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PROSPERO AND MAGIC

David Sundelson (essay date 1980)

SOURCE: "So Rare a Wonder'd Father: Prospero's Tempest," in Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays, edited by Murray M. Schwartz and Coppélia Kahn, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980, pp. 33-53.

[In the following essay, Sundelson provides a psychoanalytic reading of the relationships between fathers and children in The Tempest, focusing in particular on what he terms Prospero 's "paternal narcissism: the prevailing sense that there is no worthiness like a father's, no accomplishment or power, and that Prospero is the father par excellence."]

Dramatic conflict is strikingly absent from The Tempest. Brothers try to kill brothers, servants stalk their masters, and the union of attractive young lovers is delayed by an old man's whim, but none of these things creates suspense. Once we have seen Prospero calm the raging waters with a wave of...

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1. Introduction
2. Overviews
3. Genre
4. Classical Influences
5. The New World And Colonialism
6. Prospero And Magic
7. Further Reading
8. Copyright