When
I was doing my research, I came across a famous quote on twitter that really
made me think about one of my classes at BYU. In my British Literary History class last semester, my teacher Professor Siegfried stressed a lot about the
idea of fate v. destiny in early British literature and how many authors like
to reflect this thought in their works. As I read the play, Julius Caesar I saw that not only was
this principle of fate v. destiny a prominent point in the play, but it may be
exactly why Shakespeare wrote this work.
Since
I was inspired to write about this topic from my professor I am going to meet
with her on Wednesday (we couldn’t find a time earlier) to discuss this
principle and how it relates to Shakespeare. Looking at past notes from my
class I realize that this idea of fate v. destiny is a huge theological point,
which makes it interesting because Shakespeare lived in a Christian world while
the play is set in pagan Rome, so there seems to be something that Shakespeare
is saying about religion itself. From an article that I read it really talks
about how Caesar himself is kind of the embodiment of the idea of fate. And the
more I think about it, Brutus seems to embody the idea of destiny. So overall,
I want to do a topic of how Caesar embodies fate while Brutus represents
destiny. I really had a hard time picking a topic, everything just seemed like
it wasn’t a good idea, but after discussing on slack, some of my peers
encouraged this idea and it makes me want to go forward,
I really like the ideas. I know that as I've been reading these plays I've noticed lots of characters who rely on fate, or give in to fate. And discussing how fate and destiny are different could be very interesting. On Shakespeare online I found a compilation of Shakespeare's quotes on fate that you might find helpful! http://www.shakespeare-online.com/quotes/shakespeareonfate.html
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm not sure your images came up (they didn't for me), so I might try to fix that on your blog post.
I keep on trying to fix it and it is not working, even from multiple devices. I do not know what to do...But thanks for the source!
DeleteThis sounds so interesting! I really, honestly would enjoy reading this paper. The theological significance of these two embodiments of fate and destiny has a lot to do with the conflict between Christian notions of agency and pagan ideas of interfering gods, who inflict their will on mortals. Which is the more prominent notion in Shakespeare? I'm not sure, but it's definitely fascinating stuff. What I find especially interesting is that in this article (http://fateorfreewillinjuliuscaesar.weebly.com/), free will is opposed to both destiny and fate, which actually enable each other. Are Brutus and Caesar two halves of the same whole, or is it something else entirely? I'm not sure. I'm not sure that's what you were going for, but now I'm really excited about these possibilities.
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