The weird concept
of the "Banality of the Bard"
T. Tobias Döring William Shakspere Adolf Eichmann |
Tobias Döring, Professor of English Literature, University of Munich, President of the German Shakespeare Society , in two different reviews in the FAZ (20/10/11) and in the FAZ(12/20/11), concerning Shake-speare, used the concept and headline of
"The Banality of the Bard"
Tobias Döring obviously must have attached importance to convey his credo of the "Banality of Shakespeare", meaning the conventionality of an ordinary citizen of the province, and not a noble, intellectual, world-traveled man.
Based on Hannah Ahrendt's "The Banality of Evil"(*1), Tobias Döring, unconsciously or consciously, must have felt the need to express that we are not able to imagine, ( - corresponding to the unimaginable "evil" of Adolf Eichmann) the unimaginable "genius" of William Shakespeare in the conventionality of the ordinary Stratford man..
Hannah Ahrendt was - I suppose- right. - Is Tobias Döring also right?
*1 Hannah Ahrendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) [Paperback]