The Tempest

1
The Tempest

• A Post-colonial and Cultural studies approach

2
Cultural Studies?

• Cultural Studies branca della ricerca letteraria
  diffusasi principalmente in Gran Bretagna nella
  seconda metà del Novecento in questi studi si
  intende ampliare il settore classico della
  critica letteraria, utilizzando contributi che
  provengono da altre discipline sociali nel
  dettaglio gli studi si occupano anche di
  tematiche riguardanti il razzismo, il femminismo
  e letnicità.
• Gender Studies studi di genere si intende
  quegli studi che analizzano con un approccio
  interdisciplinare i significati e gli influssi
  socio-culturali della sessualità e dellidentità
  di genere, in questo caso specifico riferendosi
  alla letteratura e alla critica letteraria.

3
Selected Bibliography

• Octave Mannoni's Psychology of Colonization
  (1950)
• Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks (1952)
• George Lamming's
• The Pleasures of Exile (1960)
• Water with Berries (1971),
• Aime Cesaire's A Tempest (1969)
• Roberto Fernandez Retamar's
• Caliban (1971)
• A Grain of Wheat (1967)
• Tra gli altri
• Works, by Ngugi wa Thiong'o.
• Wole Soyinka, The Dance in the Forest
• Approfondimenti Fonte molto aggiornata e
  attendibile è "Colonial Metaphors" in Vaughan,
  Virginia Mason and Alden T. Vaughan, eds. The
  Tempest (The Arden Shakespeare Third Series)
  (London Thomson, 1999), pp. 144-71.

4
Négritude

• Négritude is a literary and political movement
  developed in the 1930s by a group that included.
• the future Senegalese President Léopold Sédar
  Senghor,
• The Martinican poet Aimé Césaire,
• the Guianan Léon Damas.
• 1935 3 Number of L'Étudiant noir
• 1948 Jean-Paul Sartre famous analysis of the
  négritude movement in an essay called "Orphée
  Noir" (Black Orpheus)
• The Négritude writers found solidarity in a
  common black identity as a rejection of French
  colonial racism.
• They believed that the shared black heritage of
  members of the African diaspora was the best tool
  in fighting against French political and
  intellectual hegemony and domination.
• Négritude ? To Be Proud of Being Black

5
Aimé Césaire

• Aimé Césaire (26 June 1913Basse-Pointe,
  Martinique - 17 April 2008 Fort-de-France,
  Martinique aged 94)
• He is renown poet, playwright, and essayist.
• He began a movement called Negritude Modernisme
  involving the work of native Caribbean writers
  and artists.
• His work has influenced other writers as well as
  sociologists (see Cesaire link below), like Franz
  Fanon.

6
Une tempéte, aprés la tempéte de William
Shakespeare

• A Tempest was originally written in 1969 in
  French by Aimé Césaire, with the original title
  Une Tempéte.
• It was translated into English in 1985 by Richard
  Miller.
• It is written as a postcolonial response to The
  Tempest by William Shakespeare.

7
Differenze evidenti dal confronto dei testi

• Personaggi
• Alterazioni
• Ariel, a mulatto slave
• Caliban, a black slave
• Aggiunta
• Eshu, a black devil-god.
• Struttura A Tempest è diviso in tre atti, e non
  cè una diretta e precisa corrispondenza tra le
  sue scene e quelle delloriginale shakespeariano.
• Le canzoni di Shakespeare sono rimpiazzate da
  canti tradizionali degli schiavi, e da canzoni
  tipiche della working-class.

8
Differenze che emergonodallanalisi dei
personaggi

• Prospero è rappresentato come un negriero,
  sfruttatore degli schiavi, che trae vantaggio
  dalle debolezze di Caliban, utilizzando la sua
  magia per privarlo della sua libertà.
• Cesaire trasforma Caliban dal selvaggio
  shakespeariano, ignorante e anche un po ottuso,
  a un nativo colonizzato, la cui lingua e cultura
  ha subito un processo di displacement da parte
  di Prospero.
• Infatti, il Caliban di A Tempest parla molto più
  a lungo e si esprime con strutture complesse e
  articolate
• Le ragioni che adduce per rivere la libertà non
  derivano da un senso di tradimento ricevuto da
  Prospero, bensì dalla reazione ad essere stato
  conquistato e reso schiavo.
• Quindi, il rapporto Padre-figlio ha molto meno
  rilievo rispetto a quello di Padrone-schiavo.

9
Concetto di Inferiorità 1

• "A white man in a colony has never felt inferior
  in any respect . . . . The feeling of
  inferiority of the colonized is the correlative
  to the European's feeling of superiority . Let us
  have the courage to say it outright It is the
  racist who creates his inferior
• (Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Skin, 92-93
  original emphasis).

10
Concetto di Inferiorità 2

• Caliban of Cesaire's Une tempete recognizes that
  Prospero's psychology is motivated not by an
  inferiority complex, but by a superiority
  complex, that his actions do not betray a will
  toward change, merely a will toward increasing
  power.
• Caliban tells Ariel
• "You don't understand Prospero, at all, He's
  not the collaborative type . He's a man who only
  feels alive when he's crushing someone. A
  crusher, a grinder to pulp, that's yes . That's
  what he is! And you talk of brotherhood!".

11
Prospero-Caliban Relation

• Cesaire represents the colonizer as insulting and
  ignorant.
• The underlying explanation is that all of the
  colonizers notions about the colonized are based
  on stereotype and fabrication.
• The colonizer doesnt really know the people he
  is dominating, and he doesnt really care,
  because that would make the domination more
  difficult.
• It is easier to carry on and make sure to
  belittle the colonized so things like conscience
  dont begin to act up.
• Cesaire makes this obvious in his
  characterization of Prospero, ruler of an island
  with only one native inhabitant, Caliban.
• Prospero calls Caliban an "ugly ape" (11), and
  another time comments to his servant, Ariel, that
  Caliban is "getting a little too emancipated"
  (10).
• Prospero has no patience or sympathy for Caliban,
  and insults his mother, his island, his native
  language and his hopes and dreams.
• Prospero is in a position of power, but it is
  obvious that he knows that position is tenuous.
  Caliban is a threat.

12
Ariels Speech III, 5

• Ariel Bored! I fear that the days will seem all
  too short!
• There, where the Cecropia
• gloves its impatienthands with silver,
• where the ferns free the stubborn black stumps
• from their scored bodies with a green cry
• There where the intoxicating berry ripens at the
  visit
• of the wild ring-dove
• through the throat of that musical bird
• I shall let fall
• one by one,
• each more pleasing than the last
• four notes so sweet that the last
• will give rise to a yearning
• in the heart of the most forgetful slaves
• yearning for freedom!

13
Prosperos Last Speech

• prospero Gentlemen, farewell.
• (Exit all but Prospero and Caliban.)
• And now, Caliban, it's you and me!
• What I have to tell you will be brief
• ten times, a hundred times, I've tried to save
  you,
• above all from yourself.
• But you have always answered me with wrath
• and venom,
• like the 'opossum that pulls itself up by its
  own tail
• the better to bite the hand that tears it from
  the darkness.
• Well, my boy, I shall set aside my indulgent
  nature
• And henceforth I will answer your violence with
  violence!
• (Time passes, symbolized by the curtain's being
  lowered halfway and reraised. In semi-darkness
  Prospero appears, aged and weary. His gestures
  are jerky and automatic, his speech weak,
  toneless, trite.)
• Odd, but forborne time now we seem to be overrun
  with opossums. They're everywhere. Peccarys,
  wild boar, all this unclean nature! But mainly
  opossums. Those eyes! The vile grins they have!
  It's as though the jungle was laying siege to the
  cave . . . But shall stand firm ... I shall not
  let my work perish! (Shouting) I shall protect
  civilization! (He fires in all directions)
  They're done for! Now, this way I'll be able to
  have some peace and quiet for a while. But it's
  cold. Odd how the climate's changed. Cold on this
  island . . . Have to think about making a fire .
  . . Well, Caliban, old fellow, it's just us two
  now, here on the island . . . only you and me.
  You and me. You-me . . . me-you! What in the hell
  is he up to? (Shouting) Caliban!
• (In the distance, above the sound of the surf and
  the chirping of birds, we hear snatches of
  Caliban's song)
• caliban