What, then, does this mean for postcoionial interpretations of Caliban as sympathetic
and oppressed hero for those victimized by New World imperialism? They definitely continue
but do so apart from popular culture’s understanding of race, slavery, or even Shakespeare’s
works as a whole. Additionally, as in earlier periods of American popular culture, currently
there is at best ambivalence as regards cultural attitudes about race and slavery in this
country. This is evidenced by the sometimes racially inflammatory rhetoric in this country
around the subject of President Barack Obama. School districts’ attempts in Texas and
Tennessee to change descriptions of the slave trade in children’s textbooks from the “transAtlantic slave trade” to the “Atlantic triangular trade” show that even perceptions of slavery in
this country are by no means a settled issue (Lee). Yet, by and large, this back and forth in
popular culture occurs apart from, and largely oblivious to, postcoionial academic critical
scholarship. The extent to which Shakespeare’s plays, particularly The Tempest, will be
formed by popular culture apart from this postcoionial academic framework remains to be
seen.
University of Nevada, Last Vegas
Michelle Villanueva
Works Cited
Bhabha, Homi. The Location o f Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.
Brevik, Frank. The Tempest and New World Utopian Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2012. Print.
Bruner, Charlotte. “The Meaning of Caliban in Black Literature Today.” Comparative Literature
Studies 13.3 (1976) 240-253. Print.
Burt, Richard. uShakespeare in Love and the End of the Shakespearean: Academic and Mass
Culture Constructions of Literary Authorship.” Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Siecle. Eds.
Mark Burnett and Ramona Wray. London: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. 213-231. Print.
Coleman, James W. Black Male Fiction and the Legacy o f Caliban. Lexington: Univ. of
Kentucky Press, 2001. Print.
Felperin, Howard. On the Uses of the Canon: Elizabethan Literature and Contemporary
Theory. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990. Print.
Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare and Modern Culture. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008. Print.
Greenblatt, Stephen. "The Best Way to Kill Our Literary Inheritance Is to Turn It into a
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