160 episodes
Expanding Eyes: A Visionary Education Michael Dolzani
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- Education
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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This podcast is aimed at a non-specialist audience interested in acquiring what Northrop Frye called, in the title of one of his books, an educated imagination. Its materials are drawn from the many courses in literature and mythology that I taught, combined with material from my book The Productions of Time, for which I hope the podcast may provide an accessible introduction, with concrete examples. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
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Episode 160: Goethe’s Faust, Introduction. Goethe’s Life and Work. The Faust Legend and Other Works about Faust. The Lifelong Development of the Text.
The greatest work of German literature by German’s greatest writer, by reputation. Goethe as Renaissance man with accomplishments in many fields. The Romantic style of Faust: the Contraries of visionary idealism and down-to-earth satire. The Faust legend. Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and other works about Faust. The development of Faust over 60 years.
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Episode 159: Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Act 5. The Themes of the Play: Illusion and Reality. The Uses of Art. The Use and Abuse of Political Power. The Colonialist Controversy. Strangeness and Wonder.
Prospero’s melancholy speech about life as a vanishing illusion seems to subvert the paradisal vision of the wedding masque. But the illusions of art provide the model of a greater reality and the power to work towards it by changing people. In three hours, true love has transpired, people have been rehabilitated and changed for the better, and the dead have come back to life. Life is “strange,” life is a “wonder.”
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Episode 158: Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act 4. The Wedding Masque and Its Symbolism. Prospero’s Famous Speech about the Passing of All Things in Time.
Prospero summons up a masque, a spectacle in honor of the newly betrothed Ferdinand and Miranda. Using characters from Classical mythology, it dramatizes the four levels of the Chain of Being, especially the paradisal imagery of the Golden Age. Then, suddenly, Prospero dismisses the vision, and gives his famous speech. All things pass away leaving “not a rack behind.” How to reconcile this with the ideal vision?
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Episode 157: Shakespeare’s Tempest, Act 3. Three Ordeals: Ferdinand’s Labors for Miranda, the Tormenting of Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban; the Illusory Banquet for the Court Party.
In the central act, Prospero puts three sets of characters through ordeals that are at once punitive, when appropriate, and transformative. Ferdinand humbles himself to draw logs to win Miranda—and does. Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban’s attempt at a Jan.6-style insurrection is turned into farce by Ariel. The Court Party is offered an illusory banquet, which vanishes and a harpy accuses all but Gonzalo.
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Episode 156: Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Acts 1 and 2. Gonzalo’s Golden Age Speech. Imagery from the Aeneid. Antonio and Sebastian Plot Murder. Caliban Meets Stephano and Trinculo.
Gonzalo indicates that he does not mean literally his speech about ruling the island to excel the Golden Age. But in what sense, then, does he mean it? While the Court Party sleeps, Antonio and Sebastian plot murder. Caliban meets the two lower-class, satiric characters: Trinculo, the jester, and Stephano, a “drunken butler,” and begins to worship them as gods.
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Episode 155: Shakespeare, The Tempest, Acts 1 and 2. Love at First Sight between Ferdinand and Miranda. Hopeful Vision or Cynical Negation: Gonzalo versus Antonio and Sebastian.
Ferdinand and Miranda see each other and fall in love. Prospero pretends to be the irate senex or possessive father of New Comedy. The Court Party: Alonso is in deep depression; Gonzalo tries to get him to change his negative, hopeless attitude, but is countered by the nihilistic cynicism of Antonio and Sebastian.
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Customer Reviews
Insightful but too much politics
The author clearly knows his stuff about the classics, but can’t resist inserting his uninformed opinions about current events. He loses credibility when he goes into tangents on politics.