Saturday, 17 October 2015
Comparison of Shakespeare's The Tempest and Cesaire's A Tempest
To evaluate my assignment click here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest
http://www.shmoop.com/tempest/
http://www.gradesaver.com/the-tempest
http://wmich.edu/dialogues/texts/atempest.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aim%C3%A9_C%C3%A9saire
Name:
Ranjan P. Velari
Class:
M.A. Sem. 3
Paper
no.: 11(The post-colonial literature)
Topic:
Comparison of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Cesaire’s A Tempest
Enrollment
No.: 14101032
Guidance:
Dr. Dilip Barad
Submitted
to: Smt.S.B. Gardi
Department of
English
M.K. Bhavnagar
University
Comparison
of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Cesaire's A tempest
Introduction of ‘The Tempest’:
The Tempest was written by William
Shakespeare in 1610-11. It is the last play of Shakespeare. Setting is on a remote island, where
Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to
her rightful place using illusion and skillful manipulation. He conjures up a
storm, the eponymous tempest, to lure his usurping brother Antonio and the
complicit king Alonso of Naples to the island. There, his machinations bring
about the revelation of Antonio’s lowly nature, the redemption of the king, and
the marriage to Alonso’s son, Ferdinand.
The story draws heavily on the tradition of
remote, and it was influenced by tragicomedy. Character of Prospero represent
art through his magic, he is representation of Shakespeare. The play portrays
Prospero as a rational and character of Sycorax, her magic is frequently
described as destructive and terrible.
The play begins with a ship with a
ship-master and a boatswain trying to keep the ship from wrecking in a tempest.
There is a heavy storm and boat splits in half and the people float off into
the sea. At that time Prospero chatting with his daughter Miranda. He knows
magic that’s why he caused the storm that sank this boat, but he did it for
good reason. He also promises his daughter that nobody was hurt in spite of all
the fire, boat-splitting, and drawing that was clearly going on.
Then Prospero tells Miranda for their past
that it’s time she found out that she is a princess. When Prospero busy with
learning magic in his library at that time he used to be a duke of Milan until
his brother, Antonio, betrayed him and stole the dukedom. Then stealing
Prospero’s power and position he and the three-year’s old Miranda were shuttled
out to the ocean in a wreck of a boat. They ended up on this island, where the
ex-duke has raised his daughter for the last twelve years. Because of this
reason Prospero thinks about revenge.
Other characters are Ariel and Caliban, they
are servants. Ariel is free airy spirit who was imprisoned in a tree by a witch
for not being nasty enough and the other is the child of witch and the Devil is
Caliban. All the folks were responsible for stealing Prospero’s dukedom. Alonso
the king who allowed the wicked Antonio to take Prospero’s dukedom. Because of
this fear he lost his son, Ferdinand. Alonso, Antonio, Alonso’s brother
Sebastian- set off to find Alonso’s son, the lost Prince Ferdinand. Meanwhile,
the Prince is alive and conceived that his father and everyone else from the
boat are dead.
Then Ferdinand fell in love with Prospero’s
daughter Miranda. Hard task given by Prospero to Ferdinand and he happily done
this. When he meets second time to Miranda he knows about her name and promises
to marry her. During her whole life she has ever seen third person except her
father and Caliban, the son of Devil. Back with the search party looking for the
Prince, everyone feels weary and assumes the guy is dead. A banquet appears in
front of the shipwrecked group, set up by silent fairy spirits. Yes, this is
weird, but the search party is hungry and wants to eat. Before they can dig in,
a scary harpy monster shows up. This freaky harpy (a result of Prospero's
magic) says that the sea took Prince Ferdinand in exchange for the wrong Alonso
committed against Prospero many years ago. The harpy also points out that
there are three traitors at the table.
This
traitor comment brings us to an important side-plot: Antonio and Sebastian,
thinking Prince Ferdinand is dead, are plotting to murder Alonso so Sebastian
can be king. This is messed up because Alonso is Sebastian's brother. Still,
Antonio clearly has no conscience; he admits that he's never been bothered by
stealing his brother Prospero's dukedom. So, back at the scene with the monster
harpy: Alonso is disturbed and repents of his foul deed, but Sebastian and Antonio—not
so much. Then Prospero accepts Ferdinand, saying that he was just testing the
young man with all that hard labor. Since the Prince has worked carrying heavy
wood, he has permission to marry Prospero’s daughter. Other side second story
going on that Caliban has been plotting with the king’s drunken butler, Stephano
and jester, Trinculo to murder Prospero so they can rule the island. Caliban and
Trinculo is very drunkard. Caliban pledges to be Stephano's slave and kisses
his feet way more than we are comfortable with.
The drunken schemers are led off by Ariel
playing music. Ariel leaves the group in a pool that smells like the lesser
part of a horse to await his master's orders. The trio eventually gets out
of the muck pool and sets off to murder Prospero. However, Prospero sets hounds
upon them, and the would-be-murderers run off. Eventually they come back and
get made fun of for a bit, at which point Caliban repents and says he'll work
to be in Prospero's good graces again. That being dealt with, Prospero now goes
to meet the shipwrecked King. The harpy really shook up the King, so Alonso
apologizes to Prospero and returns his dukedom. Prospero doesn't tell the King
directly of Antonio and Sebastian's treachery, but neither of the traitors apologizes
or repents or even shuffle their feet. They don't learn a lesson. However,
Prospero starts some banter about how he recently lost his daughter to the
tempest too, commiserating with the King. Prospero changes the subject and asks
if they'd like to see his cell. He pulls back the curtain covering his dwelling
to reveal—you guessed it—two very-much-not-dead children, who are very much in
love. Alonso rejoices to see his son, Ferdinand rejoices to show-off his new
girl, and Miranda rejoices at seeing so many dude —hence the line "O
brave new world that has such people in it." Prospero promises to
explain most of this eventually. Tonight he'll tell some of his life story and
everyone will head back to Naples via ships in the morning. Prospero says he'll
watch the kids get married, and then he'll retire to his dukedom in peace. He
charges Ariel to make sure the ships get to Naples safely, and then frees him
from the servant gig.
Introduction of Aime Cesaire:
Aime Fernand David Cesaire was born on 26th
June, 1913 and died on 17th April, 2008 was a French poet, author
and politician. He
was the founder of Negritude movement in Francophone literature. His works are “A
Tempest”, “Discourse on Colonialism” is an essay on the conflict between
the colonizers and the colonized.
Introduction of “A Tempest”:
Ø A Tempest originally published in
1969 in French. Aime
Cesaire developed the negritude movement which raises the question of French
colonial rule and restores the cultural identity of blacks in the African Diaspora.
A Tempest is the third play in a trilogy aimed at advancing the tenets of the
negritude movement. In 1985, the play was translated into English by Richard
Miller in New York.
Ø A Tempest is a postcolonial revision of William
Shakespeare’s The Tempest
and draws heavily attention on the original play—the cast of characters is, for
the most part, the same, and the foundation of the plot follows the same basic
premise.
Prospero has been exiled and lives on a
secluded island, and he drums up a violent storm to drive his daughter’s ship
ashore. The island, however, is somewhere in the Caribbean, Ariel is a
mulatto slave rather than a spirit, and Caliban is a black slave.
A Tempest focuses on the trouble
of Ariel and Caliban—the never-ending quest to gain freedom from Prospero and
his rule over the island. Ariel, dutiful to Prospero, follows all orders
given by him and sincerely believes that Prospero will honor his promise of
emancipation. Caliban, on the other hand, slights Prospero at every
opportunity: upon entering the first act, Caliban greets Prospero by saying “Uhuru!”,
the Swahili word for “freedom.”
Here
is a dialogue between Prospero and Caliban.
Prospero:
Stuff it! I don’t like talking trees. As for your freedom, you’ll have it when I’m good and ready. In the meanwhile,
see to the ship. I’m going to have a few words with Master Caliban. I have been
keeping my eye on him, and he’s getting a little too emancipated. (Calling)
Caliban! Caliban! (He sighs).
Enter Caliban.
Caliban: Uhuru!
Prospero:
What did you say?
Caliban:
I said, Uhuru!
Prospero: Mumbling your native language again!
I’ve already be polite, at least; a simple “hello” wouldn’t kill you. (Original
text A Tempest, Page no. 11)
Prospero
complains that Caliban often speaks in his native language which Prospero has
forbidden. This prompts Caliban to attempt to claim birthrights to the
island, angering Prospero who threatens to whip Caliban. Caliban raises a
question for his identity and Ariel easily follows the rules of Alonso.
Identity crisis also glimpse in ‘A Tempest’ by Aime Cesaire.
Here
Caliban speaks with Prospero.
Caliban:
Call me X. That
would be best. Like a man without a name. Or, to be more precise, a man whose
name has been stolen. You talk about history…well, that’s history, and everyone
knows it! Every time you summon me it reminds me of a fact, the fact that
you’ve stolen everything from me, even my identity! Uhuru! (He exists.) (Original
text A Tempest, Page no.15)
The allusion to Malcolm X cements the
aura of cultural reclamation that serves as the foundational element of A
Tempest.
Cesaire has
also included the character of Eshu who in the play is cast as a black devil-god.
Calling on the Yoruba mythological traditions of West Africa, Eshu assumes the
archetypal role of the trickster and thwarts Prospero’s power and authority
during assemblies. Near the end of the play, Prospero sends all the
lieutenants off the island to procure a place in Naples for his daughter
Miranda and her husband Ferdinand. When the fleet begs him to leave,
Prospero refuses and claims that the island cannot stand without him; in the
end, only he and Caliban remain. As Prospero continues to assert his hold on
the island, Caliban’s freedom song can be heard in the background. Thus,
Cesaire leaves his audience to consider the lasting effects of colonialism.
How can we compare Shakespeare’s The
Tempest with A Tempest?
There is not much
difference between Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Aime Cesaire’s A Tempest. But ‘A Tempest’ presents colonial
aspect and mentality of master-slave relationship. Here in the play Caliban and
Ariel portrays as a different way. Prospero is also a good example of the role
power plays in the story. Character of Stephano is another example of power in
the play. Miranda plays very innocent role in the play and she is only one
character who presents woman role in the island.
Prospero
asked question to Caliban.
Prospero:
What would you be without me?
Caliban:
Without you? I’d be the king, that’s what I’d be, the king of the Island. (Original
text A Tempest, Page no. 12)
So, in this question we can find that how
Prospero overpower and make his self superior to Caliban. But Caliban also very
talkative and give appropriate answers to the questions of Prospero and can’t
bear him. Here, Aime Cesaire gives voice to Caliban, the subaltern identity of
The Tempest. Caliban tells Prospero that “I am not interested in peace; I am
interested in free will.” Here Caliban presented as free individualistic
person and rebel.
Conclusion:
In short, A
Tempest presents colonial angle towards black identity or mulatto. The Tempest
more focused on the shipwrecked, magic, revenge and happy marriage of Miranda
and A Tempest more concentrate on attitude of Negro, status of their mind and
relationship of master-slave. Idea of rebel, Idea of resistance shown by Aime
Cesaire in the play through the character of Caliban. Caliban is a speaking
subaltern and subjugated for himself, not killing Prospero. Colonialism gives
the name to the person that’s why identity crisis happens in the play. Here we
can give the example of Robinson Crusoe that how he gives name to the Friday
and teaches all the things.
Work Cited:
http://www.enotes.com/topics/a-tempesthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest
http://www.shmoop.com/tempest/
http://www.gradesaver.com/the-tempest
http://wmich.edu/dialogues/texts/atempest.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aim%C3%A9_C%C3%A9saire
Major movements of the modern age
Name: Ranjan P. Velari
Class: M.A. Sem. 3
Paper no.: 9 (The Modernist Literature)
Year: 2014-16
Enrollment No.:14101032
Email Id: ranjanvelari@gmail.com
Guidance: Dr. Dilip Barad
Submitted to: Smt.S.B. Gardi
Department of
English
M.K. Bhavnagar
University
Major Movements of the Modern Age
Introduction:
Modern art period around was
1860s and 1970s, and it includes artistic movement into style and
philosophy of the art. In modern art abstraction is more important. Modern
sculpture and architecture are emerged at the end of the 19th
century. Modern art can be traced back to the enlightenment, and even to the 17th
century. The important modern art critic Clement Greenberg, for instance,
called Immanuel Kant “the first real modernist” but also drew a distinction:
“The Enlightenment criticized from the outside… Modernism criticizes from the
inside.”
The pioneers of modern art were
Romantics, Realists and Impressionists. By the late 19th century,
additional movements which were to be influential in modern art had begun to
emerge: post-Impressionism as well as symbolism.
Impressionism:
Impressionism was arguably practiced by Renoir, Monet, Degas, Manet and
Sisley. General view of impressionism expressed in a vision of beauty: cafes,
villages, boulevards, salons and theatres all expressed a joy of life, wholeness
and radiance by impressionists. It is the essence of realism because its aim
was to paint a specific object at a specific moment, to capture the effect of
light and color at an instant time.
Impressionism’s unit of color
was the brushstroke, which was challenged by George Seurat (1859-1891).
Seurat's views were based on scientific studies of color and perception which
had shown that local vision or perception has a halo, a haze of color surrounding
it. He turned to a kind of 'pointillism' (because of its 'points' or dots) or
'divisionism'.
Cubism:
Cubist paintings were nearly all still life’s even though the cubists
rarely used nature, preferring to paint human or constructed objects. All
painting had obeyed the principle of 'one-point perspective', it means seeing
and painting an object from one position. In terms of the object, art is a
two-dimensional medium, but it is usually trying to represent three-dimensional
space. In the painting, the paint of focus and centre of vision can move
between foreground and background as a person's point of interest shifts while
scanning over the object.
Cubists like, Pablo Picasso
(1881-1973) and Georges Braque (1882-1963) trying to suggest
that there is always several sides to the object, may be from five or six
angles.
In Virginia Woolf's novel 'To the Lighthouse' (1927), she uses the
example of Lily Briscoe's painting as an image of how art, which is, in many
ways, opposed to reason, shapes chaos using form.
Cubism, or rather the ideas of
collage and multiple perspective, suggested to writers now ways of constructing
both narrative and 'character' as composites, as not singular but an assembly
of fragments. For Picasso, Africa represented the possibility of regeneration
from outside.
Futurism:
Futurism, largely an Italian movement, was the invention of Fillippo
Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), who published the first 'Futurist Manifesto'
in 'Le Figaro' in 1909 as a preface to his volume of poems. Another
futurist, Francis Picabia (1879-1953), proclaimed, like the Russian
poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1894-1930), who declared that all existing art
should be destroyed, that all previous art was dead. The futurists generally
appeared to the world as fanatics.
Futurism stood for a complete
break with tradition and the exploration of new forms, new subjects and new
styles, all in keeping with the advent of mechanistic age. The principles of
futurism were dynamism, the cult of the speed and machine, rejection of the
past and the glorification of patriotism and war.
Expressionism:
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1953) was prominent impressionist of
Expressionism. The most well-known expressionist painter is Edvard Munch
(1863-1944), who said in a phrase that encompasses the philosophy of
expressionism:
"Nothing
is small, nothing is great. Inside us are worlds."
Like Freud, Munch saw the self as
a battleground between desire and social constraint, between id and superego.
Unlike the impressionist painters concentrated more on shadows than light, on
the sinister effects of shade and dark, the qualities of nightmare and
alienation. Passages of Joyce's Ulysses, especially the 'Night town'
section, and of Woolf's The Waves (1931) are reminiscent of
expressionist techniques, but Frantz Kafka (1883-1924) is the most European
expressionist novelist.
Surrealism:
Surrealism movement best popularized the work
of Salvador Dali. In literature, automatic writing and
stream-of-consciousness came closest to being influenced by this kind of
approach. Andre Breton wrote the Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, in which he
praised Sigmund Freud’s notion of the unconscious. Surrealism movement was an attempt to capture the mind's deepest and
most unconscious aspects in painting. The surrealists saw the unconscious as a
source of creative energy, Breton defined surrealism as 'psychic automatism' of
the human mind.
Pre-Raphaelite:
Pre-Raphaelite was a group of English painters, poets and critics,
founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel
Rossetti. The group’s intention was to reform art by
rejecting mechanistic approach.
This movement greatly influenced
by nature and these painters used great detail to show the natural world using
bright and sharp focus techniques on a white canvas. Pre-Raphaelites were fixed
on portraying things with near-photographic precision, though with a
distinctive attention to detailed surface-patterns, their worry was devaluated
by many painters & critics.
Transcendentalism:
Transcendentalism is an American literacy, political & philosophical
movement of the early 19th century, centered Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Other important transcendentalists were Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller,
Amos Bronson Alcott, Frederic Henry Hedge and Theodore Parker. They were critics
of their contemporary society for its unthinking conformity &urged that
each person find in Emerson’s words, “an original relation to the universe.”
Dark Romanticism:
Dark Romanticism is a literacy subgenre centered on the writers Edgar
Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville. Dark Romantics emphasized
human fallibility and proneness to sin and self-destruction, as well as the
difficulties inherent in attempts at social reform.
Realism:
Realism in the arts is represent subject matter truthfully without
artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, exotic and supernatural
elements. In the visual arts, illusionistic realism is the accurate depiction
of perspective and the light and color. Realism also called naturalism, mimesis
or illusionism.
Naturalism:
Naturalism is to suggest that social conditions, heredity and
environment and force in shaping human character. This is literary movement was
an outgrowth of literary realism in mid 19th century France and
elsewhere. Naturalistic works exposed the dark harshness of life, including
poverty, racism, violence, corruption etc.
Symbolism:
Symbolism period
was late 19th century movement of French, Russian and Belgian in
poetry and other arts. The term “symbolism” is derived from the word “symbol”
which derives from the Latin “symbolum”, a symbol of faith. Symbolism was a
reaction in favor of spirituality, the imagination and dreams. Symbolists
believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described
indirectly. Symbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather than primarily to
describe; symbolic imagery was used to signify the state of the poet’s soul.
In fact, Edgar Allan Poe, the renowned critic, poet and short story
writer of America, pioneered Symbolism in poetry. His famous poems The Raven,
Ulalume, Lenore, The Haunted Palace etc. are full of abundant symbols, which he
used with great artistic excellence. Famous French symbolists
Baudelaire, Mallarme, Rimbaud, Hart Crane, Ezra Pound and others have
been indebted to him. A symbolist uses words,
“to describe a
mode of literary expression in which words are used to suggest states of mind
rather than for their objective, representational or intellectual content.”
Stream
of Consciousness:
Stream of Consciousness term
was coined by William James in 1980 in his ‘The Principles of Psychology’.
In literary criticism, stream of conscious, also known as interior monologue,
is a narrative mode or devise that depicts the thoughts and feelings which pass
through the mind. This movement is usually associated with modernist novelists
in the first part of the 20th century, the most famous use of the
technique came in 1922, with the publication of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’.
Dadaism:
Dadaism was an art
movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century. The
term anti-art, a precursor to Dada, was coined by Marcel Duchamp around 1913.
Dada activities included public gatherings, demonstrates, and publication of
art literary journals: passionate coverage of art, politics and culture. Dada
was an informal international movement with participants in Europe and North
America.
Dadaism was founded in Zurich in
1916 by Tristan Tzara with the avowed object of perverting and demolishing the
tenets of art, philosophy and logic. Many Dadaists believed that the ‘reason’
and ‘logic’ of bourgeoisie capitalist society had led people into war. They
expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic logic and embrace chaos
and irrationality. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature,
poetry, art theory, theatre and graphic design and concentrated its anti-war
through rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-cultural
works.
Imagism:
The poetical movement, known as
Imagism, was a reaction against Romanticism, especially Georgian poetry. The
Georgians lived in a world of fantasy and discarded the sordid realities of
life. They lacked modernism. The Imagist Movement flourished from 1910 and
1918. Its first anthology, Des Imagists was published in 1914 with Ezra Pound,
the distinguished American poet, as editor. Imagism was 20th century
movement that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is the
first organized modernist literary movement in English language. The imagists
rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical of much Romantic and
Victorian poetry. Imagism is its attempts to isolate a single image to reveal
its essence.
Conclusion:
In short, it is an
artistic and cultural movement. These art movements’ presents various aspects
of paintings and throughout we come to know about the mind of the painter.
Paintings were not seen as direct way but hidden messages were given by
painters. For example, movement like stream of consciousness shows inner aspect
of human being. It depends upon psychological level of a person.
Works Cited
Childs, Peter. Modernism.
USA & Canada: Routledge, 2008.
Nayar, Pramod K. A Short History Of English Literature.
n.d.
wikipedia.
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