As I think Alexei once exemplified when he was on the list - a professional
academic is supposed to set aside personal opinions. So Professor Chan is
not allowed to preface his explanation of "Hamlet" with the four words "It
seems to me"
He's supposed to be explaining an example of great literature -- just as a
geologist would attempt to explain continental drift.
So it's really an entire profession that is problematical. (and throw in "Art
History" as well).. The academic study of literature may just be an
anachronism --- a vestigial organ that became dysfunctional once literature
was no longer considered a sacred guide to proper living.
But still -- didn't he come up with a nice explanation of the "little eyases"
? No better -- but also no worse -- than the assertion that WS was asleep at
the switch and the passage is deservedly forgotten.
***********
Chan is an academic (in literature, not philosophy), and he introduces his
book with the same self-celebrating line of many profs in English: He has come
up with a hitherto unnoticed and unappreciated "explanation" of XXX -- in
Chan's case of that most-written about play of all time, HAMLET. What Chan's
imagination can't accommodate in his message about Shakespeare's message, he
ignores. Otherwise, because metaphors are not disprovable, they simply require
a nimbleness of mind to depict one character and event after another as
"fitting" a
thesis. Chan allows his enthusiasm to move him to say not only that all the
details fit hs thesis, but that W.S. consciously and deliberately chose each
of them for that purpose.
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