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The American Dream Reconsidered addresses readers of
Shakespearean and American literature alike. This
study aims to re-position William Shakespeare's The
Tempest in world literature, using and
re-interpreting Leo Marx's thesis that The Tempest
may be considered "a prologue to American
literature." Focusing on The Tempest in the first
half of her work, the author points out novel aspects
of the play that may be connected to the European
experience of the New World, prefiguring even the
concept of the later American dream. The chapters
that follow the analysis of the Shakespearean play
take a glimpse at American literary history and
outline how the previously examined three major
components time, nature and magic appear in the
American literary heritage up to the present. The
examples presented are by authors from Washington
Irving to Sandra Cisneros, and include a profound
analysis of Linda Hogan's Power, the novel that, as
Limpár argues, indicates the start of a new process
in American literature by opposing the intense myth
destruction of the past two centuries and re-creating
the myth.
