SOURCE: Cox, John D. “Recovering Something Christian about The Tempest.” Christianity & Literature 50, no. 1 (autumn 2000): 31-51.

In the following essay, Cox offers a Christian interpretation of The Tempest based upon moral elements in the play, while considering contrasting twentieth-century idealist and materialist readings of the drama.

Approaches to The Tempest have changed remarkably over the last fifteen years or so, as we have witnessed a shift in favor of postmodern literary theory. At one time, what are now thought of as “idealist” or “formalist” approaches were the only way in which the play was understood. Postcolonial readings became the norm, however, with the advent of New Historicism and cultural materialism, so that one now finds virtually unanimous assent to “materialist” ways of understanding The Tempest, as well as William Shakespeare's other plays. The difference is signaled in two remarkable editions of The Tempest: Frank Kermode's Second Arden (1954) and Stephen...