{"id":2642,"date":"2025-02-07T23:57:41","date_gmt":"2025-02-08T04:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/?p=2642"},"modified":"2025-02-07T23:57:41","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T04:57:41","slug":"for-i-am-all-the-subjects-that-you-have-which-was-first-mine-own-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/2025\/02\/07\/for-i-am-all-the-subjects-that-you-have-which-was-first-mine-own-king\/","title":{"rendered":"“For I am all the subjects that you have \/ Which was first mine own king.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhy is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? \u2018I love you\u2019 is always a quotation,\u201d (Winterson 9). It is in these two lines on the first page of Written on the Body<\/em> that Jeanette Winterson places what I believe to be her thesis for the work as a whole. Winterson, in an opinion I can certainly sympathize with, adores allusions. She uses them tar from sparingly in this work, and each can be tied back to this central position: that perhaps the words we need are not always our own. Just after this paragraph, the narrator includes a quote from William Shakespeare\u2019s The Tempest<\/em>. In this passage, the maligned character of Caliban speaks against the play’s protagonists who have settled on his native island: “You taught me language and my profit on\u2019t is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you for learning me your language.\u201d What does it mean for the narrator that Caliban’s language is not his own, and yet the primary tool of expression he is given? On the very next page, Winterson enters an extended metaphor to the tune of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland<\/em>. “Love demands expression,” and this is what the entirety of the work strives to accomplish. As a translator, the narrator is intimately familiar with the words of others\u2014perhaps maddeningly so. The words of others, not unlike the primary language spoken in The Tempest<\/em>, become the avenue through which the speaker explores themself and those around them. Caliban’s outrage, Alice’s confusion, Jane Eyre’s devotion, Eve’s original sin, and Mercutio’s fatal hubris all become winters on in the great tapestry of language.<\/p>\n

title taken from act 1 scene 2 of the tempest!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhy is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? \u2018I love you\u2019 is always a quotation,\u201d (Winterson 9). It is in these two lines on the first page of Written on the Body that Jeanette Winterson places what I believe to be … Continue reading “For I am all the subjects that you have \/ Which was first mine own king.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5330,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346812],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-class-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5330"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}