The Tempest Day Three ENGL 305 Dr. Fike

Business Any questions about your cover letter, conference abstract, or final paper? Next time: Bring your laptop computer.

Last Time Sea change and felix culpa: the most recent in a series of key concepts. Note that the remarks at and may qualify the concept somewhat. –Sebastian: “A most high miracle!” –Miranda: “O brave new world / That has such people in ’t.” If comedy, history, tragedy, and romance (McDonald calls these “modes”) are the backbone of the course, the concepts on the next slide are the ribs.

Key Concepts Comedy and tragedy as structural principles, history play, romance, primogeniture, “green world” (Frye), pastoral, divine right of kings, passive obedience, correspondences, Great Chain of Being (degree/hierarchy), positional discourse, ethical discourse Elizabethan psychology (reason, will, passion; the four humours), projection, repression, individuation, animus, anima, shadow, tragedy as the result of conflicting rituals (Boose), sea change, felix culpa, karma, carnivalesque, complementarity, nigredo, “mixed modes” (McDonald), venturing, usury, grace, imagination, surd evil, chronos vs. kairos, satire, foil principle, doubling, Oedipus complex, acts of compromise, kenosis, New Historicism, historical textuality, textual historicity, synesthesia, primal scene, positional discourse, ethical discourse, embedded cues.

Types of Criticism That We Have Sampled Can you think of an example of each of the following? Mythological criticism New Criticism New Historicism Deconstruction Psychological criticism Christian/Biblical literary criticism Source study Reader response (reading) Performance criticism (watching) Post-colonial criticism

Montaigne Exercise We will use the handout of passages to guide us, but the following slide may also help. ENGL%20305/305%20Montaigne%20exer cise.htmhttp://faculty.winthrop.edu/fikem/Courses/ ENGL%20305/305%20Montaigne%20exer cise.htm

Exercise on Montaigne’s “Of Cannibals” : Consider Gonzalo’s speech in light of Montaigne’s essay. What similarities do you find? How do the essay and the play illuminate each other? 2.Some sub-points to think about/stuff to look for: –Human nature –Accoutrements of civilization –Lifestyle –Warfare –Relativism 3.What do you make of the following homology? Natives:Caliban::Europeans:Antonio and Sebastian 4.Does Caliban illustrate the idea that Gonzalo and Montaigne are wrong to suppose that uncivilized man is purer, more innocent, and more virtuous than civilized man? Or does Caliban negatively illustrate the Europeans’ corrupting influence? Appoint persons in your group to facilitate the discussion and record your answers.

Game jeopardylabs.com/play/jeopardy-game-the- tempest-and-of-cannibalsjeopardylabs.com/play/jeopardy-game-the- tempest-and-of-cannibals

Prospero’s Magic The vanishing banquet: ff. The masque of Iris and Ceres: 4.1.1ff.

Banquet at ff. What do you make of the fact that the banquet VANISHES?

The Masque of Iris and Ceres 4.1.1ff.: Read the masque aloud; then discuss the following questions: –What does the masque add to the play’s thematics? –How is the masque consistent with the material that directly precedes it? –What message does Prospero convey by means of the masque? –What do you make of the mythological figures? Iris Ceres Juno Venus Cupid

From Shakespeare’s Characters for Students (emphases added) 416: Iris “reinforces the theme of prenuptial chastity when she reassures Ceres that the scandalous Venus and Cupid have not been invited to the celebration. She also mentions that Venus and her son had hoped to bewitch Miranda and Ferdinand into sleeping with one another before marriage, but were disappointed when the virtuous couple could not be tempted to break their vow of chastity (IV.i ).”

SCFS 416: Juno is the “goddess of marriage and women.... She appears in the masque along with Ceres to bless the young couple with a prosperous life together and find children, but also to remind them not to have sex before marriage.”

SCFS 415: Ceres “is the Roman goddess of agriculture, or mother earth.... Ceres introduces the lesson of chastity by warning Iris that she will not stay if Venus and her son, Cupid, have been invited.”

Other Points in the Masque The harvest: think children April  August: mutability, the life cycle Spenser: “All things are eternal in mutabilitie.”

The Final Slide in ENGL 305 On the one hand: marriage and fertility mark the comic resolution. On the other hand: the movement from April to August (the harvest) suggests the cycle of the seasons, and this in turn suggests death. POINT: Marriage in Shakespeare, insofar as it affirms the life cycle, affirms death. Said of Twelfth Night but relevant to The Tempest: The play celebrates “not [only] love and youth, but [also] the total fabric of life as a sad and very beautiful thing.” END