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January 21, 2008

Shakespeare was messing with your brain

So I got bitten by the Shakespeare bug during high school, thanks to a rather brilliant english teacher. I never had enough scholarly insight to pursue this interest to any serious degree, but I was continually fascinated by some of my own reactions to the complexities of his writing that have fascinated untold numbers... A while ago I stumbled on this article - Reading Shakespeare has dramatic effect on your brain - and a whole host of new levels of fascination entered my consciousness. Did Shakespeare have any idea that he was using a linguistic technique known as functional shift that involves, for example using a noun to serve as a verb? I doubt it. But, perhaps he found that doing so tended to captivate or engage his audience, and so stuck with it. We can certainly conclude that he wasn't close to realizing that This process causes a sudden peak in brain activity and forces the brain to work backwards in order to fully understand what Shakespeare is trying to say., nor that this heightened brain activity may be one of the reasons why Shakespeare’s plays have such a dramatic impact on their readers..

Regardless really of how he came by this technique, it's pretty cool!

Posted by lara at January 21, 2008 10:55 PM

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