The Neo-Platonic Vision of the Soul in The Tempest

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The Tempest by William Shakespeare is one of the most relevant and studied plays of the Elizabethan period among scholars, from both, ancient and actual times. One of the many readings that have prevailed suggests that the play’s protagonist, Prospero, and his two su-pernatural servants, Ariel and Caliban, can work as a single psychological unit is constantly discussed by the academics. This reading is not new; it has been considered for longer than the idea of The Tempest as an autobiographical allegory, being first proposed by Thomas Campbell in 1838 (Yachnin).
During the Renaissance, humanists began to read the classics again and applied their knowledge into their beliefs and vision of the world. The idea that the humanist had from the human soul was profoundly linked with Platonic ideas, especially with the Flying Char-iot Allegory described in the Phaedrus, in it Phaedrus explains to Socrates, how the human soul could be represented by a chariot being pulled by two horses: “Let us then liken the soul to the natural union of a team of winged horses and their charioteer. […]To begin with, our driver is in charge of a pair of horses; second, one of his horses is beautiful and good and from stock of the same sort, while the other is the opposite and has the opposite sort of bloodline” (Plato 246b). The tripartite structure of the soul can be applied to Shakespeare’s characters; the charioteer is represented by Prospero, whom is in charge of Ariel, the good horse, and Caliban, the bad horse.
Prospero is the image of the ideal Renaissance magician; whose magic is obtained from his books and knowledge that, in contrast to Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, has domain over spirits, which represent the passions, Ariel and Caliban. B...

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...rect path, the one of moral equilibrium

Works Cited

Johnson W., Stacy. "The Genesis of Ariel." Shakespeare Quarterly (1951): 205-210. Web.
Online Etymology Dictionary. 2001. Web. 27 May 2014. .
Pattee, Richard. Caliban and Ariel: Angel and Beast. n.d. Web. 28 May 2014. .
Petry, Hally Alice. "Knowledge in 'The Tempest'." Modern Language Studies (1980): 27-31. Web.
Plato. Phaedrus. Trans. Josiah Wright. Oxford University, 1848. Web.
Shakespeare, William. "The Tempest." Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1996. 1135-1159. Print.
Yachnin, Paul. "'If by Your Art': Shakespeare's Presence in The Tempest." Shakespearean Criticism (1988): p119-134. Web.

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