Ariel and Caliban: America represented through shakespearean metaphors

• Grant number: 10/10825-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2010
• End date: August 31, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of America
• Principal Investigator: Leandro Karnal
• Grantee: Ricardo Amarante Turatti
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The research intends to study some of the ways by which the play The Tempest, by William Shakespeare, was identified with the history and with the political-social situation of America, mainly the interpretations realized by José Enrique Rodó and Roberto Fernández Retamar, and by which way these interpretations served as an example and as a legitimatory or a constitutive discourse, accordingly to each reading, to the elaboration of intelectual projects. Each one of these projects brings as a symbol two of the play characters: Ariel, in Rodós case, and Caliban, in Retamars. So, the characters signify an interpretation of the continents history, but also models which America should follow. These aproaches related to Shakespeares work, these interpretations that utilize one of the characters as symbol and model, converge in one point: the authors that follow each one of them resort to a work produced in an exterior context, the work of a consecrated english dramaturg, to serve as representation, argument and legimatory element of their own ideas, political and intelectual projects to interpretate the continents history, and of their own engagements too, accordingly to the political and cultural situation present in their countries and in their times.