“Command these elements to silence”: Ecocriticism andThe Tempest

Abstract

As part of the response in the humanities to rising concerns of the human influence on the Earth system, ecocriticisman interdisciplinary approach to the study of literature focused on ecological and environmental concernsbecame a major trend in literary and cultural studies by the first decade of the twenty-first century. This period also witnessed an increase in ecocritical studies of Shakespeare's works, which have continued to proliferate. It is timely therefore to consider those individual works that have interested ecocritics and featured in ecocritical studies. This article will provide just such a consideration of Shakespeare's final play, The Tempest (1611), providing a critical review of the play's ecocritical studies thus far, and drawing attention to central ideas and common themes in the process. Finally, the article offers its own ecocritical analysis of the play, based on historical accounts of a catastrophic tidal event that took place in south-west England, in 1607. Leo Marx (1964) proposed that William Shakespeare's tragicomedy The Tempest (1611) be considered an allegory for the New World, in the midst of the social and cultural upheaval of the 1960s. 1 Subsequent critical readings of Shakespeare's final play readily adopted this interpretation and became increasingly influenced by the prevalent political radicalisms of the erafeminist, anti-racist and environmentalistthrough their literary theoretical noms de plume: feminism, post-colonialism and ecocriticism. Feminist and postcolonial studies of the play flourished during the latter half of the twentieth century. Ecocritical studies of The Tempest are, however, a more recent development,