I’d like each of you to do two quick things before class tomorrow night.
First, choose a book from among Peter Greenaway’s fantasia of Prospero’s two dozen volumes. Write two or three sentences that show how this particular book unlocks some hidden truth or logic within Shakespeare’s play.
Second, choose any other text from this week’s assignment in “Rewritings and Appropriations.” Write two or three sentences showing how that creative work speaks to your own seminar project.
Please be prepared to share these with the class tomorrow night.
I will have to get back to the books later, as I haven’t finished reading that section, but…
I did read the Brough brother’s *Raising the Wind.* I would love to see it performed. It is sooo funny! I love how bawdy they have made *The Tempest*, with Prospero as the whorehouse overseer (who’s dog breeding business was overrun when he taught his brother how to make dogs do the dirty and the dogs liked his brother better). As someone working on writing an epilogue for *The Tempest* and seeing how creativity can align with lit. theory, I’m really enjoying reading all of these adaptations and seeing that there is no limit to the possibilities when it comes to rereading *The Tempest*.
As to Peter Greenways’s Books, I was most interested in The Book of Utopias and the Book of Games because I see a parallel between them. It seems that creating a Utopia is a sort of game, and indeed, Greenway mentions Heaven and Hell in both of them. I thought that Prospero’s island can be viewed as a sort of Hell. He is cast out of Milan and left to rule, much like Lucifer is cast out of Heaven and given a throne in Hell. At the same time, Prospero treats the development of the island like a game of Magic: The Gathering. He moves his pawns in order to give himself the greatest advantage, and he attempts to create his vision of Utopia (with little regard to other Utopian views). Of course, like any game, there is an unpredictable opponent. For Prospero, that opponent is chance.
I saw Peter Greenway’s *Draughtsman’s Contract.* Though I found it extremely difficult to follow, his artistic vision is incredible. I would love to see what these books look like on film.
Nicole, I saw Prospero’s Books, and it is a fascinating movie indeed. According to Greenaway, Prospero is an author and an actor of his own play. Basically, The Tempest is being written and performed right in front of our eyes. I hope today we will talk more about it, because this is a great postmodern work and a very original interpretation of The Tempest, and I am very interested in digging into its ideas, meanings and effects.
We just downloaded it, and I am hoping to find some time to watch it tonight or tomorrow! It was interesting to have these books in my head after class this week. Yesterday we had a round of callbacks and mostly I had people reading scenes from *Tempest* and *Titus*, and during all the *Tempest* scenes, the descriptions of these books kept floating around my head, especially the Book of Mirrors. At one point, I had an actor reading Prospero three times in a row — same scene, but different Ariel each time. And all the readings were so different. I felt like I was seeing Ariel in the different mirrors of the book.