Synopses & Reviews
Designed for "teaching the conflicts," this critical edition of Shakespeares
The Tempest reprints the authoritative Bevington text of the play along with 21 selections representing major critical and cultural controversies surrounding the work. The distinctive editorial material helps readers grapple not only with the plays critical issues but also with cultural debates about literature itself.
The second edition includes four new readings, revised headnotes that more helpfully contextualize the critical essays, a portfolio of visual representations of Caliban, and an appendix on writing about critical controversies and The Tempest.
Synopsis
This joyous play, the last comedy of Shakespeare's career, sums up his stagecraft with a display of seemingly effortless skill. Prospero, exiled Duke of Milan, living on an enchanted island, has the opportunity to punish and forgive his enemies when he raises a tempest that drives them ashore--as well as to forestall a rebellion, to arrange the meeting of his daughter, Miranda, with an eminently suitable young prince, and, more important, to relinquish his magic powers in recognition of his advancing age. Richly filled with music and magic, romance and comedy, the play's theme of love and reconciliation offers a splendid feast for the senses and the heart.
From the Paperback edition.
Synopsis
This critical edition of Shakespeare's The Tempest contains the play and 21 additional selections representing major critical and cultural controversies surrounding the work providing you with more insight into the play's critical issues and cultural debates about literature itself.
Table of Contents
Preface
PART ONE: SHAKESPEARE AND THE TEMPEST
The Life and Work of William Shakespeare
The Text of The Tempest
PART TWO: A CASE STUDY IN CRITICAL CONTROVERSY
Why Study Critical Controversies about The Tempest?
Literary Study, Politics, and Shakespeare: A Debate
George Will, "Literary Politics"
Stephen Greenblatt, "The Best Way to Kill Our Literary Inheritance Is to Turn It into a Decorous Celebration of the New World Order"
Sources and Contexts
Michel De Montaigne, from "Of the Cannibals"
William Strachey, from "True Repertory of the Wrack"
Sylvester Jourdain, from "A Discovery of the Barmudas"
Richard Hakluyt," Reasons for Colonization"
Bartolomé De Las Casas, from "Letter to Phillip, Great Prince of Spain"
New Daniel Wilson, "The Monster Caliban"
New A Portfolio of Images of Caliban
New E. M.W. Tilyard, From The Great Chain of Being
Ronald Takaki, The "Tempest" in the Wilderness
Shakespeare and the Power of Order
Frank Kermode, from Shakespeare: The Final Plays
Reuben A. Brower," The Mirror of Analogy: The Tempest"
New Leah Marcus, "The Blue-Eyed Witch"
The Postcolonial Challenge
Paul Brown, " ‘This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine: The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism"
Francis Barker and Peter Hulme, "Nymphs and Reapers Heavily Vanish: The Discursive Contexts of The Tempest"
New Aimé Césaire, Scenes from A Tempest
Responding to the Challenge
Deborah Willis, "Shakespeares Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism"
David Scott Kastian, " ‘The Duke of Milan /And His Brave Son: Old Histories and New in The Tempest"
Meredith Anne Skura, from "Discourse and the Individual: The Case of Colonialism in The Tempest"
The Feminist Challenge
Ania Loomba, from Gender, Race, Renaissance Drama
Ann Thompson, " ‘Miranda, Wheres Your Sister?: Reading Shakespeares
The Tempest"
New Writing about Critical Controversy in The Tempest