| dc.description.abstract | Of the many scholars who have undertaken an interpretation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest,
there are a few who have briefly speculated that Shakespeare might have drawn inspiration for
this play from his contemporary Richard Hakluyt. However, none of them has offered sufficient
evidence to support this claim. The present thesis provides a gateway to the historical possibility
that Shakespeare did borrow from some of Hakluyt’s works--a topic that has previously been
scantily studied, if not entirely neglected by scholars in the field. To this purpose, the thesis
adopts a comparative and interdisciplinary approach in studying The Tempest and several travel
narratives from Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations, combining stylistic analysis, including the
fundamentals of Transitivity and Social Actors Theory, with principles from postcolonial theory
and book historical statistics. It begins by exploring the intellectual space within which modern
scholars have situated Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the historical background and sources of
Shakespeare’s text, as well as the background of Hakluyt’s life and writings. The thesis then
proceeds to a stylistic and thematic comparison of several passages from The Tempest with
various excerpts from Hakluyt’s compiled travelogues, revealing an interplay of similarities and
appropriations at the level of economics, politics and social theory. Finally, it offers a brief,
overall interpretation of The Tempest, based on the findings of the previous thematic and stylistic
analyses and on a close reading of the play’s Epilogue. | |
