5. Your Turn – Understand the Rubric

Questions related to textual conversations

1. How do the composers use textual conversations to convey their thoughts and perspectives of the world
2. How does the textual conversation challenge or affirm the audience’s views of society?
3. How does your understanding of social or personal values influenced by textual conversation between your pair of prescribed texts?
4. Evaluate how conversations between texts can simultaneously horrify and motivate audiences
5. Discuss the role of perspective in shaping messages in texts and discuss how this is enhanced in a study of textual conversations
6. How has your study of the two texts enhanced your understanding of their key values?
7. When we compare two texts in a textual conversation we come to a deeper understanding of the meaning of each text.
8. How does a close study of the motifs within ‘Hag-Seed’ reveal a dynamic conversation between Atwood’s novel and Shakespeare’s play, ‘The Tempest’?
9. By creating a comparative study between The Tempest and Hag-Seed, one’s understanding of the thematic resonances and dissonances between texts is enhanced.
10. Atwood’s appropriation of The Tempest, Hag-Seed continues the conversation about how life is a performance. Both Prospero and Felix direct the action and orchestrate the main events to achieve their purposes.
11. The last three words Prospero says are “Set me free.” But free from what? In what has he been imprisoned? I started counting up the prisons and imprisonments in the book. There are a lot of them. In fact, every one of the characters is constrained at some point in the play. This was suggestive. […] So I decided to set my novel in a prison. (Atwood, 2016). The Tempest and Hag-Seed dialogically focus the reader on imprisonment. This is evident literally in the setting and the predicament of the characters but it is also a construct of the characters and their mindsets.
    To what extent do you agree with this statement? In your response, refer to your two prescribed texts The Tempest and Hag-Seed.

Questions on Form

1. Evaluate the form and media in shaping the composer’s message with a close comparison of your pair of prescribed texts
2. Evaluate the

   use of metaphors

   used in your prescribed texts to convey their message in this textual conversation.
3. Evaluate how mode, media, and form are used to convey their meaning of the self and explore the influence of context on their perspectives.
4. How does innovative language concepts, form, and style shape new meaning.
5. Changes in form inevitably lead to different perspectives on the same issue. How has the genre conventions influenced the adapted text?
6. Understanding of the connections between a pair of texts is enhanced through a consideration of form and content.

Questions related to Context/ Reframing

1. Textual conversations allow one composer to build on the observation of another reimagining them in new and varied ways. Refer to contexts, values, and language.
2. Appropriation is not about borrowing, but about recontextualising. Discuss this statement by referring to your texts.
3. How has the context of each text influenced your understanding of the intentional connections between them.
4. In what ways does Atwood’s reimagining of The Tempest better suit contemporary audiences whilst still mirroring details portrayed in the original?
5. How does undertaking a comparative study of The Tempest and Hag-Seed enhance your understanding of how texts are influenced by other texts?
6. How has the structure and form of the original text, The Tempest, been appropriated by Atwood to create something more important than just the themes and messages Shakespeare originally intended?
7. How has Atwood’s innovating with form and style brought new meaning to the concepts of ambition and betrayal in The Tempest?
8. Despite appropriating The Tempest for Hogarth Shakespeare, Hag-Seed is very much a product of Atwood’s perspectives, values and context.
9. Atwood’s appropriation of The Tempest, Hag-Seed continues the conversation about how life is a performance. Both Prospero and Felix direct the action and orchestrate the main events to achieve their purposes.
10. Not only does Atwood reveal a thought-provoking analysis of the way she views The Tempest, she also creates a world in which she makes the characters her own.
11. Atwood’s Hag-Seed reminds us that Shakespeare’s plays have transcended time. How has Atwood ensured that The Tempest transcends time and is relevant to a 21st century audience?
12. In your study of The Tempest and Hag-Seed, how has the context and values of each text influenced your understanding of the intentional connections between them?

Specific to your text