Browsing by Author "DJAMA, Katia"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Knowledge as Power in Shakespeare‟s The Tempest (1610) and Francis Bacon‟s The New Atlantis (1626): A Comparative Study.
    (Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou, 2014) DJAMA, Katia
    The present work is a comparative study which explores the issue of knowledge as power in Shakespeare‟s The Tempest (1610), and Francis Bacon‟s The New Atlantis (1626). My attempt through this work has been to find out whether knowledge and language are more dominating through magic, or spirituality, or through science instead. Throughout the present research, I have provided historical and literary overviews of the two writings in order to make them clear and to make a link between the two novels which are written in the same country and the same period of time. The intersection between the two writers reveals the influence of the Renaissance period in Britain which is characterized as the epoch of quest for knowledge and getting power through centering the attention on arts and making different explorations and experiments as well as scientific discoveries and inventions. To explore my theme and to approach the texts, I have used Norman Fairclough‟s book Language and Power (1989) in which the relationship between language and power is shown and the importance of knowledge power is clarified. My discussion shows how the characters of Shakespeare‟s The Tempest and Francis Bacon‟s The New Atlantis use magic arts and scientific explorations and experiments in order to get knowledge so that they may control the elements of nature as well as human beings. Then, the two writers analyze how knowledge can be a major source of power through the acquired language by reading books. In the end, I have deduced that knowledge is more dominating through science rather than through magic because of the different scientific improvements of mankind since the Enlightenment.