Shakespeare’s the Tempest: an Alternative Reading
Keywords:
Shakespeare’s The Tempest, North-South relationship, hegemony, rebellion, Aimé Césaire’s Une TempêteAbstract
This paper intends to offer an alternative reading of Shakespeare’s theatre by considering the ambiguous position of this dramatist regarding the relationship that he presents, between the world of “civilization” which supposedly characterizes the West and the periphery of this world, where “barbarity”, ignorance and brutality prevail. Shakespeare indeed never reveals a clear position regarding what is now commonly called the “North- South” relationship. Viewpoints that have emerged from “the margins” do revise this position by emphasizing Shakespeare’s slighting of the humanity that has developed outside the Western boundaries. For the sake of comparison, I would like to introduce Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, and how it has been “rewritten” and restyled as Une Tempête by the well-known Martiniquan Négritude writer Aimé Césaire, so as to offer a new voice to his Caliban, as a rebel against the hegemonic attitude of the master Prospero.
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