Monday 2 November 2015

Paper No. 12
Presentation Topic: Language Learning Skills

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Saturday 17 October 2015

Comparison of Shakespeare's The Tempest and Cesaire's A Tempest

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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-tempest
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


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
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.

  It is a movement in literature, music, movies, comics etc, towards the unfettered expression of the decadent natural world and obscure supernatural world. From being a purely literary phenomenon in the 19th century it has spread to other artistic fields in the 20th century.


 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.