Techniques of Decentration in Lambs’
Tales from Shakespeare
(A Genetic Epistemological Reading of Tales from Shakespeare)

Davood Khazaie: Persian Gulf University
Morteza Khosronejad: Shiraz University

Iran

Centration and Decentration, the constructs coined by Jean Piaget, explain the mechanisms of child’s cognitive development. According to Ginsburg and Opper (1988) the “Centration- Decentration” dimension embraces general patterns of thinking and is regarded as the foundation of mind structures. Centration means to be assimilated in one particular point of view and remain incognizant of others, while decentration denotes a thoroughly opposite trend. This paper discovers the techniques of decentration in Lambs’ Tales from Shakespeare.

Influenced by Piaget’s Theory and based on four developmental processes -Identity, Inversion, Reciprocity, and Correlation (IIRC), Thompson et al (1972) interpreted some poems of Shakespeare, Hughes and others. Also leaning upon decentration construct, Liberman (1987) presented a new interpretation for Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”. Khosronejad (2003) has also studied 71 Persian folktales grounded on this concept. Decentration, he believes, is the principal feature of these tales. The techniques of decentration figured in Persian folktales are: Narrator’s Intrusion, Happy Ending, Exaggeration, Inversion, and Self-Revelation. Khosronejad assumes that vacillation between centration and decentration, can be the seperating criterion of children’s literature from that of the adults.

Succeeding the previous study and with application of the preceding criterion, the analysis of Lambs’ Tales elucidated that decentration is one of the main features of comedies less tracked in tragedies. The study displays that all techniques of decentration found in Persian folktales, except Inversion, are met in Shakespeare’s comedies signifying that rendering the comedies is more appropriate for children than the tragedies. A new kind of vacillation between centration and decentration and a new kind of Happy Ending were also detected in Lambs’ Tales, not found in Persian folktales.

This study shows not only the capability of Genetic Epistemology - Piaget’s theory – in interpreting a new scope of cognitive activities of man i.e., literature but also presents a new explanation for Shakespeare’s immortality.

6

Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not! I fear lest it droop and drop into the dust.

I may not find a place in thy garland, but honour it with a touch of pain from thy hand and pluck it. I fear lest the day end before I am aware, and the time of offering go by.

Though its colour be not deep and its smell be faint, use this flower in thy service and pluck it while there is time.

1
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine. Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.