J. Thomas Looney: Difference between revisions
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Looney's book started a whole new avenue of speculation, and has many followers today. [[Freud]] read it in 1923 and was at once converted. Even at the end of his life, in 1939, Freud repeats his view in the final revision of ''[[An Outline of Psychoanalysis]]''. |
Looney's book started a whole new avenue of speculation, and has many followers today. [[Freud]] read it in 1923 and was at once converted. Even at the end of his life, in 1939, Freud repeats his view in the final revision of ''[[An Outline of Psychoanalysis]]''. |
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According to Steven May, who produced the standard edition Edward de Vere's poetry: |
According to Steven May, who produced the standard edition of Edward de Vere's poetry: |
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<blockquote>'The motifs and stylistic traits that Looney and his |
<blockquote>'The motifs and stylistic traits that Looney and his |
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followers have claimed through the years to be unique to the verse of both the Earl of Oxford and Shakespeare are in fact commonplaces of Elizabethan poetry employed by many other contemporary writers. The Oxfordians have failed to establish any meaningful connection between Oxford's verse and Shakespeare's. Stripped of this argument, the Earl is no more likely to have written Shakespeare's works than any other Elizabethan poet.'<ref>Steven W.May, ‘The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford as poet and playwright,’ in Symposium: Who wrote Shakespeare? An evidentiary puzzle', ''Tennessee Law Review'', Fall, (2004) 221</ref></blockquote> |
followers have claimed through the years to be unique to the verse of both the Earl of Oxford and Shakespeare are in fact commonplaces of Elizabethan poetry employed by many other contemporary writers. The Oxfordians have failed to establish any meaningful connection between Oxford's verse and Shakespeare's. Stripped of this argument, the Earl is no more likely to have written Shakespeare's works than any other Elizabethan poet.'<ref>Steven W.May, ‘The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford as poet and playwright,’ in Symposium: Who wrote Shakespeare? An evidentiary puzzle', ''Tennessee Law Review'', Fall, (2004) 221</ref></blockquote> |
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Revision as of 10:12, 9 July 2010
John Thomas Looney (14 August 1870 – 17 January 1944; pronounced /ˈloʊni/, "Lōney"). was an English school teacher who is best known for having originated the Oxfordian theory, which claims that Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford was the true author of Shakespeare's plays.
Life
Looney was born in South Shields. He grew up in a strong evangelical environment, and determined to become a minister at the age of 16. While studying at the Chester Diocesan College, he lost his faith. He later embraced the theories of the positivist philosopher Auguste Comte, becoming a proponent of the Comtean "Religion of Humanity" and a leader in its short-lived church. He also claimed descent from the Earls of Derby.
Looney worked as a school teacher in Gateshead. He is listed in Ward's Directory for 1899–1900 as a teacher living at 119 Rodsley Avenue, Gateshead. He later resided at 15 Laburnum Gardens, Low Fell.
After the failure of the Comtean church, Looney devoted himself to research into the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. He developed his theory during World War I, depositing his claim to priority in a sealed document at the British Museum in 1918 and then in 1920, published his work, whose short title is Shakespeare Identified, through Cecil Palmer in London. Looney, who resisted his publisher's suggestion that he use a pseudonym, argued that the real author of Shakespeare's plays was Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who fitted Looney's deductions that Shakespeare was, among much else, a nobleman of Lancastrian sympathies, with a fondness for Italy and a leaning towards Catholicism.
Looney was a member of The Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle Upon Tyne after 1911 and paid handsome tribute to the library; its unique system of operation, he said, "ensured an ease and rapidity of work which would be impossible in any other institution in the country". Looney presented the "Lit and Phil" with his edition of Edward de Vere's poems in December 1927.
He died at Swadlincote, near Burton-on-Trent, where he lodged after being forced to abandon his home in Gateshead because of the heavy German bombing of the area.
Theories and influence
Looney's book started a whole new avenue of speculation, and has many followers today. Freud read it in 1923 and was at once converted. Even at the end of his life, in 1939, Freud repeats his view in the final revision of An Outline of Psychoanalysis.
According to Steven May, who produced the standard edition of Edward de Vere's poetry:
'The motifs and stylistic traits that Looney and his followers have claimed through the years to be unique to the verse of both the Earl of Oxford and Shakespeare are in fact commonplaces of Elizabethan poetry employed by many other contemporary writers. The Oxfordians have failed to establish any meaningful connection between Oxford's verse and Shakespeare's. Stripped of this argument, the Earl is no more likely to have written Shakespeare's works than any other Elizabethan poet.'[1]
By contrast, Warren Hope and Kim Holston, in recounting Looney's methodology, state:
'Having found someone who met all the conditions he had originally established, Looney devotes a chapter to a comparison of Oxford's verse with the early work of Shakespeare, a tour de force of literary and historical analysis which in some ways anticipates the procedures of the "new criticism."'[2]
Publications
- J. Thomas Looney, "Shakespeare" identified in Edward De Vere, the seventeenth earl of Oxford, Frederick A. Stokes Co., 1920
References
- ^ Steven W.May, ‘The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford as poet and playwright,’ in Symposium: Who wrote Shakespeare? An evidentiary puzzle', Tennessee Law Review, Fall, (2004) 221
- ^ Hope, Warren; Kim, Holston (2009) [1992], "7", The Shakespeare Controversy: An Analysis of the Authorship Theories (2nd ed.), McFarland, p. 79
- Jonathan Bate, "The genius of Shakespeare", Oxford University Press US, 1998, ISBN 0195128230, p. 68
- William F. and Elizabeth S. Friedman, "The Shakspearean Ciphers Examined", Cambridge University Press, 1957, p. 7
- Russ McDonald, "Shakespeare: an anthology of criticism and theory, 1945-2000", Wiley-Blackwell, 2004, ISBN 0631234888, pp. 4-8
- Samuel Schoenbaum, "Shakespeare's lives", Clarendon Press, 1970, pp. 597-598
- Richard F. Whalen, "Shakespeare--who was he?: the Oxford challenge to the Bard of Avon", Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994, ISBN 0275948501, pp. 68-69
External links
