Caliban’s Books

This chapter frames Peter Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books (1991) as an allegory of the adaptation of canonical literature to cinema, with The Tempest’s colonial concerns refigured as a confrontation between a “masterful” original and an “unfaithful” follower. The essay then situates the film’s meditation on the literary artifact and neobaroque aesthetics in opposition to the discourses of heritage circulating in Thatcherite Britain. It also traces the development of Greenaway’s career as an artist working with moving pictures but in unconventional contexts that deepen the connection between cinema and a material or architectural environment. It suggests that Greenaway’s cinematic books and paintings attempt to immerse objects and images in history and imbue them with traces of the past.