When does the writer become a part of the university? Neither Shakespeare nor Ben Jonson could have taught at Oxford or Cambridge. If you had gone to what Harold Bloom calls a 'strong poet,' a real, undeniable poet like Thomas Hardy, and said, 'Mr. Hardy, will you give lectures?' he'd probably have said, 'Are you mad?'...You could slay a Dane with laughter by suggesting that Kierkegaard might have held a chair in theology.Good Paris Review interview with Guy Davenport.
