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DN's Author Type List II

silverchris9

New member
Joined
Jan 20, 2009
Messages
71
MBTI Type
ENFP
Walt Whitman I think has to be an INFP. Song of Myself consists entirely of Ni style self-exposition, while has statements about how he has conductors along his body that "pass all things through [him] harmlessly," which sounds like the quintessential statement of P. Lilacs and O Captain, and especially (especially especially) the Calamus poems are VERY F. Super F. Power F. Read "We two boys together clinging"; I'm an ENFP, but if I read that poem with my "thinking" mindset on, I'm pretty sure I'd find it horribly sentimental. I know one might argue that he's E because of the "Rough Walt" and his extreme extraversion, but if one considers functional preferences, he seems to write entirely out of Ni rather than Ne. Everything is considered relative to Walt.

This is in contrast to Shakespeare, with whom everything is considered with as little relationship as possible to William, which is why I think his primary function must have been Ne, which would make him ENFP rather than INFP, but that might just be me attempting to claim Shakespeare for my own type. I'd say Shakespeare is definitely P (drama in London before Marlowe before was very overtly moralizing, and Shakespeare definitely latched on to the Marlovian revision of that trend). I'd have to say that he's F, I guess, but he's T is so well developed in his plays that it's almost impossible to say whether he's T or F. I know that he seems not E based on some biographical info, but I believe that trend resulted more from him being forced to be more J by circumstance (he didn't want to go the way of Marlowe!). Plus, the whole "fall passionately in love with Anne, knock her up, then get bored and move to London" seems like a real ENFP-type action. I mean, he couldn't even make up his mind about which lover to devote his sonnets to! (and wrote all of Sonnet 144-I-think about the real or imagined love triangle between the three of them).

I'd be willing to grant ISFJ for Heaney. He's a more tactile poet than most, excepting Wordsworth. I also read some of his poetics and it's more rules and less random Wallace Stevens-style abstractions, lending support to the S preference. Plus, I'd totally believe him as an SJ guardian, especially on the basis of "Digging," which has a clear confessional streak in it, and probably represents his life fairly accurately. Digging has a real "extend and protect the tradition" feeling to it, and the poems he wrote about the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Ireland has a very J slant to it, IMO.
 

dynamiteninja

Man for all seasons
Joined
May 30, 2008
Messages
1,195
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4w5
Walt Whitman I think has to be an INFP. Song of Myself consists entirely of Ni style self-exposition, while has statements about how he has conductors along his body that "pass all things through [him] harmlessly," which sounds like the quintessential statement of P. Lilacs and O Captain, and especially (especially especially) the Calamus poems are VERY F. Super F. Power F. Read "We two boys together clinging"; I'm an ENFP, but if I read that poem with my "thinking" mindset on, I'm pretty sure I'd find it horribly sentimental. I know one might argue that he's E because of the "Rough Walt" and his extreme extraversion, but if one considers functional preferences, he seems to write entirely out of Ni rather than Ne. Everything is considered relative to Walt.

This is in contrast to Shakespeare, with whom everything is considered with as little relationship as possible to William, which is why I think his primary function must have been Ne, which would make him ENFP rather than INFP, but that might just be me attempting to claim Shakespeare for my own type. I'd say Shakespeare is definitely P (drama in London before Marlowe before was very overtly moralizing, and Shakespeare definitely latched on to the Marlovian revision of that trend). I'd have to say that he's F, I guess, but he's T is so well developed in his plays that it's almost impossible to say whether he's T or F. I know that he seems not E based on some biographical info, but I believe that trend resulted more from him being forced to be more J by circumstance (he didn't want to go the way of Marlowe!). Plus, the whole "fall passionately in love with Anne, knock her up, then get bored and move to London" seems like a real ENFP-type action. I mean, he couldn't even make up his mind about which lover to devote his sonnets to! (and wrote all of Sonnet 144-I-think about the real or imagined love triangle between the three of them).

I'd be willing to grant ISFJ for Heaney. He's a more tactile poet than most, excepting Wordsworth. I also read some of his poetics and it's more rules and less random Wallace Stevens-style abstractions, lending support to the S preference. Plus, I'd totally believe him as an SJ guardian, especially on the basis of "Digging," which has a clear confessional streak in it, and probably represents his life fairly accurately. Digging has a real "extend and protect the tradition" feeling to it, and the poems he wrote about the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Ireland has a very J slant to it, IMO.

Whitman, fine; Heaney, yes. Shakespeare, no.
 

dynamiteninja

Man for all seasons
Joined
May 30, 2008
Messages
1,195
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4w5
I'm thinking Christopher Marlowe could well be an ENTP. Like other ENTP writers such as Wilde, Byron and Capote, in his day he was as famous for his lifestyle as he was his writing. His bio suggests an outgoing personality. It is also very likely that he was a spy. Apparently the main characters in his plays are self-based. Faustus for example seems definetely NT. Also, this is the kind of guy who gets killed in a pub brawl.
 

silverchris9

New member
Joined
Jan 20, 2009
Messages
71
MBTI Type
ENFP
lol! Sorry for the re-post, ignore it except for the Heaney bit. I wasn't sure if I had posted the first time or not, and when I looked through the thread, I couldn't find the previous post! My b! Sorry, didn't mean to come off so I-say-so-ish.

Anyway, I guess my second post justified my Whitman-as-N better? He seems way Ni with all the divisions in himself. I mean, he does talk about nature, but it's generally a source of intuition rather than actual sensory knowledge, as in "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" when the bird sings this whole monologue to his absent (dead) mate. Whitman's not focusing on what the bird song is actually like, but rather how it eventually leads to whispering the sweet word "death" laving him all over. Weird.

Eliot: INTJ.

I guessed Ne because of the incredible variety of random associations, often tenuously held together, in The Waste Land. His "I" seems to be fairly historically established, and he definitely exercises his J preference in his criticism and poetics. Ironically, he can be just as self-assertive as Bloom (declaring Hamlet an aesthetic failure comes to mind). His wide variety of knowledge (read Dante in the original Italian, learned all those references he connects together in TWL) seems T, and a not-extremely-well-developed F would help explain how he "persuaded" himself that he was in love with his first wife, and how that marriage was so unhappy that it "brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land."
 

dynamiteninja

Man for all seasons
Joined
May 30, 2008
Messages
1,195
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4w5
lol! Sorry for the re-post, ignore it except for the Heaney bit. I wasn't sure if I had posted the first time or not, and when I looked through the thread, I couldn't find the previous post! My b! Sorry, didn't mean to come off so I-say-so-ish.

Anyway, I guess my second post justified my Whitman-as-N better? He seems way Ni with all the divisions in himself. I mean, he does talk about nature, but it's generally a source of intuition rather than actual sensory knowledge, as in "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" when the bird sings this whole monologue to his absent (dead) mate. Whitman's not focusing on what the bird song is actually like, but rather how it eventually leads to whispering the sweet word "death" laving him all over. Weird.

Any ideas on any other authors waiting to be typed? They're the ones I'm either unsure of, or haven't read/read enough/know enough bio details to type.
 

silverchris9

New member
Joined
Jan 20, 2009
Messages
71
MBTI Type
ENFP
I added a bit about Eliot. I can't figure out Yeats, but I'm working on it, as well as Hart Crane (definitely F) and Wallace Stevens (definitely IN??, and probably INT, I think). Also, I'm still stuck on my Shakespeare-as-ENFP theory. You INFPs can't have all the great writers!! (kidding, of course)
 

dynamiteninja

Man for all seasons
Joined
May 30, 2008
Messages
1,195
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4w5
I added a bit about Eliot. I can't figure out Yeats, but I'm working on it, as well as Hart Crane (definitely F) and Wallace Stevens (definitely IN??, and probably INT, I think). Also, I'm still stuck on my Shakespeare-as-ENFP theory. You INFPs can't have all the great writers!! (kidding, of course)

I don't think you ENFPs are exactly short-changed when it comes to great writers. Charles Dickens is arguably second only to Shakespeare (I know how subjective this is!). Charlotte Bronte is one of the greatest female writers of all time, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain and D H Lawrence certainly aren't to be sniffed at.

Also, I appreciate your typings! :)
 

dynamiteninja

Man for all seasons
Joined
May 30, 2008
Messages
1,195
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4w5
I've been wondering whether Neil Gaiman is INFP, which seems to be consensus around these parts, or INFJ...
 

silverchris9

New member
Joined
Jan 20, 2009
Messages
71
MBTI Type
ENFP
Okay, true. We did get Dickens, and that's a fair prize. And Emerson. That's pretty much ownage.

I'm going to go ahead and guess Stevens as an INTJ. He seems fairly organized, in thought as in (presumably) his insurance-company-vice-president life. He doesn't seem to be a very public persona by any means, hence the I, and he's obviously a thinker on the basis of his highly systematized poetry.
 

dynamiteninja

Man for all seasons
Joined
May 30, 2008
Messages
1,195
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4w5
Okay, true. We did get Dickens, and that's a fair prize. And Emerson. That's pretty much ownage.

I'm going to go ahead and guess Stevens as an INTJ. He seems fairly organized, in thought as in (presumably) his insurance-company-vice-president life. He doesn't seem to be a very public persona by any means, hence the I, and he's obviously a thinker on the basis of his highly systematized poetry.

I'm willing to believe it, but who is this Stevens? And any update on Yates' type yet?
 

the state i am in

Active member
Joined
Feb 12, 2009
Messages
2,475
MBTI Type
infj
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
dfw is definitely an infp. i would guess dave eggers is an infp as well. kesey seems pretty certainly an enfp. so would be henry miller, tom robbins, and joseph campbell. i think vonnegut would be more of an f than a t. I think elizabeth smart would be an infp and lester bangs would be infx (not sure if p or j). i think gonzo journalist tom wolfe (not thomas) would be an infj, along with milan kundera, joan didion, and haruki murakami (possibly an infp). i struggle to see kafka as a t, he seems like an enneagram 4 to me all the way. i'm not exactly sure why hesse and huxley are infps?

what about italo calvino, garcia marquez, rimbaud, honore de balzac, and rilke? and if nabokov is an intp, is donald barthelme considered an intp as well?
 

dynamiteninja

Man for all seasons
Joined
May 30, 2008
Messages
1,195
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4w5
dfw is definitely an infp. i would guess dave eggers is an infp as well. kesey seems pretty certainly an enfp. so would be henry miller, tom robbins, and joseph campbell. i think vonnegut would be more of an f than a t. I think elizabeth smart would be an infp and lester bangs would be infx (not sure if p or j). i think gonzo journalist tom wolfe (not thomas) would be an infj, along with milan kundera, joan didion, and haruki murakami (possibly an infp). i struggle to see kafka as a t, he seems like an enneagram 4 to me all the way. i'm not exactly sure why hesse and huxley are infps?

what about italo calvino, garcia marquez, rimbaud, honore de balzac, and rilke? and if nabokov is an intp, is donald barthelme considered an intp as well?

Ever hear of capitals?
 
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