English 4371: Cultural Encounters

Householder, fall 2005

10/27/05: Slavery and Magic in a “Brave New World”

 

 

Writer’s reflection for essay #2:  Reflect for a moment on the progress you’ve made toward successfully starting the research paper.  Identify one thing—either about your topic or about the research process itself—that was important to learn before you began the research paper in earnest.  Why do you consider it to be so important?  Then identify one thing (again either about the topic or the process) that concerns you.  What can you do to address this concern?

 

 

  1. “Old World” discourse meets “New World” discourse: Gonzalo’s golden age plantation. 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Slavery

 

    1. “That’s a brave god, and bears celestial liquor.  I will kneel to him” (2.2.111-183)

 

 

 

    1. “This wooden slavery” (3.1.59-91)

 

 

 

    1. “servant-monster, drink to me.” (3.2.1-142)

 

 

 

 

3.      The resolution: magic in a “brave new world”

 

 

    1. “I perceive these lords / At this encounter do so much admire / That they devour their reason” (5.1.153-155) 

 

 

 

 

    1. “O brave new world / that has such people in’t!” (5.1.183-4); “O rejoice / Beyond a common joy, and set it down / With gold on lasting pillars!” (5.1.206-8) 

 

 

 

 

    1. “Two of these fellows you / Must owe know and own; this thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine.” (5.1.274-6) 

 

 

 

    1. Prospero: “A devil, a born devil, on whose nature / Nurture can never stick; on whom my pains, / Humanely taken, all, all lost, quite lost” (4.1.18-190). 

 

 

 

    1. Purchas (margin comment in Strachey’s “True Reportory” p. 62):  “Can a leopard change his spots?  Can a savage remaining a savage be civil?  Were not we ourselves made and not born civil in our progenitors’ days?  And were not Caesar’s Britains as brutish as Virginians?  The Roman swords were best teachers of civility to this and other countries near us.”

 

 

 

 

Conclusion: 

 

 

 

 

Next time:  Read Smith selections.  For Tuesday, write a 1-2 page (typed, double spaced) response paper in which you nominate a quotation for inclusion on the quotation identification section of the final examination.  Support your nomination by explaining how it illustrates important themes of the text and the course.