Spiritual Homosociality in The Tempest: Magic and Moral Superiority

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper explores stage monarchs’ spiritual and homosocial relations with their subjects and rivals. Focusing on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, this paper describes spiritual homosociality as one of the ways in which male Renaissance stage monarchs strengthen authority. To examine ruling power through the lens of spiritual homosociality is to reveal inherent difficulties in the humanity of rulers of a society saturated with supernatural environments. Particularly, psychological and supernatural elements of a sovereign’s emotional exchange with his subjects in a spiritually saturated realm contribute to his self-empowerment. Prospero’s spiritual and homosocial relations, the elements of spiritual homosociality in the resultant representation of politics, happen partly in a human realm stripped of divine association, and partly in a spiritually saturated realm full of occult connections. Therefore, Prospero’s attempt to be a morally influential ruler in his territory presents spiritual homosociality as a necessary quality for successful rulers in the interpersonal and institutional relations, but it also reflects Shakespeare’s theatrical representation of the extent to which early political science overlaps with political theology and the supernatural.

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