As the third part of his trilogy on Shakespeare, "Prospero's Powers" extends the study of the late plays O'Meara offered in "Othello's Sacrifice," to consider more closely how Shakespeare fulfills his personal artistic development in "The Tempest."

The play is seen as expressing in its structure the whole of Shakespeare's tragic development up to that time. Great powers of self-knowledge and of inner knowledge of the cosmos are shown to have emerged from this development, which Prospero now embodies. Structural links are pursued that further connect Prospero's powers with the mysterious...

Recent interest in who Shakespeare's Muse may have been prompts one to come forthto dispel the drastically simplistic notions that have been brought forward.In this essay John O'Meara suggests where our concern with Shakespeare shouldactually lie or what form of Muse we can suppose it was that commanded hisdevelopment the way it did.

Shakespeare was fated for a certain experience from which he could not extricatehimself, even if he had wished to. Highlighted is his struggle with Martin Luther'sinjunction to imagine human depravity to the fullest, with which O'Meara comparesthe route...

The period covered in this book ranges from the early part of the 20th century right through to its end-roughly from the death of Chekhov to that of Ted Hughes. The question is raised whether the vision of the modern world that opened up to the authors of this period does not still apply in our own time.

The book's main theme is the finality of modern nothingness. What remains that is superhumanly possible, despite all appearances that nothing more and nothing new is left to man to break through with? Civilization for these authors had become denuded of all of its vital forces, and it...

This collection of texts, in presenting Rudolf Steiner's highly evolved understanding of the nature of thinking, points the direction to take today to carry on with the work of Goethe, of Coleridge and of Emerson as the three principal spokesmen for Romantic Imagination in 19th century Europe and America.

Their Romantic epoch came to an end, because the creative thought that served that epoch could not fully satisfy the requirements of thinking or the further necessity of theory that properly characterize our own age.

But Romantic tradition continues, with the full theory and culture...

These are the main issues arising out of Western literary tradition that John O'Meara explores in this book.

In the work of Robert Graves, Shakespeare, and Keats, O'Meara sees the deepest expression at once of our most far-reaching hopes and our sadly alienated case in respect of any mythical experience we may conceive of having in the immediate...

O Meara s work is the perfect supplement to Ted] Hughes s Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, shedding further illumination into those areas where Hughes s penetrating lens finally appears to dim. This work] shines utterly clear light on the path of understanding we may re-win with regard to myth, forcing the reader to face the incredible starkness of the prospect we face and the lack of options ever closing in and also giving the reader the necessary clues to follow, particularly Barfield, Shakespeare and Rudolf Steiner. Richard Ramsbotham, author of "Who Wrote Bacon?...

O Meara s work is the perfect supplement to Ted] Hughes s Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being, shedding further illumination into those areas where Hughes s penetrating lens finally appears to dim. This work] shines utterly clear light on the path of understanding we may re-win with regard to myth, forcing the reader to face the incredible starkness of the prospect we face and the lack of options ever closing in and also giving the reader the necessary clues to follow, particularly Barfield, Shakespeare and Rudolf Steiner. Richard Ramsbotham, author of "Who Wrote Bacon?...