The Tempest as most of Shakespeare’s works has been the source of inspiration for several other authors and their respective works. Films, plays, and paintings are some of the platforms derived from his single works in different adaptations that each illuminate aspects of the originals. Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest, is one of the many works that has reimagined Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Cesaire is inspired by his environment and ideology in his reinterpretation just as Shakespeare was when he wrote The Tempest. Cesaire’s personal experience with colonialism and his founding of the negritude movement are prominent aspects of Cesaire response to Shakespeare’s play. Cesaire's A Tempest, extends the perspective of colonialism in a way that advances …show more content…
Shakespeare’s utilizes the name Caliban to dehumanize and categorize this native in repressive terms. As Professor Lewis discussed, Caliban has a similar reference to the word cannibal which might illustrate the possible reasoning behind Prospero forcing this name upon Caliban. Cesaire challenges this imposition by having his Caliban fight this force. Cesaire extends Caliban by vocalizing not only his dissatisfaction but his rebranding to Prospero. Caliban no longer wants to carry a name that is not his and labels him as something he is not. Caliban wants to rename himself, so the name Caliban itself does not continue to dictate his life as Prospero’s slave. As Timothy Scheie states, “ Indeed, the master/slave dynamic dominates the text [A Tempest], at the expense of the love story between Ferdinand and Miranda and the political intrigue among the Europeans that compete with it in Shakespeare's text.” Cesaire shifts away from Shakespeare’s centralized spotlight of the play to the complex relationship between a colonizer and the colonized. Cesaire’s A Tempest portrays the symbolic dynamic between two critical characters to convey the representation of Prospero as the colonizer and Caliban as the colonized. Cesaire is delineating the effect of colonialism on the colonized through this renaming. Cesaire depicts this reality and rebirth when Caliban states, “Call me X... a man whose …show more content…
Cesaire utilizes Caliban to address the solely incorporated perspective of the colonizer in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Cesaire alters certain aspects of Caliban from the original in order to be able to present this perspective. For instance, Cesaire implements the language of Swahili as Caliban’s native language, he vocalizes Caliban in his transition to X, and dictates for Prospero to remain on this island. Cesaire also racializes Caliban within his reinterpretation and integrates aspects of African culture that illuminates and validates this perception of colonialism. Cesaire’s expansion of Caliban as a symbol of colonialism to the advocacy against the stigmatized or lack thereof representation of the colonized in Shakespeare’s work transcends A Tempest into a postcolonialism
Toward the beginning the parallelism between the character in the film and the text is clear, Morbius would be a modernized Prospero and Altaria would constitute another Miranda, Robby would be Ariel and Miranda who, knowing no man, aside from his dad, begins to look all starry eyed at Commander Adams, practically identical to Ferdinand in the play. The Caliban part is played by the post-Freudian Monster of Id. In the opening scene of Shakespeare's Tempest, we are presented with some insight and a portion of the fantasies and trickery of the play. Shakespeare as we all know, in all his plays starts by presenting its primary characters, however the Tempest starts towards the end of the actual story, similarly in the film, Wilcox presents us with the crews on the ship keeping the atmosphere of the impending situation at the beginning of the film.
The Tempest was originally performed in late 1611, and was published in its current form in the First Folio of 1623. It is the one play by Shakespeare not derived from one or more of the many sources commonly utilized by all playwrights of the Elizabethan era, although a contemporary German play possesses an analogous exile theme. The story of the shipwreck was probably taken from Sir George Somers' narrative of a Bermuda shipwreck of 1609.
"Negritude, originally a literary and ideological movement of French-speaking black intellectuals, reflects an important and comprehensive reaction to the colonial situation of European colonization" (Carlberg). This movement, which influenced Africans as well as blacks around the world, specifically rejects the political, social, and moral domination of the West. Leopold Senghor, Leon Damas, and Aime Cesaire are the three pioneers of the revolution. The founder who expresses his ideas more broadly, though, is Cesaire, who uses literary works to express his viewpoint on colonization. An excellent example of such a tactic is his play, A Tempest, which is a revision of William Shakespeare's The Tempest. Both Shakespeare and Cesaire accentuate the greed of Europeans in their plays. However, Cesaire is more obvious in his approach to exposing it. A comparison of the two plays demonstrates that Cesaire's version, written in the late 1960's, is written as a confrontation of Shakespeare's play. He is attempting to comment on the corruption of Colonialism and the European domination of the New World through such strategies as making seemingly minor changes, switching the main character role, and altering the storyline itself.
Shakespeare shows this by having Prospero, the rightful duke of Milan and Usurping ruler of the island, call Caliban. “A devil, a born devil on whose nature nurture can never stick” but then having Miranda, Prospero’s daughter, say. “I pitied thee, took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour one thing or another.” Prospero is saying that Caliban is a “savage” who can not be educated, yet we hear that Miranda has taught him to speak, amongst other things. This gives a conflicting view of the character of Caliban.
When Caliban is first introduced in the play it is as an animal, a lazy beast that tried to rape Prospero’s daughter, Miranda. Prospero wastes no time referring to him as, “Thou poisonous slave, got by the de...
William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest reveals how ideologies of racial ‘otherness’ served to legitimize European patriarchal hegemony in Elizabethan England. In the Elizabethan/ Jacobean times of England there were many relevant ideologies relevant to this play. In examining the values and ideologies this text endorses and challenges, the society of the time (Elizabethan England), and a knowledge of how it operated serves a great purpose in analyzing these relationships. As in many texts of this time, Shakespeare is endorsing many ideologies of his time, and, although many have labelled him ahead of his time in many respects in his writing, he is, essentially writing from the Elizabethan or Jacobean point of view and time. The Tempest endorses the inequitable relationships between races based upon the belief of European superiority. The representation of race and ethnicity in The Tempest reveals a text that is awash with imperialist European ideologies.
In this whimsical play, Prospero, the former Duke of Milan, after being supplanted of his dukedom by his brother, arrives on an island. He frees a spirit named Ariel from a spell and in turn makes the spirit his slave. He also enslaves a native monster named Caliban. These two slaves, Caliban and Ariel, symbolize the theme of nature versus nurture. Caliban is regarded as the representation of the wild; the side that is usually looked down upon. Although from his repulsive behavior, Caliban can be viewed as a detestable beast of nature, it can be reasonably inferred that Shakespeare’s intent was to make Caliban a sympathetic character.
One way in which The Tempest reflects Shakespeare's society is through the relationship between characters, especially between Prospero and Caliban. Caliban is the former king of the island, and Prospero and his daughter Miranda teach him how to be "civilized." Immediately thereafter, Prospero and Miranda enslave Caliban and he is forced to be their servant. Caliban explains "Thou strok'st me and make much of me...
In her essay “Shakespeare's Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism,” Deborah Willis argues that the play takes on a much more complex and complete identity concerning the aristocracy of colonialism, and she presents the idea that Caliban as the “other” (Willis, p.277) isn’t inherently wrong but rather misguided in readings. While her article brings up important issues concerning the reading of The Tempest, she ignores the vastness and all-consuming nature of colonialism. Her essay helped me to conclude that I perceive The Tempest as not only being solely about colonialism, but all of the issues featured in the play being tied back to colonialism, including those that Willis emphasizes aren’t as important or are ill-founded.
Allan Gilbert’s article summarizes about the multiple parallels that can be found in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. While some of these parallels are more obvious in The Tempest, some require a scholar to fully comprehend them.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, ed. Frank Kermode, with an introduction by Frank Kermode, (Arden, 1964)
From the moment in Act I, Scene II when Prospero first references Caliban, “a freckled whelp hag-born – not honoured with a human shape,” it becomes clear the low opinion Prospero has of him, and this opinion would’ve been shared by the vast majority of Shakespeare’s contemporary audience. Shakespeare’s use of imagery at this point gives the suggestion that Prospero thinks of Caliban as little more than a pet dog, an image Caliban himself emphasises at a later stage in the scene when he says, “Thou strok’st me,”. Shakespeare uses animal imagery upon...
Prospero appears to be a ruthless tyrant that strikes fear into Caliban to make him work but further on in the text we learn that this is not the case. Caliban's foul-mouthed insults,
colonising discourse and expanding territory. The Tempest thus incorporates concerns of the Jacobean 17th century context, used to naturalise the resolution.
The Tempest, by Shakespeare, offers the reader a variety of themes. The one theme that stands out the most is that of colonialism. During the time of Shakespeare, many European countries such as Spain, France, and England, were expanding their borders by taking over less developed countries, referred to as colonies. During this time of exploitation, there was skepticism concerning the possible success of the colonies. While some scholars believe that the play is about the Americas, I argue that the play reflects on colonialism in general and how it is destined for failure which is shown through the character’s relationships throughout the play.