Mary's Annotated Bibliography (2)

I think my title has shifted a bit to "The Disregarded Critics in Shakespeare and on Tumblr," but I'm not sure if disregarded is the right word.  I might try somethign like "overlooked."  Also, an alternative wording for my thesis might be,  "Although internet criticism is often looked down for it's informality, the role of the common people in Shakespeare's plays should cause readers to consider the importance of the fresh perspective that critics on sites such as Tumblr provide."  I hope this is more concise, but not more vague.

1. Scholarly Sources

Arellano, Anne Nichole B. "ShakesGAG & 4Speare: Shakespeare Reaches the Net Generation through Internet Memes." Thesis. University of the Philippines, 2014. Asian Shakespeare Association. <http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/37238352/ASA2014.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1479455122&Signature=tMWer0VGwmpKVedn6utGsy%2F7aVk%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DShakesGAG_and_4Speare_Shakespeare_Reache.pdf> 

This is a paper that discusses the use of Shakespearean references in memes.  It discusses a little of how these memes analyse the plays and are significant as a study.

Goldsmith, Robert Hillis. Wise Fools in Shakespeare. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1955. Print.

This book looks into the place of fools in Shakespeare's plays, especially as they make commentary on events of the play.  This sort of critique is what I'm looking for to compare to those on tumblr.

O'Neill, Stephen. "Shakespeare and Social Media." Wiley Online Library. Literature Compass, 3 June 2015. Web. 18 Nov. 2016. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lic3.12234/full>.

This sources is an article about how technology is shaping the way Shakespeare is read as people collaborate.  This provides me some insight into how internet analysis of Shakespeare is received.

Patterson, Annabel M. Shakespeare and the Popular Voice. Cambridge, MA, USA: B. Blackwell, 1990. Print. 

This book offers context for Shakespeare's ideas, particularly on government and social hierarchy.  Hopefully, this will help me establish my claim about the common voices in the plays.   

3. Social Sources

[Homie] Megan Young

She’s my roommate and best friend who I discuss things like this with all the time anyway.  She also is on tumblr and knows a bit about Shakespeare’s plays, possibly proving to be one of the “common” voices herself.

[Peer] Maria

Also on tumblr, she’s an acquaintance of mine who is also studying English and is currently in a Shakespeare class.  I think she could help me to refine my thesis and maybe suggest parts of plays that will be helpful.

[Enthusiast] Mya Gosling

A former library cataloger, Gosling now runs a Shakespeare web comic.  I’d like to ask her about her analysis of plays and using the internet as a way of expressing her ideas.

[Expert] Stephen O’Neill

He wrote one of the above articles and others on technology and Shakespeare.  I found a link to email him and I think that he could help me connect the two side of my paper (Shakespeare and tumblr).

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Critical Fools in Shakespear Social Media

Finding a topic that would be both interesting to me and others
was a struggle.  I remembered attending the English Symposium at one point and noting how all the presentations made their topics relevant to recent culture.  So, despite having ideas for connections between literature, I thought I should try to look at other angles.  In our other research, something that really interested me was the casual critical approach to Shakespeare taken by many amateur scholars in social media.  With the ideas many still hold toward internet literacy, one doesn't expect analyzing Shakespeare to be a common thing, but then you have Tumblr.  Tumblr is an interesting mix of people of many talents and just scrolling through my regular blog  I'll run into a quite few Shakespeare posts that often share significant insights and interpretations of the plays.  Yhe exchange pictured is just one example I came across.  Rarely. though, are these untrained voices given a lot of attention.

Then, I considered that many common characters in Shakespeare's plays do something similar.  For example, the fool in King Lear is one of the few who actually sees the situation clearly and is willing and able to openly critique the King's actions.  Something similar occurs with the soldiers in Henry V, who critique the war in a way no one close to the king will.  I realized that the internet critics were doing something similar, and maybe even this has to do with the point Shakespeare was making in the first place. 

 It’s been hard to figure out just where to go from here, but Micah, who had research this fool character, mentioned that, “We do the same thing on social media. We criticize what people post. We question. We dislike. And oddly, in the act of doing so, of forming this dialogue and questioning the established voice, we reinforce the established voice. Shakespeare does this with fools and references to plays within his works, proving the folly even of playwrights.”  These are all things I need to think about as I write my paper, especially how voice is used on the internet compared to the way voice is given to common characters in the play, or even how Shakespeare's used his own voice as a critique.

Here I found a Wikipedia webpage about the fool character that game me some good background and has some interesting connected sources, and then I found this interesting article that might help me think about social media and critiquing society.  

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