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Themes, motifs, and critical approaches to The Tempest

Themes and motifs

 * The theatre
 * Magic
 * Nature vs. Nurture
 * Love
 * Power
 * Reconciliation
 * God and humanity
 * Colonialism
 * The storm
 * Masque

Interpretation and criticism
Modern criticism of The Tempest tends to be grouped under political, postcolonial, and feminist approaches.


 * Genre
 * Dramatic structure
 * Postcolonialist
 * Feminist
 * Thompson, Ann (1999)
 * Political
 * Power and social structure
 * In The Tempest, power is repeatedly contested
 * Boatswain vs. King and Courtiers
 * Antonio vs. Prospero
 * Ariel and Caliban vs. Prospero
 * Stephano vs. Prospero
 * Miranda (Ferdinand) vs. Propsero
 * Political critics have tended to focus on Prospero's usurpation by Antonio.
 * Greenblatt, Stephen (1988)
 * Kott, Jan (1965) Shakespeare Our Contemporary
 * Performance
 * Covered in Afterlife section
 * Psychoanalytic
 * The ambivalences and ambiguities have prompted much Psychoanalytic criticism
 * anxiety about absent mothers vs. sibling rivalry
 * Sexual anxiety
 * Prospero's incestous lust for Miranda
 * Prospero using Miranda as sexual bait to get an excuse to enslave Caliban
 * The sicklemen in the masque represent castration
 * Prospero imposes his memory of past events on Ariel and Caliban
 * Wish fulfilment: the play ends with Prospero not getting what he wants, sexually and socially alone
 * Milan as mother that Antonio usurps
 * Cannot be proved or disproved, highly speculative
 * Some critics discuss it as a psychiatric case history
 * Nevo, Ruth
 * Postmodern