Imagining of Literature

                        The Politics of Vision and Love in Midsummer Night’s dream In an essay on Shakespeare Frank Kermode acknowledges that “the [Shakespeare] conversation must go on somehow, for when there is nothing more to say about the book the book dies, and the parasitical criticism dies with it”. It is this somewhat artificially sustained academic conversation about an author who has been so deeply and intensely studied that breeds into one a slight fit of doubt whether anything new and exciting could be added to the vast volume of Shakespeare criticism. Bearing it in mind, I have decided to let my own close-reading suggest the textual problems that would require interpretation in an attempt to stray away from simply echoing other people’s work. Love is a centralling force in Midsummer Night’s Dream - being the power that is requisite for unity...