Disaster and the Response of Art in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale

Abstract

Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale presents not just the tragic decline of a hero and salvation through supernatural comedy; it also presents a ‘disaster’ and Shakespeare’s suspicion that a disaster can never be solved through human means. In this his thought anticipates Maurice Blanchot’s L’Écriture du désastre. Disaster is un-writeable and cannot be recovered from. But Shakespeare also shows how art can repair some of the damage. Art can show that disaster is impossible to recover from and at the same time recreate our impossible but necessary faith in recovery. Art can make us demand that art itself become nature, and disaster become redemption, even as it shows us that neither can ever really occur.