Depictions of Caliban through the ages

In Fromental Halevy's opera La Tempesta, c. 1850


William Bell Scott, "Ariel and Caliban," 1865


William Hogarth, detail from "Shakespeare's The Tempest," c. 1730


From the BBC website, a children's summary of "The Tempest"


Charles Buchel, illustration from published version of "The Tempest," 1904


Willie Anderson as Caliban in Michael Smuin's "The Tempest" by Ballet San Jose Silicon Valley, c. 2002.

Paper topics for "The Tempest"

There will be two stages to this assignment.
1) Gathering Evidence: Due Friday, Feb. 6 in class.
Select one of the following topics. Go through the play and make a list of quotations that you could use as evidence for your paper. (You don't have to write out the entire quotation, but write enough that you'll remember what you're referring to.) You should have at least 8-10 examples, and probably more. Write down anything that could possibly be useful--you will go through these later and sort them out. Then start to think about which pieces of evidence are most relevant, how to make connections between pieces of evidence, what the evidence reveals about the play, and what kind of argument you might be able to make.

2) Paper: Due Friday, Feb. 13 in class.
Using the evidence you gathered, write a 4-5 page analytical paper on “The Tempest.” This paper should have a clear thesis statement and should be grounded in evidence from the text in question, including quotations. Your paper’s argument should attempt to answer both “how” and “why:” how does Shakespeare use a particular theme, and why do you think he employs it that way? Close reading should be the foundation for your analysis, with attention paid to the details of language: symbolism, imagery, metaphors, word choice, and/or poetic technique, where applicable.

Topics
1. Discuss Shakespeare’s use of images of performance, acting, and theatricality in “The Tempest.” Focus your argument closely on an element of this theme, such as Prospero’s “staging” of scenes, Antonio “acting” the part of Duke, or Ariel creating theatrical illusions.

2. Discuss one example of the opposition between “art”/“magic” and “nature” in “The Tempest.” Choose a particular scene or passage to analyze. You might compare Ariel or Prospero as “art” and Caliban as “nature;” discuss Gonzalo’s imagined commonwealth; or analyze natural imagery and metaphors in a scene of your choosing.

3. Compare Ferdinand and Miranda’s description of love as “slavery” or servitude in Act 3, scene 1 with Shakespeare’s depiction of either Caliban or Ariel as slaves or servants. Why does Shakespeare use the language of slavery for both kinds of relationships? (If you choose Caliban, you might discuss him either as Prospero’s slave or as Stephano’s slave.)

4. Discuss Prospero and Caliban’s relationship as a parent-child relationship. There is much “parenting” imagery in the play and many examples of parents and children. In what ways does Prospero function as an adoptive parent to Caliban? How does that relationship compare to other parent-child relationships? Be sure not to merely judge Prospero (“he is a bad father to Caliban and a good father to Miranda”) or to list the differences, but to analyze how Shakespeare uses the idea of parenthood figuratively and symbolically.

5. “The Tempest” takes place in a single day; most of the “action” takes place before the play begins. Choose one or two scenes or passages in order to analyze the theme of memory in the play. How is memory used or manipulated by the various characters? What does memory (or forgetting) provide or offer—does it teach? grant power? create pain or weakness?

6. Choose one or two examples to analyze how Shakespeare use the imagery of sleep or dreams. How does Shakespeare use sleep to represent issues of power and control? of art and imagination? How does he draw parallels between the dream-world and the world of the theater?

Short writing assignment: The Lotos-Eaters

For Tuesday:
1. Read the entire poem at least 3-4 times. Look up any unfamiliar words in the dictionary.
2. Find your assigned stanza and read it again several times. Read it out loud. Pay attention to how it sounds.
3. Now re-read it with a pen or pencil in hand, and start to mark up the passage. Answer these questions:
-What is its meter, and does it diverge at any point from its regular meter? (Mark stressed and unstressed beats)
-What is its rhyme scheme (the pattern of rhymes)?
Does it use any of the following techniques?:
-alliteration (repetition of first letter of word: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers)
-consonance (repetition of consonant sounds within words: lift sweet and swift)
-assonance (molten golden notes)
4. Look for unusual images, metaphors, similes, and surprising word choices. Look for repeated images, patterns in language, shifts in tone, etc. Underline, circle, or make whatever notations will help you. Make notes to yourself in the margins.

Due: Friday, Jan. 23 in class
Write an analysis of 1-2 pages on your stanza, analyzing how and why Tennyson uses these techniques. What mood does he create? How does the sound of the words add to my understanding of the poem? Why does he choose one word/image over another?

The Colossus of Rhodes

The Colossus of Rhodes served as the inspiration for the Statue of Liberty. The Colossus, which depicts the god Helios, was constructed in about 300 B.C. to celebrate the victory of the Rhodians over Antigous and his son Demetrius, who had attacked the city. The statue was popularly depicted as straddling the harbor, so that ships could pass under its legs, but historians do not believe that to be true. The Colossus was destroyed in an earthquake only 56 years after it was constructed.

A historically accurate rendering of the Colossus of Rhodes:


The Colossus as depicted by Emma Lazarus: