Love as a Construct of Power in Shakespeare’s The Tempest: A Reception-Theoretical Reading

The Tempest has been traditionally received as a romance that exalts love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. In fact, love has been traditionally understood as a redemptive moral agent that resolves conflicts and re-establishes harmony. However, this paper will use Reception Theory to show that love in The Tempest is a construct of power whose meaning is contingent on the reader's horizon of meaning. Through an analysis of how paternal, romantic, and supernatural love are variously constructed by early modern, Romantic, and modern readers, this paper will show that love is not a stable ethical value but an effective strategy that legitimates power. Through this reception-based analysis, this paper will show that Shakespeare's love is a multifaceted text that can be variously read to naturalize or interrogate power, and that The Tempest is a text whose political meaning is constructed through audience interpretation.