Yup, brings to the fore and colors the presentation. But anything more
specific I think is just footnote material. Lucian had his magic island,
and Plato before him--humans imagine strange places, especially seafaring
humans.
At 07:57 AM 1/29/2003 +1000, you wrote:
>>At 10:16 AM -0800 1/28/03, Mark Weiss wrote:
>>My point being only that one can overload the play, which is more
>>than interesting enough, there's a history of fantasy islands
>>(forgive me, I couldn't help myself) going way way back. The idea is
>>the contemplation of a society unthreatened or contaminated by the
>>outside--a perfect social laboratory. Thomas More comes to mind.
>>And the New World was often seen as such. It wasn't just the
>>Puritans who saw themselves building a perfect society upon an
>>imagined void--it's a thread that continues throughout American
>>history. Mormons and hippie communards were also utopians.
>
>Shakespeare is clearly calling on those utopian traditions as well:
>and Kott's point is that The Tempest shows (crucially, he points out
>that it occurs in the dramaturgy) that utopias are as prone to ills
>as any other society. I don't think it's overloading the play at all
>to bring together the New World elements and the utopias - they were
>conflated at the time, the New World offering hope of a new and
>cleansed society - the Puritans being the clearest contemporary
>example. It's not specifically anti-Spanish, but the Spanish
>Conquest was part of the discourse around at the time, as well as
>Raleigh.
>
>Best
>
>A
>
>--
>
>
>
>Alison Croggon
>Home page
>http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
>
>Masthead Online
>http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
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