The document provides an agenda for Class 18 of the ELIT 17 class. It includes the following items: a class countdown, a recitation, special guests, a discussion of The Tempest and "Of Cannibals", an introduction to Essay #2, and an introduction to sonnet terms. For the recitation, it discusses a special guest speaker, Catherine Castellanos, who will discuss her experience acting in productions of The Tempest. It also includes discussion questions about The Tempest and an excerpt from the play. For the essay introduction, it provides details about Essay #2 on The Tempest or Othello. Finally, it introduces key terms for analyzing sonnets.

1. ELIT 17 Class 18

2. AGENDA
 Class Countdown
 Recitation 2
 Special Guests
 Discussion: The Tempest
and “Of Cannibals”
 Introduction to Essay #2
 Introduction to the Sonnet
Terms

3. Count Down
Class 18 (today)
 Finish The Tempest
 Introduce Essay #2
Thanksgiving:
 No Meeting
Class 19
 Sonnets
 Discussion: Homework
Grades
Class 20
o Sonnets
o Homework Self-Assessments
due
o Exam 3 Preparation
o Final paper discussion
Final: Tuesday, Dec. 8 1:45-
3:45
o Essay #2 Due Before Class
o Exam #3 Comprehensive

4. Recitation

5. Special Guest: Catherine Castellanos
Works at California Shakespeare
Theatre/Intersection for the Arts, La MaMa
Experimental Theatre Club and American
Conservatory Theater
Lives in San Francisco, California
She has been with Cal Shakes for 14 seasons,
and has acted in many productions, most
recently, playing the part of Prospero in
Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
She will be doing a reading of a new adaptation
of Yerma with ACT around January 22, and
then she is off to Oregon Shakespeare Festival
for 10 months.

8. What do you think?
• What is the overall impact of the
Masque? How is it supposed to affect
the two young lovers? What is its
message about the sanctity of the
marriage bond?

9. Christopher Plummer as
Prospero
Act 5 Scene 1 Lines 1-40
• Why does Prospero decide to show mercy to his enemies?
Why is Ariel the first to speak of mercy? Do you think
Prospero had planned to forgive them from the
beginning?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38N1QcUarTE

10. Do you know?
• Why does Prospero decide to show mercy to his enemies?
Why is Ariel the first to speak of mercy? Do you think
Prospero had planned to forgive them from the
beginning?

11. The Tempest - Prospero's incantation
You elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and
groves,
And you that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose
pastime
Is to make midnight mushrumps, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though you be, I have bedimmed
The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous
winds,
And ’twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove’s stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based
promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked
up
The pine and cedar; graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ’em
forth
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure, and when I have required
Some heavenly music, which even now I do,
Prospero gestures with his staff.
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKrX3MzdFUI (5.1.41-66)

12. (5.1.41-66)
• Why does Prospero decide to give up magic? What does
his choice show about what he thinks happened in the
past? How does he plan to live in the future? What has
Prospero learned? Has he changed in any fundamental
way or had the change already occurred before the
beginning of the action?

14. “Of Cannibals” by Michel
de Montaigne
Montaigne lived in an age of adventure and exploration, and, as a
result, he heard many tales of strange and fascinating people
elsewhere. One such tale originated from the explorer
Villegaignon. During a French expedition to South America in
1557, he encountered a tribe of cannibals in Brazil (then referred
to as “Antarctic France”). The crew returned with some of those
people they had come across, and Montaigne was lucky enough
not only to meet one of these cannibals at Rouen in 1562 but also
to employ a servant who had spent a dozen years living among
them in their native land.

15. Based both on his first hand knowledge and the interviews of his
servant, Montaigne reverses the egocentric European belief in the
superiority of Western culture. “Of Cannibals” asserts that the
cannibals are not simple, ignorant, and barbarous as some claim,
but rather live in harmony with nature, employ useful and
virtuous skills, and enjoy a perfect religious life and
governmental system. Montaigne asserts it is the European who
has bastardized nature and her works, while the “savage” lives in
a state of purity.

16. Clearly, as authors were to do for centuries afterward, Montaigne
romanticizes “the noble savage” in his essay. He idealizes the life
of Brazilian tribal peoples; nonetheless, he sees the dignity,
nobility, intelligence, and harmony of their lives. He is one of the
first great thinkers to question the Eurocentric view of human
behavior, the notion that the standard for human behavior is
white, Christian, and European. Montaigne forces the readers to
confront themselves and their own social behavior; he points out
the distance in character between the cannibals and his audience.
Montaigne tries hard throughout his essay to find fault with the
cannibals’ behavior and way of life but can offer only one,
slightly humorous, observation: They do not wear trousers.

17. Let me
ask you!
1. At the beginning of this essay, which some
see as an early example of cultural
anthropology, what does Montaigne say
about who we think the “barbarians” are?
2. What does he say is the normal “criterion
of truth and reason” for most people?
3. What did the one witty cannibal say when
inviting his captors to eat him?
4. In his description of cannibal society,
Montaigne keeps comparing it to the
European society of his day — what is he
suggesting through this comparison?
5. What are two criticisms of the European
society which the three cannibals make at
the end of the essay?

18. In Groups
 Discuss
your
answers to
the
homework
questions
and your
QHQs.

19. Gonzalo, as Act 5 shows, has never
approved of what was done to Prospero.
In his speech in 2.1 (on the ideal
commonwealth, echoing Montaigne’s
essay “Of Cannibals”), he expresses
distaste for the more cynical and divisive
features of government and society—
exploitation of labor, expropriation of
land and extremes of luxury, poverty,
drunkenness, gluttony. Discuss
Gonzalo’s speech in the context of
Montaigne’s essay.

20. GONZALO: I’ th’ commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things, for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all,
And women too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty—
[…]
GONZALO: All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavor; treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth
Of its own kind all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people.
[…]
GONZALO: I would with such perfection govern, sir,
T’ excel the Golden Age.
2.1.164-184

21. Montaigne states that a group of native people lived in a
utopian-like society:
“… A nation wherein there is no manner of traffic, no knowledge
of letters, no science of numbers, no name of magistrate or
political superiority; no use of service, riches or poverty, no
contracts, no succession, no dividends, no properties, no
employments.”
Gonzalo’s speech in Act two Scene one almost directly parallels
how Montaigne refers to the society the native people have:
“Letters should not be known; riches, poverty/Bourn, bound of
land, tilth. vineyard, none;/No use of metal, corn, or wine, or
oil;/No occupation; all men idle, all” (2.1.162-169). Gonzalo
states that he would love to live in a society that is nearly
identical to the one Montaigne refers to, but Sebastian and
Antonio mock his vision and do not agree with it.

22. Questions
The play can be read as Shakespeare’s commentary on European
exploration of new lands. Prospero lands on an island with a native
inhabitant, Caliban, a being he considers savage and uncivilized. He
teaches this “native” his language and customs, but this nurturing does
not affect the creature’s nature, at least from Prospero’s point of view.
But Prospero does not drive Caliban away, rather he enslaves him,
forcing him to do work he considers beneath himself and his noble
daughter. As modern readers, sensitive to the legacy of colonialism, we
need to ask if Shakespeare sees this as the right order; what are his views
of imperialism and colonialism? What are our twentieth century reactions
to the depiction of the relationship between the master and slave, shown
in this play? How does Montaigne’s essay complicate our view of
colonialism?

23. Questions
The theme of Utopianism is linked to the
explorations of new lands. Europeans were
intrigued with the possibilities presented for
new beginnings in these “new” lands. Was it
possible to create an ideal state when given a
chance to begin anew? Could humans hope to
recreate a “golden age,” in places not yet
subject to the ills of European social order?
Could there be different forms of government?
Consider both Shakespeare’s The Tempest and
Montaigne’s “Of Cannibals” in your response.

24. Essay #2 Othello or The Tempest 100 points
Due: 8 December 2015 before class begins
Prompt Introduction
In a thesis driven essay of three to six pages excluding the Works Cited page,
respond to one of a variety of prompts on Othello or The Tempest. You may also
craft your own prompt if you like. Please see me for approval. You need only
the primary text for this essay, but you may incorporate other primary or
secondary texts or film productions as additional support. Remember, you can
also draw on your own knowledge to discuss, explain, and analyze your topic.
Your essay must be formatted MLA style with appropriate citations. There are
no research requirements for this essay, but you must include a works cited
page that includes any text you use in your essay. The Works Cited page for
this research project will include at least one of Shakespeare’s Plays. If you use
other sources, including other primary or secondary sources from class, please
list those too.

25. Sonnet Terms
For your convenience, I
have listed on the next
several slides the terms
with which you should be
familiar in order to
discuss the sonnets.

26. Sonnet Terms
1. Alliteration: The repetition of identical consonant sounds, most often the
sounds beginning words, in close proximity. Example: pensive poets, nattering
nabobs of negativism.
2. Allusion: Unacknowledged reference and quotations that authors assume their
readers will recognize.
3. Assonance: The repetition of identical vowel sounds in different words in close
proximity. Example: deep green sea.
4. Caesura: A short but definite pause used for effect within a line of poetry.
5. Consonance: is the counterpart of assonance; the partial or total identity of
consonants in words whose main vowels differ. Example: shadow meadow;
pressed, passed; sipped, supped. Owen uses this "impure rhyme" to convey the
anguish of war and death.
6. Elision: the omission of a sound or syllable when speaking (as
in I'm, let's, e ' en ).

27. 7. Enjambment: A line having no end punctuation but running over
to the next line.
8. Explication: A complete and detailed analysis of a work of literature,
often word-by-word and line-by-line.
9. Foot (prosody): A measured combination of heavy and light
stresses: monometer (1 foot) dimeter (2 feet) trimeter (3 feet)
tetrameter (4 feet) pentameter (5 feet) hexameter (6 feet) heptameter
or septenary (7 feet)
10.Heroic couplet: two successive rhyming lines of iambic pentameter;
the second line is usually end-stopped.
11.Iambic pentameter: Iamb (iambic): an unstressed stressed foot; it is
the most natural and common kind of meter in English.
12.Meter: The number of feet within a line of traditional verse.
Example: iambic pentameter.
13.Onomatopoeia. A blending of consonant and vowel sounds
designed to imitate or suggest the activity being described. Example:
buzz, slurp.

28. 14. Scan (scansion): the process of marking beats in a poem to establish
the prevailing metrical pattern.
a. Anapest: unstressed unstressed stressed. Also called "galloping
meter." Example: 'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through
the house/ Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse."
b. Dactyl (dactylic) stressed unstressed unstressed. This pattern is
more common (as dactylic hexameter) in Latin poetry than in
English poetry. Example: Grand go the years in the Crescent above
them/Worlds scoop their arcs/ and firmaments row (Emily
Dickinson)
c. Iambic: Unstressed stressed. Example “I think that I shall never
see”
d. Spondee: stressed stressed. A two-syllable foot with two stressed
accents. The opposite of a pyrrhic foot, this foot is used for effect.
e. Trochee (trochaic): stressed unstressed. Example: "Tyger!
Tyger! Burning bright"

29. 15. Sonnet: A closed form consisting of fourteen lines of rhyming
iambic pentameter.
16. Shakespearean or English sonnet: A fourteen-line poem written
in iambic pentameter, composed of three quatrains and a couplet,
often with three arguments or images in the quatrains being
resolved in the couplet. Rhyme scheme: abab cdcd efef gg
17. Petrarchan or Italian sonnet: 8 lines (the "octave") and 6 lines
(the "sestet") of rhyming iambic pentameter, with a turning or
"volta" at about the 8th line. Rhyme scheme: abba abba cdcdcd (or
cde cde)
18. Quatrain: a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four
lines.
19. Repetition: a literary device that repeats the same words or
phrases a few times to make an idea clearer.
20. Rhythm: a strong, regular, repeated pattern of movement or
sound. "Ruth listened to the rhythm of his breathing”

30. HOMEWORK
• Choose your essay topic:
Othello or The Tempest
• Post #18: Your prompt
and a one paragraph
answer: focus on your
thesis. Work on your
essay!
• Read: Sonnets 14 and 71
• Learn: Terms List 3