Adapting The Tempest

Elizabeth Gruber sensitively, rigorously, and convincingly delineates a philosophy and mode of reading she calls “ecophenomenology,” in which embodied cognition, the claims of the natural environment, and human storytelling together offer us compelling new understandings of traditional and reworked literary texts, notably what is Shakespeare’s arguably most “ecological” play, The Tempest. Ranging across fiction from Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed and Rachel Ingalls’ Mrs. Caliban through Marina Warner’s Indigo, Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, and Abby Geni’s The Lightkeepers, this groundbreaking and elegantly written book makes a compelling case for how humans adapt ourselves and our stories to the world, testifying to the importance of human beings, and the hope offered by the humanities at a time of seeming human and environmental collapse.
—Dr. Sujata Iyengar, Professor of English, University of Georgia.
 
Adapting The Tempest: Explorations in Ecophenomenology examines five female-authored novelizations of The Tempest, showing how they engage the play in a spirit of transgressive dialogism. A major through-line linking each chapter is the articulation of an updated self, one that encompasses the biological and the psychological. Philosopher Thomas Metzinger’s lucid theorization of selfhood seeds this study’s approach. A dedicated materialist, Metzinger nonetheless addresses the interiorizing that defines humanness. This book extends Metzinger’s theories by arguing for ecophenomenology, which harmonizes awareness of humans’ embedment in the world with the storytelling and reflective consciousness that define our species. Re-reading The Tempest in tandem with the five novels demonstrates the benefits of an ecophenomenological approach to selfhood.

Elizabeth D. Gruber is Professor of English in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Writing at Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania, USA. Previous publications include Renaissance Ecopolitics from Shakespeare to Bacon: Rethinking Cosmopolis (2017) and The Eco-Self in Early Modern English Literature (2023).