"Academic" vs. "nonacademic"; or, things to consider when arguing about Shakespeare

One of the mysteries of blogging is that the blogger (in this case, me) is often and consistently surprised by which posts get attention and comments, and which do not. It can be frustrating, but usually it is fun and even instructive. When I posted a few links about Joseph Pearce's book,  The Quest for Shakespeare: The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome, I didn't expect 25+ comments. But it's good to see that folks care about Shakespeare (or at least that's how I'm going to interpret it for now).

Anyhow, Mark Brumley, who has carefully read Pearce's book (I've only skimmed it) and knows far more about Shakespeare than I do, has made a couple of comments on the post that I think should be highlighted here for the benefit of those interested in the debate between Pearce and Dr. Robert S. Miola. I've flowed them together for ease of reading:

I think we would all benefit from a little less heat and a lot more light on this subject.

Does Pearce make his case or not? Perhaps more scholars might be persuaded by more footnotes. But whether Pearce shows scholar X that he has read scholar Y, the matter ultimately comes down to the evidence he presents and the arguments he makes based on the evidence.

Miola makes what seem some valid points about the value of scholarly procedure, etc., although I think the deja vu complaint is overdone. The book need not be original scholarship to be valuable--plenty of non-original works synthesizing or summarizing the case others make on a subject get published all the time and serve the general public and even the scholarly community well. This business about original scholarship or having to say something new if one wants to speak at all is a problem--as seen by the endless stream of trivial dissertations and scholarly hairsplitting works trumpeted as "revolutionary".

The point about scholarly procedure or even what Miola regards as evidential lapses could have been made without the personal attacks. Of course one can argue that Pearce's case, too, could have been made without personal attacks. The problem is, Miola presents himself as "a professional". That seems to put the greater burden on him to show us, by his actions, how it's done. We expect, in the words of Christopher Derrick, "the cool lucidity" of the scholar in the academic critic who criticizes a work as unscholarly. We got something else. Something that comes across to many of us non-academics as the professional coming unhinged. For me, that makes it harder to get at the truth of the matter because I have to consider the "spleen" factor when weighing Miola's criticism. What a pity. ...

The academic vs. nonacademic or (what is not exactly the same but will serve here) scholar vs. nonscholar dimension behind this discussion bears further reflection. There are realities regarding these two categories of persons we might consider.

1. Nonacademics sometimes present a true thesis or make a sound point that academics sometimes miss or wrongly reject

2. Nonacademics, lacking certain skills, knowledge and the benefit of the collective wisdom/critique of academic colleagues, sometimes present a false thesis or don't have the point they think they have

3. Academics' professional skills and knowledge, and guild mindset, sometimes result in their avoiding a mistake that the nonacademic, perhaps out of presumption or disregard for the virtues of the academic, succumbs to

4. Academic's presumption about his greater skills, and knowledge, and his perhaps unwitting adoption of professional "groupthink" lead to overlooking or attacking a sound position presented by a nonacademic

Which is or which are operative here I leave to your reading of Pearce's book and your consultation of other resources. However, it would help, I think, to move beyond the fireworks, personal insults and snide remarks, and look at the evidence and arguments.

Here is the original post with all of the appropriate links.

Comments

[alypius]

Look, I'm a graduate student studying English history, I undergrad degree in English lit, I've done some graduate work in English Literature, including some Shakepeare courses, and I can tell you the reason why Dr. Miola is so p---ed off at Pearce: he is simply distorting the nature of the evidence. There is simply not enough dispositive evidence to support the claim that Shakespeare was a Catholic. The only place I might dispute Miola on this is with the testimony that Shakespeare's father was purported to have left, which does have some support among scholars. The evidence is better but not conclusive for him being a papist either. The best we can say is that Shakespeare knew some Catholics, knew about Catholic beliefs and practices in a way that suggested his familiarity with them (on the basis of language in his plays). That's about it. For my money, I think he is a slightly earlier generation what Donne was to his: someone who came from a Catholic background or Catholic area of England who conformed for the sake of moving up in the world. (I've heard other scholars make similar claims.) Dr. Miola was too overheated in his remarks, but you have to understand how frustrating it is to watch popular authors try and sell books based on arguments that really go beyond what the evidence can support. It gives a false impression, even if, as I believe, Pearce did not intend to do so. He simply reads too much into it. It's not really a popular or academic thing, by the way: Father Peter Milward has been making the claim that Shakespeare was a papist for years, and I don't buy his arguments either. Again, it's nothing against Joseph Pearce personally, it is just that he wants to take his readers where the evidence will not justify him going.

[Mark Brumley]

Thanks for your comments, alypius. Your friend, Augustine, has been much in the news lately.

I can tell you the reason why Dr. Miola is so p---ed off at Pearce: he is simply distorting the nature of the evidence. There is simply not enough dispositive evidence to support the claim that Shakespeare was a Catholic.

As far as I can tell, that is not a good reason to be "so p---ed off", as you put it. Such a reaction supposes this is "personal" and as far as I can tell, it isn't. If what you say is true--if Pearce is distorting the evidence--then that is a good reason for a scholar, in a calm, scholarly way, to show us how Pearce is mistaken, etc. That's not what we have gotten from Dr. Miola, in my opinion.

Dr. Miola was too overheated in his remarks, but you have to understand how frustrating it is to watch popular authors try and sell books based on arguments that really go beyond what the evidence can support.

I understand that scholars and academics are human beings and they suffer from the limitations of human beings. They sometimes get frustrated and write out of frustration. But that doesn't make their overstatements scholarly or correct. What's more, I would like to be better informed about the debate here. I know Pearce's side of it. I would like to read a scholarly, academic argument from the other side. Dr. Miola seems as if he wants to address the evidence but he comes across (to me, at least) so offended and eager to put down someone who holds an alternate view from himself, perhaps especially because the writer in question is a highly successful literary biographer and popular writer, that I cannot be sure Dr. Miola's passion has not caused him to review the book in a way that obscures the truth. My confidence is further undermined when I see illogical statements in Miola's rebuttal. My conclusion: if I want to read a scholarly reaction to the Pearce thesis, I must look elsewhere. Not because Dr. Miola is not a scholar but because in this instance he has chosen not to behave like one.

It may be, as Dr. Peters has suggested, that the gifted and knowledgeable amateur here has extended himself beyond what his autodidacticism has enabled him to write competently about. Or it may be that that has little to do with this debate and that it is mainly a matter of a thesis poorly or incorrectly argued, a problem by no means confined to the world of the amateur and autodidact. In any event, I, at least, have not been helped by Dr. Miola to decide whether either of those possibilities is the case, or whether Pearce is right and his opposition is prejudiced and wrong. Why? Because of the over-the-top way that Pearce's critic has responded.

It may be the case that the sum total of all the Catholic connections that Pearce presents does not amount to a decisive case in favor of the Catholic Shakespeare. Or perhaps it does. Or perhaps the case is not resolved beyond a reasonable doubt but by the preponderance of evidence in favor of Pearce's thesis. Or vice versa. Whatever judgments people come to on this, let's let them be based on just sticking to the arguments about the evidence.

There are plenty of lessons here for those of us who regularly engage in controversy. Those lessons would seem to apply even to academics. Indeed, perhaps especially to them because they would be our teachers.