* Dear 7th period: Whilst we ride our bus to San Jose, you will be engaged a bit of multiple choice practice (on your desk) and Tempest study. I will discuss any and every question from your guide and play on Monday and Tuesday of next week. One thing I will tell you early is that I will be allowing you to use your AP Note Cards on the essay portion of the final exam, so be sure to make a good card for each of these last two dramas. Please stay on track and use your class time wisely today. I love discussing the play with you and look forward to seeing you on Monday. All you need for today is in this blog post.
- Check your own answers after you finish (you do not need to make corrections; 1991 is only for practice. Answers for 1991. Study answers that were incorrect (but there is no associated written assignment). When you finish, please continue on to The Tempest work below.
- First, read S. T. Coleridge's Notes on The Tempest (pp. 64-71)
- Please read these notes to guide your reading of Coleridge:
- The French school wished drama to be an entirely convincing, realistic delusion. Coleridge is not of this opinion.
- Dr. Samuel Johnson (according to Coleridge) believed that we could not really be deluded, so it was useless to judge a work by its realism.
- Coleridge taught that participants in literary art needed to be bring, what he calls elsewhere, "a willful suspension of disbelief." So Coleridge is for a middle way where both the viewer and the author have a role to play in bringing the art to its fullness. We, the viewer or reader, are willingly deluded, but the author and performers must exhibit enough plausible pretense to keep the reader or viewer engaged. Either participant could make an error serious enough to mar the relationship. Better writers and better viewers will produce better effects together.
- Coleridge teaches that The Tempest is a "purely romantic drama" and so has elements that stretch the imagination (spirit, magician, wedding blessing masque, etc.) (66). However, Coleridge does not see this as a fault or insult to his reason.
- Question for you to respond to in your notes: How then, is The Tempest a good, rich, rewarding, well-written play, if it indeed has many elements that are romantic, imaginative, unhistorical, etc.? There is a key word that Coleridge focuses on as the quality that justifies and balances the work. What is it?
- Now continue on to acts IV--V (finish your journal with 7.4 and 7.5 by Tuesday)
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