
	Trending ▼ ICSE CBSE 10th ISC CBSE 12th CTET GATE UGC NET Vestibulares ResFinder

Select 2020 : Select

10 pages, 11 questions, 0 questions with responses, 0 total responses,

Debjyoti Chakraborty
The Heritage School, Kolkata

+Fave Message

Profile Timeline Uploads

Home > debjyoti123456789 >

Formatting page ...

The Portrayal of Treason in The Tempest... The Portrayal of Treason in The Tempest: The Fourfold Role of a Machiavellian Duke Miguel ngel GONZ LEZ CAMPOS Universidad de M laga ABSTRACT In Elizabethan drama treason was a dramatic device of paramount importance. Most of Shakespeare s works, for example, could hardly be conceived without the notion of treason as a central and dominant leitmotif. Tragedies such as Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and also comedies such as Much Ado About Nothing mainly depend on, at least, one act of treason. But in spite of its significant presence in those plays, it is probably in The Tempest where the representation of treason reaches one of the highest points of complexity and sophistication in Renaissance drama. In this play, traditionally regarded as Shakespeare s farewell to his Art, a myriad of treasons appears to us at different levels (political, moral, socio-economic level, etc.). Unlike other plays by Shakespeare, The Tempest is entirely dominated by just one character, Prospero, who controls all the events of the play by means of his extraordinary powers and who articulates the dominant discourse by erasing any dissenting voice. For this purpose, Prospero carefully carries out an extremely interesting task of self-fashioning. The aim of this paper is to analyse the way the multi-layered myriad of treasons is presented in The Tempest, paying special attention to the strategies used by the Duke of Milan to validate his own view of things, strategies which have effectively worked until recently on generations of literary critics who had considered Prospero as the one betrayed, such as he depicts himself, rather than the traitor. According to Curt Breight the discourse of treason was central to a thirtyyear period of English Culture beginning in the early 1580 s (1990:4). The continuous threats against the established authority due to the political, social and religious issues of the moment undoubtedly made the concepts of treason and usurpation of power very much present in society. Thus, it is not by chance that in Elizabethan drama treason becomes a very common dramatic device of paramount importance. In fact, most of Shakespeare s works, for SEDERI 14 207 (2004): 207-216

Formatting page ...

debjyoti123456789 chat

Horizontal lines at:
Guest Horizontal lines at:
AutoRM Data:
Box geometries: