A Comparison Of Writing Techniques In The Tempest And The Odyssey

The Tempest: Use of Prose and Verse

Discuss About The Science Secularization English Drama Moon.

This paper will present a compare and contrast based on the similarities and the differences in between two of the chosen texts that are been studies throughout the course. To elaborate this essay, the chosen novels are- The tempest by William Shakespeare and the Odyssey by Homer. The paper shall focus on comparing and contrasting the writing techniques in between these two novels.

The Tempest- Reading any of the Shakespearean plays could feel like reading a long poem and that is because of the fact that they are usually written in a combination of prose and verse. However, in The Tempest, William Shakespeare has done something different. Although Prosperos’s slave, Caliban depicts of prose, still he also depicts a lot of verse too that makes the sense right since Prospero taught him to speak or to talk. The readers of the Shakespearean play really appreciates the literary devices that the playwright employs in constructing his plays. In most of the plays of William Shakespeare, they contain soliloquies that offer a wide path for the dramatist or the writer to reveal the inner thoughts of the characters (Wilson, 2015). Those soliloquies requires the character to think that he is left alone on the stage because he divulge to the audiences what he is really thinking. Shakespeare has not used much soliloquies in The Tempest as because the dramatic moments in the play are not that intense. Notwithstanding the fact, Prospero still has make use of this device significantly in Act V when he said the audience the thing that he has mastered with the aid of magic.

William Shakespeare wrote most of this play in verse by making use of iambic pentameter. It is to note that Iambic Pentameter refers to the literary term which defines the meter of the play and the stresses are place of each of the pairs of syllables that contain both an unaccented and accented syllable. “Beseech you, sir, be merry. You have cause, / so have we all, of joy, for our escape”- This quote from Act 2, scene 1 is the best example of classic iambic parameter than Shakespeare has made use of in the play. Many of the poets of Renaissance period has used this literary term as because of the fact that the alternating stresses creates a rhythm which contributes to the beauty of the language of the play. Shakespeare has also added prose passages in many of his plays along with prose lines that are been spoken by the characters belonging from the lower social rank. He has used this device in order to reveal the complexities of the Caliban. In the play, The Tempest, Caliban talks of the prose when he conspires with Trinculo and Stefano but at the time when Caliban talks of beauty of the island, he talks in the verse. The Elizabethan language of Shakespeare could be difficult to understand at first. The use of the Oxford English Dictionary and Shakespearean glossary are the two different sources which could help in understanding the language but it is also to mention that the biggest assist comes along with practise. Shakespeare has also used different rhetorical devices and unfamiliar languages which Shakespeare has employed in the writing of his texts which might cease to be strange to the readers and the written language assumes the beauty which is hidden within it.

The Tempest: Soliloquies and Literary Devices

It is to note that it is relatively easy to date the composition of The Tempest, as Shakespeare has made use of materials which was not available until the late 1610, for example the letters from New Virginia colony in Jamestown as well as an account of the 1609 shipwreck off Bermuda (Vaughan & Reedy, 2017). The tempest, unlike any of the other plays of Shakespeare, is not drawn from any of the earlier literary works. In fact, there is absence of any kind of formal source, expect the ideas that Shakespeare might have found in reading the accounts of the stories that are appearing from new colonies and the Bermuda shipwreck, which had recently took place in New World.

It is one of the difficult plays to categorize. Though the play ends in a wedding and hence it might be easy for most of the readers to define it as a comedy but it is also to note that there are several serious hints which diminish this comedic tone of the play. Instead, most of the modern anthologies of Shakespeare categorise this play as romance. Romances are referred to the plays that are with the potential for the tragedy but in those plays the tragic elements are been resolved. With the play, The Tempest, the author turns to magic and fantasy as a way for exploring the romantic love, love of a father and the sibling hatred (Tosi, 2014). With the same, this plays also examines many other topics which Shakespeare had focused on in his former plays, like the topics such as nature versus nurture (King Lear), the attempt of overthrowing a king (Julius Caesar, Macbeth etc.) and of innocence (Twelfth Night). Although, this play provide the very first masque within itself, the idea of a play within a play had occurred in the earlier works as well. Some of the examples of such idea include Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet (Mateo, 2015). The Tempest, in many ways serves as the climax of the earlier works of Shakespeare as because of the fact that in this play, he has collaborated many of his earlier ideas in one. This play is although one of the shortest plays of Shakespeare but it still maintains the integrity of five act structure. Most of the Elizabethan theatres adhere to the five act structure that corresponds to the division in action. It is also to mention that there is very little plot in The Tempest. There is a love story in the play and then there is again a story of two younger brothers who have covet the possessions and titles of their old brothers. Finally, there is again the story of the plot of the Caliban to kill Prospero. However, none of these plots are given that much of attention, instead this play is all about the complexities of the human nature and is about the reminding of the audience that the division in between tragedy and happiness is always fragile and that they must be very carefully maintained. With the same, it is also to note that in the play there is a betrayal that need to resolve and two murder plots. The careful manipulation of all the characters in The Tempest along with their plans also have controlled the direction of the action. The avoidance of Prospero of tragedy on the play has revealed decency in his character as well as contradicts some of the arguments of critics that he is an amoral demigod who is exploiting the natural inhabitants of this island.

The Odyssey: Use of Epic Similes and Epithets

The Odyssey- It is to note that unlike, The Tempest, The Odyssey does not have any kind of obvious point of view (Derrida, 2017). It is little complex and in the very beginning it was appearing to be told in third person, in the voice of god style. However, the storyteller himself does sometimes speak to the characters which was revealing his own personality. The storyteller asks the muses for assisting and helping him to tell the story well and later he addresses the Eumaeus as ‘you’ as because of the fact that he admires and likes the character very much. It begs the question- who is the actual narrator of The Odyssey?

The Odyssey is one of the very significant epic poems from the ancient Greece that was passed down vocally from one generation to generation. It is one among the earliest epics that are still in existence and has set a pattern for the genre and is one of the best known examples of primary epic. It means that it does not have any one particular and obvious author. With the same, it also suggests that the story of the book would itself change with each and every retelling as because each of the bards who told it changed many scenes a little, took away the parts, added some more parts or have emphasized some different ideas. In this poem, Homer employs most of the poetic and literary devices that are associated with the epics such as digressions, catalogues, quests or journeys, long speeches, divine intervention, metaphors, similes and various trials. The poetry is composed in Ancient Greek language. One of the devices that are mostly used in the poem is the epic simile. Simile is basically a figure of speech in which two different things are depicted as similar and in poetic purposes, this is often done by the use of the words “as” or “like”. Epic simile often extends the comparison to the expansive proportions. Homer has used epic simile in different manner in this poem. Firstly, the later poem has very lesser similes and in most of the part they do not expand the already big world of the story. The similes in the poem in fact intensifies the experiences for the readers. He has also used epithets extensively in The Odyssey. Epithet is the term that is used for characterising the nature of any object, event or a character. One of the most significant epithet in The Odyssey is the “rosy-fingered Dawn”. The first light of the morning is in the poem, compared to the rosy fingers that is getting spread across the land. Also, sometimes Athena is also called as Pallas or Pallas Athena that too carries the epithet “sparkling eyed”. Furthermore, some of the other literary devices in The Odyssey are the use of digressions and catalogues that might seem as tedious to the readers of the modern time. To all his readers in the ancient Greece, the various list of villains or heroes of Homer were familiar. However, for the modern readers, the epic also has a very unusual number of repetition. Notwithstanding the fact that this repetition is one of the very significant features of the oral tradition which helps to identify the poem The Odyssey as primary epic.

Hence, from the above it can be concluded that the writers of The Tempest and The Odyssey have dramatically presented a linkage in between the language and power in their own way by means of verse and prose by various different characters through colonisation and education, through using the names and the concept or renaming, through the rhetoric and speeches, through love scenes and persuasive language, through means of translation as well as through the use of six different forms of language. All these have begun to show the skilled and varied ways in which Homer and William Shakespeare, at their own ages and in their several different plays and poetry, share common themes and elements that make their works comparable in thematic way.

References:

Derrida, J. (2017). “This strange institution called literature”: an interview with Jacques Derrida. In Acts of literature (pp. 33-75).

Kaufman, S. (2016). Science and Secularization: English Drama, the Moon, and Theological Cosmologies, 1592-1614(Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto (Canada)).

Mateo, M. (2015). Variations on Much Ado About Nothing: Beatrice and Benedick in Target-Language Adaptations. Linguaculture, 2015(1), 24-44.

Tosi, L. (2014). ” But It’s the Story We Like”—King Lear for Children: From Drama to Narrative. Children’s Literature, 42(1), 246-274.

Vaughan, A. T., & Reedy, T. (2017). Roger A. Stritmatter & Lynne Kositsky, On the Date, Sources and Design of Shakespeare’s’ The Tempest'(Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 2013). Early Modern Literary Studies, 19(2).

Wilson, R. (2015). Moonlight Sonata: Larkin and the Shakespeare Prize. The Cambridge Quarterly, 44(1), 1-24.