First Name:
Tyler
Last Name:
Laminack
Major Department:
English
Thesis Director:
David Orvis
Date of Thesis:
May 2012
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is often rendered as Shakespeare’s “green” play, what with the woods and the fairies and the large amounts of species wandering on and off the stage. This thesis seeks to explore that “green” nature and reconsider its meaning and context, especially as it relates to constructs of ecology and the “ecological self,” to use the modern parlance. I examine how a queer ecological philosophy can apply to a Renaissance drama and how that application lends both to new considerations of the modern “ecological self” (which, I argue, contains these instances of queer, feminist, and post-colonial mention) and to new interpretations of the drama, itself, reimagining that very nature which moves on stage.