by scarp

> “A number of years ago I did teach a class on literary homages and borrowings,” she says. “I talked in that class about Jane Eyre and (Jean Rhys’) Wide Sargasso Sea, and about King Lear and (Jane Smiley’s) A Thousand Acres, and a number of poems — Dover Beach and Dover Bitch — and looked at this idea of borrowing. I think that it’s a very, very long tradition. I mean, Shakespeare’s King Lear is actually borrowed from another play with exactly the same title, King Lear. He did not conceal his borrowing. So it’s always been part of our literary tradition, that we come back to certain stories.”