Literature and History 4 Cultural Materialism Shakespearean Discourses

Literature and History (4): Cultural Materialism & Shakespearean Discourses

Starting Questions What is ‘Discourse’ according to Foucault? Why is history textualized? What do you think about the first lecture quoted in our textbook, chap 2(pp. 236 -237)? What is New Historicism? How about Cultural Materialism? Cultural Poetics?

Outline Cultural Materialism e. g. 1: Brown’s reading of The Tempest e. g. 2: Barker, et al’s reading of The Tempest e. g. 3: Shakespeare and Education History as Time Travel and Costume Drama Your Journal: Possible Approaches References

Cultural Materialism a literary criticism that places texts in a material, that is socio-political or historical, context in order to show that canonical texts, Shakespeare supremely, are bound up with a repressive, dominant ideology, yet also provide scope for dissidence. examines ideas and categorize them as radical or non-radical according to whether they contribute to a historical vision of where we are and where we want to be. (Wilson 3536).

Example (1): Paul Brown’s reading of The Tempest Instead of aesthetic harmony, truth and coherence, he sees the text as n n n riven with contradictions which bear the traces of social conflicts. an intervention in contemporary colonialist practices Foregrounds what it seeks to cover (conflicts in colonialist ideologies).

An example: Paul Brown’s reading of The Tempest (2) Kermode – Prospero a Césaire – Caliban is the disciplined artist productive natural man, the slave that creates history. Brown: does not do a humanist reading of the characters. Instead, he -- sets The Tempest in the context of contemporary colonial discourses of sexuality, masterlessness and savagism. -- Caliban unifies the heterogeneous discourses of masterlessness, savagism and sexuality.

Example (1): Paul Brown’s reading of The Tempest (3) discourses of sexuality – John Rolfe and Pocahontas (1614). . . The strive with all his body is in ‘no way led. . . With the unbridled desire of carnal affection: but for the good of this plantation, for the honour of our countrie, for the glory of God, for my own salvation, and for the converting to the true knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, an unbeleeving creature, namely Pocahontas” (Brown 49) masterlessness – Look Upon me London (1613) Savagism –e. g. the Irish 1) as beast-like, requirement the management of the British husbandman. 2) with natural simplicity. (without any qualities of civility)

Example (1): Paul Brown’s –contradictions and ambiguities Prospero’s island = Ireland, placed between the American and the European discourse The play – produces colonial stereotypes which refuse to be contained. n E. g. Prospero’s “education” of Miranda (e. g. the romance trope in Prospero’s speech powerlessness) n Ariel – freed only to be bound The play’s class hierarchy and aesthetic ordering as euphemization (e. g. colonization as education, colonialist re-organization as family romance). Caliban’s ‘my island’ speech –desire for power and powerlessness Prospero’s ‘dream’ speech – colonialist narrative revealed as forgery. yet he goes on.

Example (2) Barker, et al. To de-mystify contemporary Shakespeare --as shown in n n midsummer tourism at Stratford-upon-Avon construction of an English past which is picturesque, familiar and untroubled. Arden series of Shakespeare (eternal values of the texts vs. their historical backgrounds) through examining his intertextuality or thru’s con-textualization.

Example (2) Barker, et al. (2) 1. the inter-textual relations between Prospero’s versions of history with that of Ariel’s, Miranda’s and Caliban’s 2. The moment of disturbance – when Prospero calls a sudden halt to the celebratory mask. the real dramatic moment because Prospero is anxious to keep the sub-plot of his play in its place.

Contemporary Shakespearean Discourses in UK – as a ground for discrimination GCE (General Certificate Exam) –A level at least one Shakespeare play Those on GCE O level and CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education) should be steered away from Shakespeare (Sinfield 138) –

Contemporary Shakespearean Discourses in UK – forming a hegemony? According to a survey done in 1968, only 1/8 of 800 level students showed any wish to keep on reading literature; Most of the A and O level students have ‘light’ private readings. (Sinfield 137)

Contemporary Shakespearean Discourses in UK – exam questions “At the center of King Lear lies the question, “What is a man? ” Discuss. ” “The Winter’s Tale is much more concerned with the qualities of womanhood, its virtue, its insight, and its endurance”. Discuss. ” “Compare Shakespeare’s treatment of the problem of evil in any two plays” (Sinfield 138 -39. ”

History as Time Travel & as Costume Drama “To read the past, to read a text from the past, is thus always to make an interpretation which is in a sense an anachronism (時間錯置). Time travel is a fantasy. We cannot reproduce the conditions. . . of another century. To do so would be, in any case, to eliminate the difference that makes the fantasy pleasurable. .

History as Time Travel & as Costume Drama (2) “The real anachronism, then, is of another kind. Here history as time travel gives way to history as costume drama, the reconstruction of the past as the present in fancy dress. The project is to explain away the surface strangeness of another century in order to release its profound continuity with the present” (C. Belsey qtd Wilson 13)

Your Journal: Possible Approaches choose a text to study its interaction (under a certain subject) with its author’s life and its society (rules, norms and socio-economic conditions). The text can be contained or controlled by its conditions, but it can also intervene in it actively by utilizing different and conflicting discourses consciously or unconscious; Stories of time travel, its historical methods and underlying ideologies; Discuss one of the views of history, time, truth, culture, discourse, and/or their interactions, discussed in class and give examples to support your argument.

References Alan Sinfield, "Give an Account of Shakespeare and Education. . . , " in Dollimore and Sinfield, Political Shakespeare. Eds. Jonathan Dollimore, Alan Sinfield. Methuen 1984: 134 -57. “’This thing of Darkness I acknowledge mine’: The Tempest and the Discourse of colonialism. ” Political Shakespeare. Barker, Francis and Peter Hume. “Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish: The Discursive Con-texts of the Tempest. ” Kiernan Ryan (ed. ), New historicism and cultural materialism: a reader (London and New York: Arnold, 1996). Scott Wilson. Cultural Materialism: Theory and Practice. Blackwell Publishers, 1995.