Podcast of the day-Is Shakespeare still relevant ?
By Paul
A panel discussion from the 8th World Shakespeare Congress, hosted by the University of Queensland, on Shakespeare's relevance to the modern world. Listen to the podcast.
Related;
A review of Shakespeare's Twenty-First Century Economics: The Morality of Love and Money;
“Turner writes, "This book makes three arguments, following Shakespeare. First, that human art, production, and exchange are a continuation of natural creativity and reproduction, not a rupture of them. Second, that our human bonds with one another, even the most ethical and personal, cannot be detached from the values and bonds of the market. And third, that there is a mysterious dispensation according to which our born condition of debt can be transformed into one of grace. These three arguments may be taken as refutations of the three reproaches to the market offered by its critics: that the market necessarily alienates us from nature, from each other, and from God." Thus the challenge of Turner's book is twofold: It invites us to rethink our view of Shakespeare, but perhaps more important, it invites us to rethink the relation of our economic to our spiritual life…
For example, Turner operates with a peculiar definition of money "as a generalized and quantified measure of the obligations that unspecified others owe me and the obligations I owe others." In a book devoted to countering Marxism, it is surprising to find a concept of money that comes perilously close to the labor theory of value. Turner's failure to understand the commodity nature of money leads him in turn to misunderstand the monetary nature of inflation, as shown by perhaps his most peculiar economic claim in the book: "A low rate of inflation is the sign that a people at large...actually trust the fairness and truthfulness of the market that gives money its value." As most reputable economists would agree, inflation is a product not of the regular functioning of the free market but of government intervention in the market: Inflation is the fall in the value of money brought about by government manipulation of currency and credit. Fortunately, Turner's occasional errors in economic theory do not invalidate his overall argument and are basically irrelevant to what he has to say about Shakespeare.”
Related
Shakespeare on the web; MIT, Google Books, Internet Public Library, BBC, Podcasts, Wikipedia
Across the blogs; Complete William Shakespeare on CD, A New “Shakespeare”, Economic History of Shakespeare, Brand Consultant, The changing value of Shakespeare
Charlie Rose interview with Harold Bloom on Shakespeare
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