Shakespeare's plays contain many instances of the Renaissance conflict of reality and illusion, a theme that has drawn the attention of scholars over the years without, however, yielding a systematic philosophical interpretation. My study offers the view that Shakespeare's treatment of illusion in his plays reflects his aesthetic philosophy, in which he is deeply indebted to the idea of redemption through poetic illusion as set forth in Sir Philip Sidney's essay The Defence of Poesie. Shakespeare's redemptive aesthetic is manifested in a series of protagonists who are symbolical poets and whom I identify as "redeemer-illusionists." / The magus Prospero of The Tempest is the prototype of the redeemer-illusionists: the poet in a universal sense and Shakespeare's realization of the Vates or "right poet" of Sidney's Defence. This vatic figure is essentially a teller of higher truths in a fallen world; his object is to redeem the fallen world through moral enlightenment, yet he must set himself apart from this base world because of its inherent mortality. This he does by adopting the medium of illusion, which emphasizes the mutability of the world and the power of divine truth to govern the moral sphere. / Prospero comes late in the Shakespeare canon and is the most fully developed vatic figure among Shakespeare's redemptive protagonists. But there are other vatic figures that precede and foreshadow Prospero; thus I trace the development of the vatic character in Prince Hal, Hamlet, and Vincentio (the Duke of Measure for Measure). These characters are forerunners of Prospero as redemptive figures and illusionists, though they do not possess his ultimate advantage--the vatic power to shape the illusory world and guide the soul toward truth via language. / Though most scholars have stressed the Aristotelian elements of Sidney's Defence, I find that his concept of the Vates and his theory of divine truth in poetry are primarily influenced by Plato's Ion. Shakespeare inherits Sidney's Platonic concepts but alters them substantially in his redeemer-illusionist, whose illusions are finally the source of his ethical dilemma. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 43-07, Section: A, page: 2356. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1982.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74891 |
| Contributors | WRIGHT, NEIL HUTCHISON., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 187 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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