L34-02-24-14-205

1. L34-02-24-14-205 • Time crunch: On the schedule, please read straight ahead: Descartes, the one page from Hume, and Kant. • Late tomorrow, you will get the second assignment: same deal, commentaries on passages, but this time, there will be more texts represented: • Bruno, Bacon, Shakespeare, Descartes, Kant, and Coleridge. • Don’t be alarmed: all of these fit quite tightly together, and that will be the focus of the lectures for this week and half of next. • HEADS UP on the final assignment. It will be to write an essay on either Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, or William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! The general topic will be INQUIRY, and you will get very exacting topic prompts. DO NOT make the mistake of thinking this will be just an ordinary undergraduate ‘I think’ paper. What I will be expecting is that you make the transition from reading passage exactly, to a whole text. • I realize you will not have time to handle both of these books with the same detail, but we will divide our last days quite evenly between Kuhn (with attention to Peirce and Coleridge) and Faulkner. You will need to make a selection as to which one you prefer to work on, and that quite soon.

2. The Tempest In this case, there is no place in the text where you can fall asleep: the language is tight, and anywhere you alight, there is something that needs you to bring you’re A game to the reading. The first point today: This play is an EXPERIMENT. It is written at the start of a modern world that is expanding, discovering new places, and new ways to get into trouble, by the hour. The play itself, moreover, gives us a NEW MAN, Prospero, who reflect the very ambitions common to Bruno, Bacon, and as you will shortly see, Rene Descartes. The simplest statement of the hypothesis is this: Suppose a person whose KNOWLEDGE is already at the point of allowing a direct conversion to POWER: WHAT WOULD HE ACTUALLY DO?

3. The context The play is presented at COURT, to the king and his counsellors and members of the future legal profession. Both performances are in the time of the marriage of King James’ daughter, Anne. GET THE HINT. This is a play that is directed to a sitting king, who has a daughter about to get married.

4. The METHOD • Not only the individual words, the cast of characters, but the discernible actions are all METAPHORICAL. Thus, to read this, you have to have all the circuits of your brain, plus your feelings, entirely turned on. • Read this INTENSELY. You have to assemble the play as you think. This is NOT a representation of an original, it is ORIGINAL THINKING. Treat it as such. • Not just attention to the language, but STRUCTURAL INFERENCE. Apposition.

5. Timeline: Prospero usurped by his brother Antonio and Alonso of Naples Miranda was 3; they have been on the island for 12 years (she’s 15). Caliban was a child (under 3?) when his mother Sycorax died & Ariel was locked in a pine tree—where he stayed for 12 years. (Caliban 14-17 when Prospero arrives; he’s about 24-27 when the play starts) Alonso has just married his daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis The whole situation Court party arrives Sycorax arrives S dies, Ariel in tree Prospero arrives 3 12 12 3 Resettled in Italy Note the spacing by chronological age of the children: structural inference

6. What is obvious here? Alonso is marrying his daughter to the King of Tunis, and with Prospero’s brother (Alonso’s co-conspirator) in Milan, and he (next, Ferdinand) in Naples, HE WOULD CONTROL ALL SEA TRAFFIC THROUGH THE MEDITERRANEAN. A few words on Philip II of Spain (1527-1598) [died 12 years before Tempest was written]: he’s the anterior example that gives particular point to this play. He, already in the position a generation earlier that Alonso is setting up to establish, GETS MARRIED TO MARY, Queen of Scots (later “Bloody Mary”) so as to control, effectively, THE ENTIRE WORLD. The SPANISH ARMADA, defeated by Queen Elizabeth’s navy (and the weather), was his, and its defeat is the opening of ENGLAND to its future as a world power. Philip himself was therefore King of Spain, Co-ruler of England, the Mayor of Jerusalem, the Duke of Milan, The King of Naples and Sicily, and the conqueror of Tunis, Athens, Corisca, and Palestine, with effective control over Portugal, Malta and Sardinia and all the ports and the sea lanes of the Aegean & Mediterranean. You might have heard that this play is about the Americas: nonsense. This is a play singularly about recent European history: what blunders can you prevent, especially with the marriage of a daughter. They apply prospectively to new worlds. LOOK AT THAT MAP

7. The story: usurpations & conspiracies, real, imagined, transposed • Real • Alonso and Antonio usurp Prospero • Antonio and Sebastian, on the island, plan to usurp /kill Alonso • Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo, plan to usurp / kill Prospero • Imagined: • Prospero has “usurped” Caliban. THINK. • Ferdinand is there to “usurp” Prospero • Transposed as rape: Appetite ->violence • Caliban over Miranda • Ferdinand over Miranda (as Prospero protests) • Miranda over Ferdinand (as Miranda desires) • Prince of Tunis over Claribel Watch your kingdom, WATCH YOUR DAUGHTERS same thing

8. The plot • The play is an ordered sequence of scenes, with a structure remarkably unnoticed. Ferdinand & Miranda p.46 5 Clowns’ confusion Caliban 6 p.39 4 p.50 Court party Harpy’s banquet p.55 p.26 7 3 Prospero Wedding masque p. 60 p.6 2 8 tempest p.3 Reconciliation p.71 1 9 The action on the left is completed, in perfect symmetry, in the scene on the right. A PERFECT FRAME TALE

9. The characters • Check the symmetries: • Prospero (male) Sycorax (female) • Wizard Witch • MirandaCaliban • Wondrous woman A (horny) would be king Miranda Ferdinand A (horny) would be queen A (horny) would be king Look forward to the last scene, with M & F

10. Caliban What is he, after all? The bastard son of a witch, but what nurture has he had? First of all, he’s a European: the north atlantic had been Muslim / Arabic, was then SPANISH. His mother is blue eyed (Caucasian: there is no evidence for the scholarly contrivance that this means she was pregnant, none, zip, in all of Shakespeare. It means what it says: her eyes were blue) His mother dies when he is three: Ariel is locked in a tree. He’s 18 at least when Prospero and Miranda arrive; he’s 30 when the action takes place. Is he king on the island for those 12 years? Get serious. He is an abandoned child, living on mussels, nuts, and berries: no language, no education. Miranda is his teacher, and he tries to rape her. His pivotal line: “I must eat my dinner.”

11. Understanding the human What separates Caliban from any of the others? His desire for miranda is on a par with Ferdinand’s. His desire for power is on a par with Antonio’s, Alonso’s, and early on, it seems, Prospero’s. What makes us human? Prospero’s power? It is useful only for staging a REVELATION. We are not born human: we have to learn how to become human. At birth, what are we? Caliban. Don’t educate him, nurture him, he drifts to the monstrous.

12. The close action . Carries wood Carries wood Gonzalo fanticizes Antonio & Sebastian conspire i.e., does Caliban’s job Ferdinand & Miranda 5 Clowns conspire Clowns’ confusion Caliban 6 4 Harpy’s banquet Court party 7 3 Prospero Wedding masque 2 8 tempest Reconciliation 1 9 The action on the left is completed, in perfect symmetry, in the scene on the right. A PERFECT FRAME TALE