Professor Sarah Beckwith’s Work-in-Progress Talk

Professor Sarah Beckwith, Katherine Everett Gilbert Distinguished Professor of English, gave a Work-in-Progress presentation on February 26th featuring her paper “Tragic Implications.”   A copy of “Tragic Implications” was shared with members of the audience in advance of her talk.  Beckwith composed this piece for a symposium held in Boston, MA in 2019 to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Stanley Cavell’s essay collection “Must We Mean What We Say?”  Professor Beckwith told the audience that she did not go back and make any adjustments to the original, conference-inspired draft of the piece, so it may have come across as a less formal piece of work. 

Beckwith began her presentation by noting that this paper is part of her thinking for a book project and that it gives a glimpse of both the archive involved in the project and the part of the Shakespearean canon on which she is focused.  However, this piece will not appear verbatim in the book.  "This paper was written in the wake of Stanley Cavell’s death and as a way of continuing his work. The paper concerns an early, classic essay of his entitled ‘Must We Mean What We Say?’ I go on to relate the tragic implication of the vision of language he articulates there. I show how the irreversibility, unpredictability, and boundlessness of speech, as of other action, emerges in Shakespeare’s late tragedies, especially King Lear," stated Beckwith. 

During her presentation, Professor Beckwith shared that when she wrote this paper, she took advantage of an opportunity to look at “tragedy” not from the place she feels most people would expect in Cavell’s essay collection, “King Lear and the Avoidance of Love,” which is the final piece in the collection, but from the title essay “Must We Mean What We Say?”   

Professor Beckwith posited during her presentation that Stanley Cavell was one of John L. (J.L.) Austin’s greatest readers.  “There is a natural affinity between the work of ordinary language philosophy done in this idiom and the work of theatre, because of course actors play actions – they don't play passions unless they're bad actors,” explained Beckwith. 

During the Q&A session following Professor Beckwith’s presentation, Professor Victor Strandberg stated that he found the part of her paper that turns on the difference between “Love” and “Charity” very interesting.  Professor Strandberg followed his comment with a question for Beckwith about “Love” and “Charity” in a passage he read from the King James Bible, 1st Corinthians Chapter 13 Verse 13. This led to a discussion about the usage of the word “charity” versus “love” in different biblical translations and the fact that “charity” is utilized in King Lear instead of “love.”  Professor Beckwith suggests that in King Lear Shakespeare is “Trying to open out the question of love into a question of the bonds of communal love and the idea of what it means to be in charity, not just to be as it were the giver or recipient of charity.  I take that to be a really consequential difference.” 

“I have really enjoyed the faculty series all year, and getting to hear Sarah talk about her work was great—I’m now really looking forward to her book. As a grad student it’s also really fun to watch and listen to faculty give each other comments and debate an issue, which we don’t get to see very often. These department gatherings have also been really lovely given the pandemic, as they’ve preserved a sense of community, even if it is over Zoom,” remarked English Ph.D. candidate, Savannah Marciezyk when asked for one of her takeaways from Professor Beckwith’s presentation. 

A recording of Professor Beckwith’s talk can be found on the Duke English website along with the archive of other Duke English Faculty Works-in-Progress presentations that the department has held over the last year. 

The final installment of the 2021 Spring English Faculty Works-in-Progress series will be held Friday, April 16 at 1:15 p.m., featuring Professor Ranji Khanna.  Details about Professor Khanna’s presentation and registration will be forthcoming.