humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

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In this post I want to get started on Looney's

Wonder Theory of Oxfordian Authorship.

Humans are wowed in by wonder, I think it's Sokol
who calls it a 'psychosomatic experience,' our minds
and bodies are simiultaneously engaged by something
new or unexpected or unique.

In The Tempest Miranda is 'a wonder' because she
is the 'top of admiration!

Admired Miranda!
Indeed, the top of admiration, worth
What's dearest to the world.

The line 'top of admiration,' is a phrase unique
to Bacon.

Bacon writes in the Augmentis that the 'tops,
ultimates or summitates of human nature should
be studied.'

Humans seem to want to study the 'tops of admir-
ation,' we study atheletes; Einstein's brain is in
a jar, probably at Princeton.

Here's the mechanism of Looney wonder:

Looney's readers only swoon because Looney
merges Oxford's incomparable title -- 17th earl
of the ancient De Vere line -- with the even more
incomparable Shakspeare works. Somehow
that conflation of high nobility and genius literary
works puts Looney's reader into a suspended
state, a state of wonderment.

I've experienced it. Took me a couple of weeks
to throw off.

The quotes are indebted to Theobald, p. 88.