Steve Mentz

THE BOOKFISH

THALASSOLOGY, SHAKESPEARE, AND SWIMMING

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New York Times on “Lost at Sea”

August 19, 2010 by Steve Mentz Leave a Comment

New York Times, Th Aug 19, 2010, C1, C5

Filed Under: Blue Humanities, Lost at Sea, Uncategorized

Indigo: a tale of two Mirandas

August 18, 2010 by Steve Mentz Leave a Comment

Indigo, or Mapping the Waters

A compelling & poetic re-take on The Tempest in a Caribbean setting by Marina Warner.  A first-contact narrative portraying the origins of the Sycorax-Caliban-Ariel family broken by the arrival of Kit Everard from England in 1609, framed by two different sections about the modern Everards: Ant, the patriarch & master of the Game at Flinders; Kit, his uncertain son; Miranda, Ant’s grand-daughter; and Xanthe, the patriarch’s late-arriving daughter, who displaces both Kit & Miranda from the family succession.  The two girls, Miranda & Xanthe, compete for the role of chosen daughter just as the two cousins in Sacred Hunger struggle to be Ferdinand.

Some nice writing about the sea and Shakespeare: “But for Xanthe Everard this was the final transformation: a pearl of rare size and beauty, she had become incapable of further motion in mind or body; she had given her first and last cry for the love that most people crave all their lifelong days” (376).  Sounds a bit like Garcia-Marquez, I guess.

Filed Under: Blue Humanities, The Tempest, Uncategorized

Sacred Hunger: Who gets to play Ferdinand?

August 18, 2010 by Steve Mentz Leave a Comment

Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger

A very good novel about slavery by way of *The Tempest*.  The main plot concerns the legacy of the merchant William Kemp, who invests in a slave ship in an attempt to save his sagging fortunes.  (His son, who chooses sugar, gets better results.)

But the key tension operates between the son, Erasmus Kemp, and the nephew Matthew Paris.  Kemp wants the good mercantile life; Paris, fleeing from the death of his wife and child while he was imprisoned for publishing heretical (proto-Darwinian) tracts, wants something more radical.

From a Shakespearean point of view, they both want to be Ferdinand: the heir & chosen suitor.  Kemp even plays Ferdinand in a failed production of *The Enchanted Island* opposite a wealthy merchant’s daughter early in the novel.  But it’s Paris’s multi-racial world, on the slave ship, in Africa, and in Florida, that redefine Prospero’s magic isle.

Filed Under: Blue Humanities, The Tempest, Uncategorized

Down to the sea in discontent

August 5, 2010 by Steve Mentz Leave a Comment

An engaging, slightly rambling, response to Lost at Sea, piracy, and Shakespeare’s Ocean in (of all places) the Washington Times —

Down to the Sea in discontent

Filed Under: Blue Humanities, Lost at Sea

Throne of Blood at BAM in November

July 30, 2010 by Steve Mentz Leave a Comment

I’ve found my fall term play, finally: a stage version of Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood” (a Japanese film of Macbeth) at BAM Nov. 10-13.

http://www.bam.org/view.aspx?pid=2235

Filed Under: New York Theater

TARA’s Bollywood Miranda

July 28, 2010 by Steve Mentz Leave a Comment

TARA is a London-based theater group that does multicultural productions; I saw a good mostly-Arabic Tempest a few summer ago.  Their current production is a Bollywood-inflected new play called “Miranda” that transposes The Tempest to Goa.

http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/event/195713/miranda

Filed Under: The Tempest

Podcast of my July 13, 2010, Folger lecture

July 26, 2010 by Steve Mentz Leave a Comment

The podcast of my “Stories from the Sea” lecture at the Folger’s Elizabethan Theater is here 

Filed Under: Blue Humanities, The Tempest

Lost at Sea

June 8, 2010 by Steve Mentz 1 Comment

The show is up: www.folger.edu/lostatsea

Filed Under: Blue Humanities, Lost at Sea, The Tempest

Class cancelled Th 2/11

February 11, 2010 by Steve Mentz Leave a Comment

No class tonight, everyone.  Please post about your research topic on the SJC message board, by email, or in a comment to this blog.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

snow is water too

February 10, 2010 by Steve Mentz Leave a Comment

Have fun on today’s snow day.  Just a reminder that you need to have a one-page paper proposal (less formal than a real precis or abstract) to give me tomorrow night in class.  You should be prepared to talk about it briefly.  Some more details are in my previous post.

Btw, I give the Tfana *Measure* a hearty thumbs up, if you’re looking for a little Shakespeare in the coming weeks.  I think they do an “under 25” special price.  www.tfana.org

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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About Steve

Steve Mentz
Professor of English
St. John’s University
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Pages

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Recent Posts

  • Othello on Broadway
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  • Branagh’s King Lear at the Shed
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