The Tempest as "Gift of Death". (1st October 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fletcher, Andrew
• Is Part Of: Shakespeare. Volume 16:Number 4(2020)
• Page Start: 395
• Page End: 405
• Publication Date: 2020-10-01
• Subjects: Derrida -- aesthetics -- affect -- temporality -- actor -- player; Periodicals; 822.33
• DOI: 10.1080/17450918.2020.1829019
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1745-0918

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article opposes the view that The Tempest knowingly betrays the barbarity implicit in the creation of aesthetically pleasing works of art, thereby disabling the aesthetic as a source of value. I argue that The Tempest takes the foundational oppositions which constitute dramatic art (representation versus reality, script versus performance, belief versus scepticism), and, by incorporating them into the drama, demonstrates their contingency. This involves a consideration of the distinction drawn by Robert Weimann between the "doubly encoded" stage figure of Prospero, at once "actor" living within the fiction of the play, and "player" wishing to escape its captivity. The aporia that this creates is related to Derrida's concept of "gift" as disruptive of both teleological temporality, and of an ethic founded on an economy of obligation. The relationship of aesthetic value to alterity is ultimately focused in the figure of Caliban, the "thing of darkness" at once central and alien to the lives of those whom he, resistingly, serves. He comes to betoken the "gift of death" as enabling condition of aesthetic and ethical experience. The piece responds to an ethical turn in Shakespeare studies, and a renewed interest in aesthetic issues. It opposes an exclusive historicist emphasis on the plays, attempts to give a more nuanced context for a "presentist" consideration of Shakespeare's works, and sketches a possible approach to works of art in general aimed at articulating an alternative to their "disenchantment" at the hands of critics without sacrifice of the intellectual integrity previously seen to be suppressed by aesthetic responses.