Module A: Textual Conversations
The Tempest & Hag-Seed
Acknowledgement of Country
Overview
What does this Module require you to do?
Module Descriptor
Context, Content, Analysis
The Tempest
Context, Content, Analysis
Hag-Seed
How to prepare for the exam
The HSC Examination
Module A
Descriptor Paragraph 1
Resonances
Dissonances
Mirror
Align
Collide
Common
Disparate
Issues
Values
Assumptions
Perspectives
Key Words
The most integrated
comparative study you will
have ever engaged with –
one text is reliant on the
other to make its meaning.
How can study of the first
text enhance your study of
the second?
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Module A
Descriptor Paragraph 2
Identify
Interpret
Analyse
Evaluate
Context:
Key Words
The steps to using textual evidence from
the texts
The stronger your contextual
understanding, the more flexible you will
become in interpreting where the
composers are coming from
Module A
Descriptor Paragraph 3
Textual Features
Concepts
Values
Personal Perspective
Key Words
Metalanguage pertaining to
literary/rhetorical/linguistic/figurative devices, the ideas within the text,
and the beliefs articulated by the
author
You will be dropped into a pit
and you won’t know what kind of creature you are fighting. Be
prepared to adapt!
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Questions to answer for revision
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Context Prism
William
Shakespeare
His Audience
The Tempest
17th Century
Jacobean England
Page 3 of Handout
Margaret
Atwood
Her Audience
Hag-Seed
21st Century Canadian/Western World
(also includes knowledge of the past
The Tempest - Context
Things to consider:
- Shakespeare is a compulsory text for HSC Advanced English. Why?
- Why are Shakespeare’s plays still in production every year?
- Filmmakers continue to film and re-imagine Shakespeare. What for?
- How are Shakespeare’s plays still relevant to modern audiences?
The Tempest Context
Key concepts
b. 1564,
d. 1616
William Shakespeare
Written 1611.
The Tempest
Retrospectively decided – Shakespeare’s drama genres as Tragedy, Comedy, or History. ‘Problem play’.
Genre
Differences between the two key periods of Shakespeare’s context
Elizabethan vs. Jacobean
Rebirth of European culture after the ‘dark ages’ of medieval times
The Renaissance
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The Renaissance
Catholic Europe
Protestantism
King James Bible
The Jacobean Era
King James I of England: Some Key Points
How he became King
Line of succession from Elizabeth not straight-forward.
He had odd interests
And Shakespeare appealed to these interests to stay funded.
He maintained a new age of peace
Worked to reduce debt after Elizabeth’s many wars and to encourage tolerance between Catholics and Protestants in England
He colonized the New World
The colony of Virginia created in the Americas in 1610.
Imprisonment
Literal: Prospero, Caliban, Ariel.
Figurative: Revenge, Shakespeare
The Motif of Performance
Prospero performing to manipulate others
Ferdinand performing for Prospero’s approval
Stephano playing at being King
Caliban performing for Stephano and Trinculo
Antonio pretending to be loyal to Alonso
Power and Responsibility
Was Prospero really that great a leader?
The right to rule vs. the ability to rule
Who controls the island? Who should control the island?
The Tempest: Content
Transformation
Ariel’s ability to transform form and function
Prospero’s transformation from vengeful to forgiving
Caliban’s past transformation from animal to half-man
Representation of the Other
Caliban and Ariel representative of the marginalized, the voiceless.
Caliban in particular as a reflection of Jacobean view of the ‘savages’ of newly discovered lands
The Tempest: Content
Analysis
Some key language elements of The Tempest
Allusion
Congery
Diacope
Personification
Metaphor
Repetition
Imagery
Pathetic Fallacy
Irony
Paronomasia (puns)
Also:
Blank Verse (iambic pentameter) indicates an educated character, or something speaking formally to another. Prose can indicate madness, casual exchanges, and low class.
1. Blank Verse vs. Prose
Shakespeare highlights his ideas through contrast on just about every level – within sentences, within scenes, within the entire play, and across characters.
3. Antithesis
At six separate mentions of dreams – a motif that alludes to the internal alternative lives within the mind, and of our innermost desires (such as freedom).
2. Dream Motif
‘You’ vs. ‘Thee/Thy/Thou’ – complicated social rules of Shakespeare’s time. The choice of pronoun reflected the status of a person in relation to oneself. ‘You’ indicates the other person is of a higher or equal rank.
4. Pronoun Choice
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Shakespeare’s values
Females as commodities for trade, manipulation, economic relationships
– Claribel, Miranda
Relationship between Prospero and Caliban indicative of European exploitation of non-Europeans
Would the half-illiterate Jacobeans have looked upon Prospero’s educated nature as a worthwhile value in comparison to Antonio, a leader who pays attention to his state?
Hag-Seed
Context
The Tempest, Atwood style
Hag-Seed Context
Key Concepts
Part of a series where highly respected authors adapt Shakespeare
Hogarth Shakespeare
Left wing, environmental and feminist fiction
Margaret Atwood
Postmodern commentary on the nature of fiction – a theatrical fiction within a narrative one
Metatextual
Rap, Disney, Metallica, Leonard Cohen, special effects
Pop Culture Influence
A ‘remake’ of The Tempest
The Tempest
Prison system, arts & education institutions
Institutionalisation
Hag-Seed Context
Relationship with The Tempest
The Tempest
Hag-SeedHere
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Hag-Seed: Content
Examine. Compare. Contrast.
Felix’s grief as metaphorical prison.
Literal prison for the ‘Calibans’ – under Felix’s tutelage
Tony, Sal, Lonnie ‘shipwrecked’ in Fletcher Correctional
Imprisonment
Literal performance of The Tempest
Felix playing at being ‘Mr. Duke’
Tony’s false loyalty
The Motif of Performance
Felix’s power comes from the ‘magic’ of the theatre / his knowledge
Was Felix a good director? Is his use of Fletcher Correctional responsible?
Power and Responsibility
Resonant?
Align?
Mirror?
Hag-Seed: Content
Examine. Compare. Contrast.
Does Felix truly transform and redeem himself?
Prisoners transformed through education
Transformation rooted in healing from grief rather than forgiveness
Transformation
Are women still ‘the Other’?
Prisoners as ‘the other’ in modern society
Red Coyote representative of Indigenous voice
Representation of the Other
Dissonance?
Collide?
Analysis
Some key language elements of Hag-Seed
Allusion
Appropriation
Metaphor
Bathos
Profanity
Reported Speech
Stream-of-consciousness
Also:
The quote or phrase included at the beginning of a text is an intertextual device suggestive of a theme or concept (sometimes ironically).
1. Epigraph
The successive use of multiple words meaning the same thing. Felix often uses this device, “How he has fallen. How deflated. How reduced,” demonstrating his theatrical and articulate nature.
3. Congery
Felix frequently refers to his ‘art’ with words such as ‘magic’, rendering his command of stagecraft as metaphorically similar to Prospero’s command of ‘the dark arts’.
2. Magic Motif
Felix talks through his thinking process in how he intends to stage The Tempest, inviting the reader to consider authorial intent more explicitly. The events of Felix’s version of The Tempest also play out alongside Hag-Seed’s modern version of the narrative, highlighting commonalities and differences.
4. Metatextuality
Prospero / Felix
Think of these characters as ‘engines of exploration’ – they are used by their authors to explore thematic concerns and are (both consciously and unconsciously) reflections of the values and contextual influences of their times.
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HSC Examination
Sample Questions
Your understanding
Hag-Seed
The Tempest
Example C
Explain the centrality of the motif of performance in the textual conversation between Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed
Example B
“Never again will a single story be told as though it is the only one”
To what extent is this statement true in light of your exploration of Textual Conversations?
Example A
You have studied a pair of prescribed texts in Textual Conversations.
How has the context of each text influenced your understanding of the intentional connections between them?
HSC Questions
2019, 2020, 2021, 2022
2019
A general question
about the purpose
of dismantling,
reconstructing,
recycling texts.
Strong responses:
Jacobean and
postmodern feminist
contexts
‘Hag-Seed’ as a title
power, imprisonment,
revenge, colonialism
2020
A general question
Challenging the
reader to evaluate whether the newer text is an inferior
shadow of the
earlier
Strong responses:
context of texts
language and
determining significance of the textual
conversation
2021
Specific question that
uses an extract from
each text to prompt
discussion of ‘broader
textual conversation’.
Strong responses:
political and ethical
questions related to
themes raised in
extracts
power and captivity,
postcolonialism
2022
Specific question that
uses an extract from
Hag-Seed to prompt
discussion of collision of perspectives
Strong responses:
extract
the arts for redemption, political and individual power, postcolonialism
Practising Flexibility
Exercises to strengthen your ability to respond
WRITE
Take questions or themes and write as much as possible in just 7 minutes. Count the amount of words written and keep track of progress.
7 Minute Paragraphs
DISCUSS
Debate ideas with your peers – use examples to support your position
Discuss
SYNTHESISE
Use pre-written quotes + themes + analysis and rewrite into essay form to practise the reconstitution of information
Essay Writing
INVENT
Use Module C to explore the ideas in The Tempest / Hag-Seed for your own discursive, persuasive, and imaginative pieces
Craft of Writing
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Thanks!
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