Preparing for The Tempest

In discussions of "The Tempest", one controversial issue has been colonialism and imperialism. On the one hand, George Will, a political commentator, argues that we must view Literature in a political viewpoint. The piece of literature we are examining is Shakespeare's, The Tempest, and if you look through the eyes of Will you are going to see the direct meaning of colonizing countries and/or in this case, people, and see that Shakespeare was pro-colonization because he wanted to appeal his work to the audience which was the Queen and her loyals. In order to pay the bills Shakespeare had to be their puppet and I think that is why other people have different viewpoints on The Tempest because Shakespeare himself was confined to limited expression. Will wants you to dissect Literature as "this is how it is and you are going to like it." You have no induvidual thought in the matter and in my honest opinion, that is boring. As quoted in the article, "the transmission of the culture unites, even defines America-transmission through knowledge of literature and history-is faltering." This goes to show that we obviously have lost the creative thought process while we read literature. On the other hand, Stephen Greenblatt, Professor of Humanities at Harvard University, contends the view that we should take risks and have our own opinions on what we read while respectfully maintaining what the piece was put out there to be. This makes reading more interesting and makes you want to keep reading and gaining more insight instead of being like a political robot and accept whatever is being handed to you. He states that "critics want a tame and orderly canon," while as I can infer that he is opposed to that type of approach. Greenblatt wants us readers to go in depth and analyze reading from different viewpoints and share our cummulative knowledge. In that case we should view Shakespeare's writing as creative and accept different points of view on the play such as, Aime Cesaire's, A Tempest, which to my understanding is mocking colonialism. Greenblatt is simply suggesting to not get stuck in "the social cement" of literature and "take the risk of collective amnesia." You will never get to your full potential of understanding if you follow in someone elses footsteps. However, my own view will reside with Greenblatt and I will use some of his approaches to my understanding in creating an essay that will explore The Tempest in new depths and not "deculture" literature but merely broaden the potential the play has.



Hopefully this sounds okay :)