Our Shakespeare, ourselves: The pleasures (and pitfalls) of fannish reading

Abstract

So much of what we think we know about William Shakespeare as a person is, at worst, untrue, and at best, merely unproveable. How do we get from this string of documentary lacunae to the central figure of the Western literary canon, and what can that journey reveal about different modes of reading and engagement? The answer, I argue, lies in what Anna Wilson calls "fannish hermeneutics"—in essence, a mode of affective reading that emphasizes an emotional connection to the text, thus operating in contrast to the manner of reading favored by academic institutions, and which can tell us far more about the reader than about Shakespeare. While I certainly do not propose to elevate one reading mode over the other—after all, at their worst, one reeks of pedantry and the other gave us the authorship controversy—I explore how readings of Shakespeare's sonnets reflect different forms of fannish engagement and hermeneutics.