Date of Award

Spring 5-1-2026

Document Type

Honors Project

Degree Name

Bachelor of Liberal Studies

Department

English and Linguistics

Department Chair or Program Director

Levin, Jonathan

First Advisor

Dr. Maya Mathur

Major or Concentration

English

Abstract

William Shakespeare’s The Tempest focuses on Prospero, the banished Duke of Milan, who loses his kingdom and is exiled to an island where he lives with his daughter, Miranda, and two indigenous islanders, his servant, Ariel, and his slave, Caliban. The inciting incident of The Tempest is the attempted rape of Miranda by Caliban. Prospero’s desire to maintain power leads to the creation of an enemy “other,” Caliban, whose negative portrayal is tied to his racial difference and inferiority. In The Tempest, Prospero’s primary fear of Caliban is directly related to his fear of miscegenation, between Miranda and Caliban. In this context, Miranda’s bodily purity becomes a battleground for Prospero and Caliban. Each man seeks to control access to Miranda,and her capacity for reproduction, to increase their power on and off the island.

Adaptations of The Tempest cannot exist without, in some way addressing the tense and racially charged nature of the relationship between Prospero, Caliban, and Miranda. Most modern adaptations challenge this idea of Caliban’s innate inferiority of knowledge, capacity, and physical appearance. In this paper, I examine Shakespeare’s The Tempest alongside Julie Taymor’s film, The Tempest (2011), Aimé Césaire's Une Tempête(1961), Elizabeth Nunez’s Prospero’s Daughter (2006), and Safiya Sinclair’s Cannibal (2020). I argue that while Julie Taymor’s Tempest unwittingly perpetuates Caliban threat to Miranda, adaptations like Aimé Césaire's Une Tempête, Elizabeth Nunez’s Prospero’s Daughter, and Safiya Sinclair’s Cannibal seek to challenge the idea of Caliban’s innate inferiority by making Prospero the true threat.

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