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From Tempest to Epilogue: Augustine's Allegory in Shakespeare's Drama

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

James Walter
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Abstract

The Tempest is an allegory of the process of interpretation in a tradition that derives from Augustine's Confessions. Allegory calls attention to signs as signs and examines their adequacy to represent truth. Shakespeare's play begins in the realm of allegory's arbitrariness. Just as the imposition of Prospero's art on nature creates a storm to disorient characters in the play, Shakespeare's drama enthralls viewers in the theater, tempting them to an error like Prospero's retreat into his study in Milan. Gradually, however, by art attuned to a providential design working in events, Prospero resolves the conflicts among the characters. The symbolic unity of life finally suggested remains nevertheless an expression more of desire and promise than of realization. To remind his audience of this truth, Shakespeare makes Prospero in the Epilogue rupture the imagined world of art and insist on the audience's relating the play's ideal meanings to their historical lives.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 98 , Issue 1 , January 1983 , pp. 60 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1983

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