Tree Becoming

<p><b>Trees abound in Shakespeare's plays, and in </b><b><i>Tree-Becoming</i>, </b><b>Shannon Kelley explores how he uses his characters' identification with cypress, balsam, bay laurel, myrrh, and pine trees as metaphors to express emotional distress.</b> Opening new avenues for investigating knowledge of the plant world in early modern literature, Kelley traces the Ovidian conceit of arboreal transformation in <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i>, <i>King Lear</i>, <i>Othello</i>, and <i>The Tempest</i>. </p><p>Through the recurring motif of tree-becoming, in which characters who can no longer endure painful feelings align with or are imagined as trees, Kelley proposes a radical reading of Shakespeare's depiction of trauma's lingering impact on the body and psyche. These arboreal moments resist resolution and resist healing, offering instead a vision of survival and endurance. Bringing Shakespeare in conversation with insights from critical plant and trauma studies, <i>Tree-Becoming</i> honors survivors of trauma as they are, not as we would have them be: they become trees – different, but not less than.</p>