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The Tempest Revisited in Martinique:

Aime Cesaire’s Shakespeare

by Joseph Khoury

Césaire and Shakespeare: Two Tempests

by A. James Arnold

1. Khoury argues that Shakespeare was writing for his audience (the colonizer) and Cesaire's adaptation was written for the colonizer and colonized. He says that both plays are different, but they treat the relationship between master and slave similarly.

1. Says that Ariel is representative of Martin Luther King Jr. (non-violent) and Caliban is Malcolm X. This can be seen in the scene in which he demands to be called X, instead of Caliban, a name given to him by his master.

2. Cesaire is quoted in the essay as saying that he wanted to show that Prospero was a complete totalitarian and didn't want to show him as a wise man.

2. Ariel tries to lead Caliban in a moderate and non-violent path, while Caliban is firmly against trying to reconcile with the totalitarian Prospero.

3. In trying to change his name, Caliban is trying to force his master to recognize him as something other than a slave.

3. Arnold argues the Cesaire's Prospero is presented as an agent of European capitalism at its inception.

4. He defines Cesaire's idea of Negritude as such, "Negritude is not only the active attempt to reject racism, but also the active attempt to assert African heritage by resisting assimilation into the West by narrating the African culture to the West, even using the language of the West.

4. He compares the texts to find similarities and differences between the two. For example, there is no mention of the Church in Shakespeare's version, yet Cesaire uses the Inquisition as a reason for Prospero's expulsion from Milan.

Animism, Negritude, and the Interdependence of Place And Being in Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest

by Paula Willoquet-Maricondi

"Teaching in the Multicultural Tempest"

by Lisa McNee

1. States that Cesaire is posing two questions in "A Tempest": "First, whether a precolonial reality if recoverable and, secondly whether mutual cross-cultural understanding is achievable."

1. McNee includes a poem by Haitian poet, Leon Laleau to demonstrate the power that language has over the colonized. She uses this to show the power of language evident in both versions of The Tempest.

2. Makes the important point that Cesaire's decision to leave Prospero (a representative of the West) on the island is a challenge to the audience to "redefine their own sense of of relations between Self and Place."

2. She argues that the struggle for power marks this as a Marxist adaptation of The Tempest. She states that the plot to murder Prospero is justified because he stole the island but also because he stole Milan from the people.

3. Suggests that one has to be more at peace with nature. By the end of the final act, nature has reclaimed the island. Prospero, fights against it and withers, while Caliban still sounds strong in the distance, crying out for freedom.

26 June 1913

17 April 2008

3. While this text deals with teaching multicultural literature in a college setting, its lessons are applicable to middle and high school as well:

4. While Prospero threatens to imprison Ariel back in the tree, Ariel doesn't think that is a punishment. It shows his closeness to nature and Prospero's unwillingess to believe that being stuck in a tree isn't a punishment. She actually compares it to being an embryo in the womb. For Cesaire, person and environment are profoundly connected.

  • A. Discuss issues of race, class and gender throughout the year
  • B. Promote honesty and mutual respect in the classroom; stress courtesy and tact so students can feel comfortable discussing such sensitive subjects
  • C. Respect your students enough to engage in a real discussion rather than remaining completely neutral

Aimé Césaire's "A Tempest"

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