order and purpose and though the reader is free to interpret as he sees fit he is still limited by the text before him. If you give him a text of Romeo and Juliet yes he has a lot to go on but he's probably not going to be able to see the history of the Congo or the Declaration of Independence therein, he is limited. It is not something wholly created by the reader, it is something given to the reader that exists in two truths, two consciousness', the combination of two minds in one moment, the writer's words in the reader's mind. you cannot have one without the other. To remove the author from the text is to have air, it is a foolish enterprise and I am annoyed by the short-sighted argument herein.

Minor Tirade Complete...