I Spy More Than Poststructuralism
From Stephen J. Miko's essay "Tempest" in Donald Keesey's Contexts for Criticism, page 381:
“The main point, to which I think Shakespeare consistently returns, is that attempts to match words and things, wishes and realities, inevitable leave disjunctions, especially for those who insist on neatness and univocality. “
As I was reading Miko’s essay, I found myself unsure as to where the poststructuralist ideas came into play. It seemed to me that he wrote so much about whether or not the characters are “real” or who or what the characters represent that I was lost. However, this line, and Greta’s response to the article helped me a lot.
First, Greta said that Miko compares Caliban to a human, or even to “Us,” (Miko 381) the readers or audience, in order for us to understand our own relationship to the characters in the work he is critiquing. This idea helped me to appreciate Miko’s argument. Many of the other critics seem to write from a lofty place both intellectually and stylistically, but Miko seems to want his reader to understand his writing, while still writing in an intellectually rigorous and stylistically advanced manner.
Greta goes on to talk about the fact that Miko discusses the ideas of good vs. evil, a topic that, upon my reading of the essay, seemed to revolve around character analysis and comparisons to real humans, rather poststructuralism. However, when I read the above line, I see that Miko is successfully using the poststructuralist thought in that he has reversed good versus evil and deconstructed both until he can say that neither exists as a complete and separate idea. The ideas of good and evil are so complex and varied, as Greta points out, that they cannot be reduced to each being defined by only one word.
Despite this successful use of poststructuralism that I find myself agreeing with completely, I do think that Miko has relied on other forms of criticism in order to support his poststructuralist claim. Without his use of the reader-response theory, structuralism, and the conventions of intertextuality (although he does not compare the play to other authors, he talks about it in terms of Shakespeare’s other plays) he would not be able to prove his idea that there is neither complete good, nor complete evil. Because of the influence of these other modes of criticism, I find myself thinking that perhaps this essay was placed in the wrong section of the book. Yes, the above quote insists that poststructuralism is used, but I feel that the other forms of criticism form more of the backbone of the critique than does the poststructuralist viewpoint.
Do I think that Miko’s essay is helpful and successful criticism that helps me to better understand the text? Absolutely, but I do not think that the poststructuralist ideas stand out enough for this essay to be defined as a poststructuralist essay.
Erica, you know I noticed all those different types of criticism as I was reading the article as well. However, I just kind of tried to box them away and focus only on the poststructural parts. But you really bring up an interesting question. Why did Keesey chose to place this the poststructuralist chapter? Now that you bring it up, I think Miko’s article probably fits more appropriately in the new historicism chapter that we also started looking at this week. After all, as you pointed out he uses Shakespeare’s other works as a context for The Tempest. Isn’t this in a way a type of historicism because his consideration of these other works (even if they’re by the same author) creates a sort backdrop from which to study the text? And Miko also uses the other schools you mentioned. So wouldn’t new historicism which is a mixture of all the previous schools of criticism with a particular emphasis on poststructuralism be a better fit for this essay? I suppose the main focus wasn’t historical background, so I guess in some ways it makes sense that it wouldn’t be placed in that section, but nonetheless Erica, I agree with you, I think the correct category of this article is quite ambiguous.