Tempest- Unpredictable Flashcards
Para 1
Well-orchestrated plans still need the unpredictable:
-Prospero, after twelve years stranded utilises his sorcery to bring those that usurped his dukedom to him. Yet once the gears are in motion Prospero makes the grand gesture of denouncing his magic abilities”I’ll break my staff…ill drown my book” line and stage direction
- “Rarer act is in virtue than in vengeance”
Does not seek revenge, instead he seeks to rediscover his humanity, a feat that cannot be achieved with magic.
Renaissance humanism-revolutionary ideal of the Shakespearean Era that man could impact his own fate through his actions, not solely rely on divine intervention.
“Divine” “own prescience”
Viewed through this scope Prospero’s sorcery becomes symbolic of Jacobean societies reliance on the supernatural, his success thus causing Shakespeare’s contemporaries seek the unknown to discover for themselves.
Para 2
Even initially unwanted discovery requires becoming lost in the unknown
-thrusts his protagonists from the “outer suburbs,” linked to high society via the cultural code, into an environment of “full of… migrants” likewise linked to the lower class, and thus feel like “sojourners in a foreign land.” hyperbole and simile respectively illustrate apprehension and disorientation.
Views change when reluctantly engage in cultural activities like cooking the duck. “In the haze of dawn and steam and fractured dialogue, the young man and woman felt intoxicated” illustrates unanticipated cultural growth
Birth of couple’s child, “Queue of bleary faces… He began to weep. The twentieth century novel had not prepare him for this” demonstrates completion of discovery of community and novel motif representing worldly understanding
Para 3
Northrop Frye’s Green world, external mirrors internal:
“Wild setting” used by the author to “escape the order of the city. It is here that issues…prominent to the city world become resolved”
-naturally unpredictable location free of the stringency of the upper world where its problems can be solved i.e. Discoveries be made.
“Ten leagues beyond mans light”
“Full of…sound and sweet airs that delight” mirrors prospero’s discovery as simple charm of nature promoted over convoluted magic.
(( “Gentlemen who are of such sensible and nimble tongues, that they always use to laugh at nothing” michel de montaigne ))
does not as bluntly fit Frye’s green world but modernises it.
Hyperbolic description of their move outside the city to that of a “foreign land” highlights likeness to unexplored green world
-tactile imagery used to display place of loosen order “screaming…spitting..on the street,” typical of Frye’s green world but one of community, friendly “advice and “sharing gifts of grappa” needed to overcome the cultural and societal disconnect of modern urban life.
Thesis
Discovery is unpredictable by its nature due to its reliance in the unknown, what has yet to be discovered. Only by becoming lost in and embracing the intrinsically unpredictable unknown can our beautiful paths be found, our place in humanity and its cultural landscape. Shakespeare and winton utilise character’s internal conflict and external environment to illustrate that whether it is sort after or thrust upon you, the unpredictability of the unknown is essential to discovery.
