world literature questions
Ibrahim
Class Preparation Assignment
June 8th
Summer 2017
Readings:
The Tempest “Introduction” and Act 1
“My Papa’s Waltz”: T. Roethke
Questions over longer reading:
Prospero’s brother, Antonio, usurped him, but who originally “cast” onto Antonio control of the government of Milan?
Originally, the king of Naples cast” onto Antonio control of the government of Milan.
Whom did Ariel serve before Prospero? What is strange about how Prospero describes her?
Sycorax the witch who trapped him in a cloven pine. The strange thing about how Prospero describes her is that he is somewhat insulting his servant Caliban, who was the child of Sycorax.
Poems
My Papa’s Waltz
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
— Theodore Roethke
Enjambment
Enjambment occurs in every stanza.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Ambiguity
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Blank verse / meter
Dizzy and easy in the first stanza and knuckle and buckle in the third stanza reproduce the father's halting and drunken rhythm.
Rhyme (or lack thereof)
1 and 3, 2 and 4, 5 and 7, 6 and 8, 9 and 11, 10 and 12, 13 and 15, 14 and 16
Repetition – Waltzing
If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch,
But that the sea, mounting to th’ welkin’s cheek,
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer! A brave vessel,
Who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her,
Dashed all to pieces (1.2.1-8).
I have done nothing but in care of thee,
Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who
Art ignorant of what thou art, naught knowing
Of whence I am, nor that I am more better
Than Prospero, master of a full poor cell,
And thy no greater father (1.2.16-21).
Enjambment
If by your art, my dearest father, you have
Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
Ambiguity
Dashes the fire out. O, I have suffered
Blank verse / meter
I have done nothing but in care of thee,
This is a pentameter with 10 syllables.
Rhyme
There is no rhyme
Repetition
I am
