SHAKSPER 2001: Re: Kermode (Tempest Reference)

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 03/21/01 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 12.0690  Wednesday, 21 March 2001

From:           Clifford Stetner <cstetner@worldnet.att.net>
Date:           Tuesday, 20 Mar 2001 20:13:53 -0500
Subject: 12.0655 Re: Kermode (Tempest Reference)
Comment:        Re: SHK 12.0655 Re: Kermode (Tempest Reference)

> > I agree with Larry Weiss that his use of geographical accuracy to argue
> > against a colonialist discourse in the Tempest, and by extension, all
> > post colonialist readings and all historicist readings of Renaissance
> > lit, is unsupportable.
>
> Did I say that?  Geez!  I shall be more careful in future.

Sorry Larry:

I took this:

>for thematic
>purposes such a prosaic and well-known locale just doesn't fit.
>Prospero's island, with its pre-verbal demi-human native, elemental
>spirits, etc., would not be in an area settled since at least the
>Phoenicians.  We are familiar with WS's cavalier treatment of time when
>different chronologies suit the action (as in Othello); perhaps the
>geographical equivalent can be called "double space."

to refute the point that Kermode heavily relied on, that the
geographical location of the island was not consistent with new world
colonialism.  He seemed to me to be using one "single space" reading to
refute another, and this was supposed to invalidate all post colonialist
readings.  I should not have imputed these implications to you or the
further implication he tried to draw from it that Shakespeare should not
be read politically at all.

I guess my disclaimer wasn't sufficient. Trying to respond to requests
for eyewitness accounts, I wasn't able to read the mass of posts
carefully enough.

Clifford Stetner
CUNY
http://phoenix.liu.edu/~cstetner/cds.html


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