Image-magic in A Midsummer Night's Dream: power and modernity from Weber to Shakespeare

Abstract

This article argues that the modern world is not only produced by, andis promoting, processes of rationalization and disenchantment, but isalso the site of ‘enchanting’ influences that are genuinely ‘charming’ or‘magical’. Such modes of influencing rely increasingly on the power ofimages, and on theatre-like performances of words or discourses. Theimpact takes place under conditions that, following Victor Turner’swork, could be called ‘liminal’, and which can be turned through ‘imagemagic’into a state of ‘permanent liminality’. A path-breaking analysisof such influences can be found in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’sDream, written at a highly liminal moment in European history, the endof the Renaissance and the unfolding of the Reformation. It is arguedthat the central problem of the play is the source of the power thatmotivates, from the inside, human beings. Shakespeare attributes thispower to images through which human beings can be incited to act, inparticular to fall in love, and assigns a decisive role in the manipulationof such images to the Trickster figure of folk-tales and myths. Suchimage-magic makes its victims believe that they gained enlightenment,maturing to reason, exactly when succumbing to its influence; while itslasting impact is the confusion of the senses, or the power to distinguishand discriminate.