L34-205-02-23-15• Housekeeping: The next assignment prompt will be sent out tomorrow morning; close on

returns, early submissions are being returned first.• Midterm II: this will be a commentary on ONE passage, from a selection of 6.• All the formatting and manuscript rules of assignment 1 will be the same.• Final assignment: a paper on EITHER Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific

Revolutions; OR• William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

The topics will be very specific: you won’t need other sources. DON’T use them. There will be enough specification in the prompts.

Reading: This week: Shakespeare tomorrow Descartes on Wednesday; Descartes & Hume Thursday; Kant on Friday SECOND MIDTERM DUE, SUNDAY (by the deadline)Next week: Kant &Coleridge, Faraday&Maxwell, Peirce &KUHNLast week: KUHN and Faulkner.

Finals week: All revisions due; Final paper due by Thursday AM

Tempest• Structural Inference: Texts are not transparent. • They do not ‘give’ you information. • They give you a structure, and you have to understand it actively.

The fundamental issue here is to sophisticate your reading without becoming sophistical. Read EXACTLY, and pay attention.

In The Tempest, we have Shakespeare’s most meticulous text. There is not a thing out of place, and there is nothing insignificant. Meaning is not a property, not given:

MEANING IS ALWAYS CONSTRUCTED: THE INTELLIGIBLESIGNIFICANCE: part, analytic MEANING: whole, synthesis• POST-RENAISSANCE, EARLY MODERN: the emergence of a literate public, highly sophisticated literary genres (that includes philosophy and science)• Two fundamental shifts:

Ancient: BEING Renaissance: KNOWING Modern: INQUIRY

Peirce: all thinking consists of experiments upon a diagram

• Groups:1. Ship: passengers,

Master, mariners2. Prospero, Miranda,

Caliban, Ferdinand, [Ariel]

3. Alonso, Sebastian, Antonio, Gonzalo [Adrian & Francisco]

4. Trinculo, Stephano, Caliban

5. Ferdinand and Miranda

Plotting5 : F & M

Buffoons 4 6 Buffons

Court 3 7 Court

Prospero 2 8 Prospero

Wreck 1 9 Reconcile

relations

Ferdinand

Caliban

Prospero Ariel Sycorax

Miranda

The whole situation

• 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

3 12 12

Sycorax arrives

S dies, Ariel in tree

Prospero arrives

Court partyarrives

Note the spacing by chronological age of the children: structural inference

Resettled in Italy3

LOOK AT THAT MAP

• 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.

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