The Tempest

1
The Tempest

• Day Three
• ENGL 305
• Dr. Fike

2
Business

• Any questions about your cover letter, conference
  abstract, or final paper?

3
Last Time

• Sea change and felix culpa the most recent in a
  series of key concepts. Note that the remarks at
  5.1.179 and 185-86 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.

4
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), 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.

5
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
• Performance criticism

6
Montaigne Exercise

• We will use the handout of passages to guide us,
  but the following slide may also help.
• http//faculty.winthrop.edu/fikem/Courses/ENGL203
  05/30520Montaigne20exercise.htm

7
Exercise on Montaignes Of Cannibals

• 2.1.150-70 Consider Gonzalos speech in light
  of Montaignes essay. What similarities do you
  find? How do the essay and the play illuminate
  each other?
• Some sub-points to think about/stuff to look for
• Human nature
• Accoutrements of civilization
• Lifestyle
• Warfare
• Relativism
• What do you make of the following homology?
• NativesCalibanEuropeansAntonio and Sebastian
• 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.

8
Game

• jeopardylabs.com/play/jeopardy-game-the-tempest-an
  d-of-cannibals

9
Prosperos Magic

• The vanishing banquet 3.3.19ff.
• The masque of Iris and Ceres 4.1.1ff.

10
Banquet at 3.3.19ff.

• What do you make of the fact that the banquet
  VANISHES?

11
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 plays 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

12
From Shakespeares 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.92-100).

13
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.

14
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.

15
Other Points in the Masque

• The harvest think children
• April ? August
• Spenser All things are eternal in mutabilitie.

16
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