Ecological Semiotics in The Tempest

Abstract

If Semiotics is all about signs, then this entire Universe can be considered as a discourse encrypted in signs, and Nature is one of the densest texts with intricately coded signs. Semiotics and Ecology are vast domains of study, and so is Shakespeare, the synonym for English Literature across the world. The Tempest, widely considered as the last work by Shakespeare, has been re-visited, re-worked and re-interpreted time and again, and is one of the favourite texts of leading literary critics and scholars of all times. Scholars point out that the second half of Twentieth century and the early part of the Twenty first century witnessed an escalating focus on environment, leading to the advancement and spread of various multidisciplinary streams such as media ecology, cultural ecology, environmental humanities and so on. An Ecosemiotic reading of a text is different from an Ecocritical reading, and this paper is an attempt to look at the aspects of Ecological Semiotics in The Tempest, to see how this trend in the horizon of literary studies can be applied successfully to decode the encoded ecological signs seamlessly weaved into the fabric of the text.