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Monday, September 27, 2010

Article

   In the article, "Literary Study, Politics, and Shakespeare: A Debate", two different people, George Will and Stephen Greenblatt strongly disagree and both make good arguments. They both have completely different ideas of how Shakespeare represents imperialism and colonialism in The Temptest. Greenblatt argues that Shakespeare's readers were not that involved in the political aspect, while Will argues that Shakespeare's writting is "unrecognizable" and works around the topic of politics.
    To sum up George Will believes that Shaekspeare's readers are too politicaly light. . Will states that "ideology radically devalues authors and elevates ideologists" He also believes that the topics of colonialism and feminism are things that are not important for Shaekspeare'sreaders to understand. Overall Will is saying that the literary critics are the ones who should be anaylzing and identifying the author's work of his or her peice.
   But Stephen Greenblatt believes the complete opposite of Will, saying that the themes such as imperialism is too deepining for the reader. He believes that The Temptest is full of "conspicuous allusions to contemporary debates over colonization".
   I personally can not decide what side to take, although i did seem to side with Stephen Greenblatt rather than George Will. I agree with his view more because he believes that readers need to think more deeply so that the readers better understand the authors point of view. I also believe that Greenblatt's evidence was more compelling than Will's.  
  

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Colinization and Temptest Act II & III


    I believe that Shakespeare is definitley attempting to have his readers portray Caliban as an "other" or as a representation of native peoples. He is described as a "savage" and looked down on throughout Act II and Act III of the Temptest. I believe that Shakespeare is trying to shed light onto colinization for Europeans. I see the character, Caliban, as a representative to show the unfair hatred of colonization.
  I am not exactly sure why, but I believe (from what I've read so far...) that Shakespeare is sympathetic toward Caliban. I think that he is showing this horrible side of colonization as an example of what tends to happen to the world and its "foriegners". I believe that Shakespeare is trying to show the world the use of "hegemony- that is, its dominant values, sense of right and wrong, and sense of personal wealth." (Cultural Studies 2). When I read the Temptest I get the strong idea that Shakespeare was portraying the concept of hegemony. Caliban is a man of no personal wealth whatsoever, but has extreme dominant values. But this is overlooked because of the wrong doings of colonizaion and streotyopes.
   This video on Native Americans was pretty sad, and dissapointing to watch because it could have been prevented. Why did we have to represent the native Americans as monsters and murderers? While watching this video I was continuously reminded of the "Danger of a Single Story" video. It just showed that yet another "single story" influenced people's perception on certain things, in this case Native Americans. Even though this was in the 50s and 60s I believe that Shakepeare was trying to show that exact same concept of how colinization, but only in his narrative it is about Prospero taking the land from Caliban and giving him the short end of the straw (unfair...).

I know this wasn't all that great so im sorry...but I tried ;)

Monday, September 13, 2010

    In first act of The Temptest  it is quite apparent what kind of man Prospero is. Prospero is a controlling and manipulating man. For example when he is speaking to Miranda he manipulates the situation so that she is giving him sympathy while not even knowing the entire truth about the past. This is shown in lines 63-65 when Miranda explains to her father of how it "makes her heart bleed to think o'th'teen that I have turned to you, which is [her] remembrance!" (Act 1, Scene 2 lines 63-65). When hearing this story of the past it is natural for anyone to feel sorry for Prospero, but when you look more deeply this is what the character Prospero wants you to feel, he wants Miranda, and the others, to take pity on him. Prospero blames his brother for bad happenings, when truly it seems as if it was his own fault for letting things take a turn for the worse. Miranda not only fallen into his lies but she actually believes all of what he says about the past, asking her if he can forgive him.
  I believe that the way Prospero can manipulate people by using historic narratives is because who can argue with the past? Especially when it is so believably worded. Everyone seems to believe Prospero because he is the one who is constructing these stories and putting the blame on others. I can definitley see how this is relating to what we have been discussing in class, and especially in 1984. In 1984 the government wanted to control its past and make in only seem as if everyone else was to blame for mistakes. Prospero is doing the exact same thing, he is manipulating reality. These narratives help in making Prospero in control of everyone and their mindset of reality.

Monday, September 6, 2010

"The Danger of One Story" Post

    When I watched this video I, like many others most likely, instantly related to what Adichie was talking about. I was really interested in what she was saying about American's perspective of Africans. It is true that so many are suffering and many wars are continuously happening, but they are people. And American people seem to instantly feel bad for those living in Africa. And I admit that I also sometimes only see one veiw of Africa and many other places, people and things, but after seeing this I can now really start trying to realize that there is just more than one story. It occured to me that Americans seem to have an instant bias towards foreigners. Like Adichie said even she veiwed Mexicans as only being suffering immigrants, but when you truly look at their country they are people just like the people in America. In my opinion these thoughts of foriegners has a lot to do with medias output on the subject. For alot of us, media is our only source to see our outside world. And unfortunatley it truly only gives us one story.
     I believe that the danger of only hearing one single story is everywhere. It is important to hear more than just one story on a subject. This relates back to our discussion we had in class about Texas textbooks. I kept referring back to this in my mind while watching this video clip because like Adichie said it is so important for us to hear more than just one story, and that is what we did in class. I really enjoy discussions like that and I think that it is not only beinifiting us as students but also as humans. At some point we have all fallen short to the danger of only hearing one story, but if we all attempt to broaden our horizens and read more litterature and listen to more than one news channel, hopefully I along with others can start to escape from the danger of only hearing one story.