Resource Author
SchwartzResource Description
Representing the "brave new world": The Tempest Multimedia Group Project
I quote from Douglas L. Peterson's "The Utopias of The Tempest ":
Utopia is both a fiction and a concept, an imaginary region where an ideal social roder is imaginatively represented. [. . .] The Tempest presents four utopias, two of which are envisioned by characters. The first is Gonzalo's (2.1.148-65). The betrothal entertainment (4.1.60-138), in which Prospero imagines a winterless world of timeless "increase," is another. A third is contained in Caliban's brief, fragmentary descriptions of the beauties of the island to which, years earlier, Caliban had introduced the newcomer Prospero (1.2.332-37; 2.2.167-72; 3.2.135-43). These descriptions contain exotic details that hint of contemporary accounts of voyages to newly discovered islands in remote tropical seas, like the Bermudas and the New World. Such connections with the discovery of new places, and, conceivably, even real utopias, offer intriguing opportunities for teachers and students to investigate the extent to which Shakespeare has fashioned the play out of the discourses of travel, exploration, and colonization (Cartelli; Barker and Hulme). Fourth, the island itself, which is now under Prospero's governance, is both stage ("this bare island" [epilogue 8]) and setting for Shakespeare's own utopian vision, The Tempest itself. 139
Etymologically, "utopia" means "no place." The Tempest Multimedia Group Project assumes that multimedia technology enables users to create a place, or a sense of place, in the digital no-place that is the world wide web. Also a no-place, Prospero's island serves as an "imaginary region where an ideal social order is imaginatively represented" (Peterson 138). The island offers itself as a screen on which the various characters project their images of utopia, as a blank slate on which Prospero seeks to inscribe his version of the island's history (as against Caliban's and Ariel's versions). Our project further assumes that the tension between no-place and place (the paradox inherent in the concept/fiction of utopia), screen and image, blank slate and inscribed history in The Tempest is a productive tension, one that can be used as a point of departure for the exploration of cartographic, historic, dramatic, cinematic, artistic, and critical visions and revisions of The Tempest island. Our goal is to present an argument concerning representations of the island's space and place while demonstrating awareness that our own multimedia web presentation constitutes one more critical and imaginative representation of the island.
The class will be divided into four groups. Each group will create a multimedia website on a particular topic, consisting of text, audio, video, and/or imagery. The text must follow the lines of a traditional essay and include discussion of topic, prior critical work, methodology, goal, and thesis. The essay-text must be well-researched, and in-text documentation must link via anchors to a collective Works Cited page, named workscited.html, which can be found in the public_html subfolder within the Schwartz teacher folder. Instructions for linking via anchors can be found here.
I have created a subfolder for each group inside the public_html folder in the Schwartz teacher volume, which you can access from home here. Save all web pages, imagery, audio, video, and text to your group folder. Use Dreamweaver to create your website. You may download Dreamweaver for free here. You may wish to organize your text and images in Dreamweaver using tables or layers, which you can create by following instructions on this Dreamweaver tutorial . For further help, see the Help menu of the Dreamweaver application. Save all Dreamweaver web pages as a .html extension. In naming your web pages, avoid capital letters and spaces between words; keep the names simple.
All groups will need to find a representative image of their topic, name it, and save it in their appropriate group folder. They will then draw the Space/Place Group's attention to their image so that the group can make a thumbnail copy with which to create a hot spot/rollover image on their web page featuring a map of the island. (For an example of a web page with hot spots/rollover images, go here.) To create a still image from video, go here. Space/Place group should see my mini-tutorial on creating thumbnail images .
The idea of the class project is for all groups' websites to link together in a comprehensive multimedia website on The Tempest , one that aims equally to represent the text (bringing it "alive" in multiple media, remaking it) as to put it in critical perspective.
As this is a computer-assisted classroom, you will be required to learn and use multimedia applications. I have prepared a mini-tutorial on scanning and modifying images and creating thumbnail images and hot spots . The CWRL Multimedia Masterguide offers tutorials on audio and video applications. A Dreamweaver tutorial is available here. Each software application offers its own tutorials under the Help menu. For further help, see me in class or during office hours.
Friday, 4/23, Works Cited is due.
Monday, 4/26, representative image is due.
Friday, 4/30, rough draft of website is due.
Friday, 5/7, complete web site is due.
Space/Place Group (3; computer-savvy recommended)
Your task is to research the island's analogues in Shakespeare's sources and contexts. How is the island described in the play? What places emerge from the discourses on travel, exploration, and colonization out of which Shakespeare fashioned his play? What maps of the New/Old Worlds were available in Shakespeare's time? What maps of the Bermudas or other parts of the New World were then in existence? What maps of an individual New World island floated around? How was the New World represented in art and writing?
You may want to consult the Sources and Contexts and The Postcolonial Challenge sections of your edition of The Tempest as starting points for your research.
For the multimedia component of your argument, scan, modify, place on a web page, and link through "hot spots/rollover images " a series of maps (at least 3) successively closer to a representation of The Tempest island. For instructions on scanning and modifying images, consult the mini-tutorial . Also, collect groups' representative images (they should be available in groups' subfolders on Monday, 5/3), reduce them to thumbnail size, and superimpose them in the form of hot spots/rollover images onto your final, chosen map of the island. (For an example of a web page with hot spots/rollover images, go here.) For instructions on creating thumbnails and hot spots/rollover images, consult the Space/Place Group section of the mini-tutorial . Since your website will be the home of the total project website, remember to name your home page "index.html." Then write at least five pages advancing a critical argument about space and place in the play in relation to contemporary discourse about the New World, focusing on the images (historical, cartographic, artistic) available at the time. In your conclusion make an argument about how your multimedia website enhances critical and scholarly understanding of space and place in The Tempest . Your text should be distributed in paragraphs over the three or more web pages you create featuring maps successively closer to a representation of The Tempest island.
Postcolonial Group (3)
Your task is to research postcolonial representations and re-presentations of the island and its "original" inhabitant, Caliban. How are the island and Caliban described in the play? How have postcolonial writers reimagined the island and Caliban in their rewritings of Shakespeare's play? How have critics and thinkers identified the island and Caliban with various colonized regions and peoples of the world? How have the island and the figure of Caliban been "appropriated" or "indigenized" by writers and critics? What are the postcolonial issues surrounding the island and Caliban? How do revisions of the island and its "original" inhabitant affect our understanding of the island's history and Caliban's place in it? How do the various contested versions of the island's history depend for their credibility on the identity (the space/place) of the island? How do changes in the latter lead to different understandings of the former?
You may want to consult The Postcolonial Challenge section (especially the full text, excerpted there, of Aimé Césaire's A tempest : based on Shakespeare's The tempest : adaptation for a Black theatre ) of your edition of The Tempest as a starting point for your research. The two following sources may also help: Thomas Cartelli, "Prospero in Africa," Shakespeare Reproduced: the Text in History and Ideology , eds. Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O'Connor (new York: Methuen, 1987), 99-115; an article that I will copy for you.
Write at least five pages advancing a critical argument about imaginative and critical re-visionings of this island and Caliban in the play. You will want to incorporate relevant imagery in your website. In your conclusion make an argument about how your multimedia website enhances critical and scholarly understanding of the island and Caliban in The Tempest .
Theater/Film Group (3)
Your task is to research theater and film representations of the space and place in the play. How is the island described in the play? How have directors, past and present, envisioned the island? How have their varying representations shaped the "meaning" and interpretation of the play, especially of the island's history?
Write at least five pages advancing a critical argument about theater and film representations of space and place in the play. You will want to incorporate video clips and imagery from theater and film in your website. Instructions for doing so are available here. I have created an account for you on the multimedia station in Parlin 6. Your login name is film; your password is "bubbles." (Remember to bring all audio/video materials with you to class every day.) In your conclusion make an argument about how your multimedia website enhances critical and scholarly understanding of space and place in The Tempest .
Song/Sound Group (2)
Your task is to research song and sound in The Tempest . Consider Caliban's speech in 3.2.130-38 and the stage directions in 4.1. Find other indications of the same. How have song and sound been represented in theater and film productions of the play? What is the place of song and sound in The Tempest? How do song and sound help to shape the play's representation of the island? What are the (Elizabethan?) sources of these songs and what are the implications of Shakespeare's use of them to depict song and sound in a "brave new world"? What is the significance of Shakespeare's putting these songs in the mouths of Ariel and Caliban?
Write at least three pages advancing a critical argument about song and sound in the play. You will want to incorporate audio clips from theater and film in your website. Instructions for doing so are available here. I have created an account for you on the multimedia station in Parlin 6. Your login name is song; your password is "snapple." (Remember to bring all audio/video materials with you to class every day.) In your conclusion make an argument about how your multimedia website enhances critical and scholarly understanding of song, sound, and their relation to the island in The Tempest .
Begin!
Your first goal now is to sign up for a group, get together with your group members, exchange email and phone numbers, begin assigning tasks, and schedule your first group meeting this week. Remember, your Works Cited is due this Friday. There will be hitches, I will not know all the answers, defects will dog us, but this is a cutting-edge assignment and the benefits of creation and education should more than compensate for the costs of hair-pulling, sleepless nights, etc. So good luck!