The Tempest A Postcolonial and Cultural studies approach

The Tempest A Post-colonial and Cultural studies approach

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 l’etnicità. • 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 dell’identità di genere, in questo caso specifico riferendosi alla letteratura e alla critica letteraria.

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.

Négritude • Négritude is a literary and political movement developed in the 1930 s 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”

Aimé Césaire • Aimé Césaire (26 June 1913 Basse-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.

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.

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 c’è una diretta e precisa corrispondenza tra le sue scene e quelle dell’originale shakespeariano. • Le canzoni di Shakespeare sono rimpiazzate da canti tradizionali degli schiavi, e da canzoni tipiche della “working-class”.

Differenze che emergono dall’analisi 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”.

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).

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!".

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 doesn’t really know the people he is dominating, and he doesn’t 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 don’t 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.

Ariel’s 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!

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! Prospero’s Last Speech (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-me. . . me-you! What in the hell is he up to? (Shouting) Caliban! (In the distance, above the sound of the surf and the chirp ing of birds, we hear snatches of. Caliban's song) caliban: FREEDOM HI-DAY!