MACMILLAN The Tempest and New World-Utopian Politics

This study on New World-utopian politics in The Tempest traces paradigm shifts in literary criticism over the past six decades that have all but reinscribed the text into a political document. This book challenges the view that the play has a dominant New World dimension and demonstrates through close textual readings how an unstable setting at the same time enables and effaces discursively over-invested New World interpretations. Almost no critical attention has been paid to the play's vacuum of power, and this work interprets pastoral, utopian, and 'American' tensions in light of the play's forever-ambiguous setting as well as through a 'presentist' post-1989 lens, an oft-neglected historical and political paradigm shift in Shakespeare criticism. Review 'In this fascinating analysis of The Tempest, Brevik breaks new, critical ground by reading Caliban as a figure from Old World mythology and folklore and Ferdinand as expressive of New World masculinity. His intriguing contention that the setting for Shakespeare's politically subversive romance is utopian, meaning nowhere, and cannot be limited to a specific geographical locale widens the range of possible literary and cultural contexts Virgilian, European, African, and American from the early pioneers to today the language of this dramatic text evokes. He impressively negotiates the theoretical labyrinth surrounding Shakespeare's enigmatic island, resulting in a concise, but nuanced map of the dizzyingly varied, interpretative heritage of The Tempest and its pedagogical usefulness in culturally diverse and globally aware classrooms today.' - Jennifer C. Vaught, University of Louisiana at Lafayette 'Brevik offers a provocative and clarifying overview of the controversies that have made The Tempest one of Shakespeare's most hotly debated plays. In the process, Brevik both offers his own valuable contribution to the on-going debate and addresses important pedagogical questions about the strengths and limitations of presentist literary interpretations.' - Gerald Graff and James Phelan, editors, The Tempest: A Case Study in Critical Controversy About the Author Frank W. Brevik is an assistant professor of English at LaGrange College.