Two of Shakespeare’s primary sources-Montaigne’s “Of Cannibals” and accounts of the voyage of the Sea Venture-relate events that take place in the New World. The weak insinuation of African colonization nevertheless makes more sense than to link the island to the New World, along with the corresponding insistence that Caliban is Native American. After all, North Africa was annexed by Rome, supplied the West with emperors, produced no less a figure than Augustine, and was Christianized at an early date before being colonized by Islam. Even if we assume the island is North African rather than European, the suggestion of African colonization remains tenuous at best. It is puzzling why so little postcolonial criticism focuses on the colonization of Africa, though non-Western critics of the early twentieth century suggest the link. Although events take place entirely on the island, the wedding of Alonso’s daughter in Carthage triggers the movement, the unjust banishment of Prospero from Milan fuels the plot, and the narrow sea route between Milan and Carthage delimits the scope of action. And so all this begs the question, is The Tempest about colonialism or not? Tempest Agonistesįrom the outset, it is clear the action takes place on an island somewhere in the Mediterranean, the most familiar body of water in Europe and a defining boundary for Western culture for over two thousand years by the time Shakespeare wrote The Tempest. Once the initial argument evolved that The Tempest was primarily and consciously a play about colonialism, the premise was accepted with little or no reservation. Postcolonial assumptions about the play are so reflexive as to deracinate The Tempest, causing it to vanish into thin air, leaving not a rack behind. Shakespeare’s play has become a shibboleth and his Caliban an avatar, empty signifiers that represent the easiest, most recognizable, and least complicated example of all that Western colonialism aspired to or indeed became.

Overwhelmingly, those who have included a reading of The Tempest in their various courses in their various disciplines have no formal training in Shakespeare or understanding of Renaissance poetics, and the play is seldom contextualized in the broader Jacobean and Renaissance culture from which it emerged.

Surely no other work of literature has been as assigned, deconstructed, interdisciplinized, revisioned, trivialized, and ventriloquized as The Tempest. Outside English departments, the play has been taught in such varied disciplines as African American studies, American studies, anthropology, comparative literature, cultural studies, education, environmental studies, film studies, history, linguistics, modern languages, Native American studies, oppression studies, peace studies, philosophy, political science, psychology, religious studies, sociology, theater, and women’s studies.

During this time-not counting courses in Shakespeare, Renaissance drama, or early modern literature- The Tempest has been taught in English departments at the undergraduate or graduate level in freshman seminars surveys of Great Books capstone courses writing and composition courses seminars on literary theory, Marxism, postcolonialism, and race, gender, queer theory early American literature and transatlantic literature courses surveys of American literature and courses on Romanticism, modernism, modern drama, Third World literatures, postmodernism, Chicano/a literatures, Afro-Caribbean literatures, and diaspora literatures. Over the last forty years, postcolonial criticism has become a dominant mode of critical discourse for the profession of literature and Renaissance studies in particular, with The Tempest serving as terminus a quo for many such discussions across historical periods and academic disciplines. He is associate editor of Milton Quarterly. This piece originally appeared in the Fall 2014 issue of Academic Questions (Volume 27, Number 3).ĭuke Pesta is associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.

Errand into the wilderness takaki