Assignment Writing
Topic :
The Postcolonial Literature
Name : Ravina Parmar
Batch year : (2019-2021)
Roll no. 17
Enrollment no : 2069108420200031
Submitted to : Smt. S. B. Gardi English Department Bhavnagar
Introduction :
Aimé Fernand David Césaire (26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) was a Francophone and French poet, an Afro-Caribbean author and politician from the region of Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature". ( Heller Ben A. )
He was written A Tempest, originally in French language and later translated into English Language. It is an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest from a postcolonial perspective. Césaire uses all of the characters from Shakespeare's version, but he specifies that Prospero is a white master, while Ariel is a mulatto and Caliban is a black slave. Laurence Porter) These characters are the focus of the play as Césaire foregrounds issues of race, power, and decolonization.
Meaning of Appropriation :
Appropriation means borrowing, imitating, taking over or using someone's idea or concept as a raw material to produce something original or at least something evidently different (Massai, 2007).
A reworking or re-imagination of a well-known text to change, or extend its meaning. For example, Marcel Duchamp's artwork, L.H.O.O.Q is an appropriation of Da Vinvi's Mona Lisa. Duchamp took an image of Da Vinci's painting and drew a moustache on it.
Meaning of Adaptation :--
It is defined by Julie Sanders as
"a specific process involving the transition from one genre to another: novels into film; drama into musical; dramatization of prose narratives and prose fiction; or the inverse movement of making drama into prose narrative'' ( p. 17-18).
These two terms we can notice that,that is not compulsory happening that while adapting the text we have to change a gener. Even that isn't needed. And also these two terms " intersect or interrelate yet we don't get Clear distinctions between them as creative activities".
Let's see what was the process of adapting or something appropriating. In Adaptation we have a clear signal relationship and informing original text. But in the appropriation we don't have the same process but here text does not have a clear or obvious signal or relationship with the original text. But Appropriation brings engagement with the text, and often adopts a picture of critique ".
Key words :
A Tempest, Aime Cesaire, Adaptation, Appropriation
Research Objective :
The present study is trying to study the adaptation and appropriation in the work of Aime cesaire’s A Tempest. What was the main difference between A Tempest and the Tempest? Also we have to look at several aspects like how the character changed, what was the main subject of the play.
Adaptation and Appropriation of A Tempest from The Tempest :--
As we know that Aimé Césaire's A Tempest deals with colonialism, and in this play, he discusses his idea of Negritude. It is a call for freedom and a reflection of the ways of how to get freedom. In this play, Césaire not only ''re-reads and re-writes Shakespeare's The Tempest but expresses one of the most fundamental concerns of postcolonial literature; the effects of place and displacement on both the colonizer's and the colonized sense of identity''.
In the play of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest possesses some ''European biases in the justification of colonization among the colonized countries while Aimé Césaire’s A Tempest is written as a postcolonial response to William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and embodies the spirit of rebellion of the oppressed peoples against the European colonization'' (Guo, 2008, p. 13).
A Tempest addresses modernist issues and theories such as colonialism, racism and color discrimination through the utilization of a classic play most modern readers are familiar.
In this adaptation the main theme is changed, the protagonist is changed and the narration is changed and as such it deals much more with the story from the point of view of Caliban and Ariel. In making A Tempest an adaptation for black theater, Césaire suggests his governing principle: the master/slave relationship. This relationship between the colonizer and the colonized in Aimé Césaire's A Tempest is manifested clearly through two major characters, Prospero and Caliban, The former is the representative of colonizers while the latter is the representative of the colonized .
Caliban is portrayed as an oppressed native and a rebel against colonization, fighting vigorously through various means to achieve his ultimate goal, freedom. The colonizer, Prospero, on the other hand is portrayed as the exploitative usurper of self-determinism, land, property, dignity, and even identity of the colonized peoples. This struggle between the colonizer (Prospero) and the colonized (Caliban) creates the main conflict in the play (James, 1978).
Aimé Césaire replaces the article “the” with “a” suggesting a singular storm rather than a universal one. The title of Aimé
Césaire's play, A Tempest, is a deconstruction of the title of William Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest. In addition, the
title A Tempest may suggest that the storm is not a creation of the magician Prospero (the colonizer); instead, it is a natural
ongoing process and a regular phenomenon and this undermines the power of the colonizer (Prospero). It may also
suggest the change in the black society through destruction and regeneration (James, 1978).
Contrary to Shakespeare’s Caliban, Césaire’s Caliban is completely different. He is seen as a colonized black native whose land has been taken and whose language and culture Prospero’s has displaced. Césaire’s Caliban is much more vocal and articulate, and his arguments for freedom are much more forceful and to the point, revealing his strong indignation towards being conquered and enslaved.
Language is an important tool to fight back and to represent self and race. The language in which Prospero commands Caliban is also used by both Shakespeare’s and Césaire's Caliban but with a difference. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest,Caliban is seen as the victim of the language he has been taught, and he only has the ability to represent his powerlessness and express his resentment
Caliban: You taught me language, and my profit on't
I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning my language.
Prospero: Hag-seed, hence
Fetch us in fuel, and be quick — thou'rt best —
To answer other business. Shrug'st thou, malice?
If thou neglect'st, or dost unwillingly
What I command, I will rack thee with old cramps,
Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar,
That beasts shall tremble at thy din.
Caliban: No, pray thee.
[aside] I must obey; his art is of such power (Shakespeare, 176).
However, the case is different with Césaire's Caliban and the language Prospero teaches him becomes more than a tool to curse. It becomes a tool for him to voice his resistance and charge against the colonizer also we see him use colorful phrases and double meanings of words to almost make a mockery of Prospero out of the language he has been taught.
Caliban: Uhuru!
Prospero: What did you say?
Caliban: I said, Uhuru!
Prospero: Mumbling your native language again! I have already told you, I don't like it. You could be polite, at least; a simple
"hello" wouldn't kill you.
Caliban: Oh, I forgot... But make that as froggy, waspish, pustular and dung-filled "hello" as possible. May today hasten by
a decade the day when all the birds of the sky and beasts of the earth will feast upon your corpse!
Prospero: Gracious as always, you ugly ape! How can anyone be so ugly?
Caliban: You think I am ugly….well, I do not think you are so handsome yourself. With that big hooked nose, you
look just like some old vulture. (Laughing) an old vulture with a scrawny neck! (Césaire, 1992, p. 11)
In this conversation, we come to know that Prospero scolds Caliban for using “Uhuru” instead of "hello" and describes it as “mumbling”. This may suggest two important things: First Prospero does not understand the native language of the colonized (Caliban) and at the same time he does not want to understand the meaning of “Uhuru” as it is a threat for him because once the language is accepted as intelligible and worthy of rational meaning, it will claim the same status as Prospero’s own. Caliban’s answer in This instance is stronger and he fights back labeling the language of the colonizer Prospero as nothing more than gibberish.
Conclusion :
Thus Aime Cesaire introduced various fruits of Colonialism. Cesaire also expresses the view that there is no dignity without freedom. Nevertheless, the freedom, which Césaire speaks about, is not only the simple freedom from the oppressive physical presence of the colonizer, but it is also the freedom from the psychological bonds, which so many colonized people have accepted. The basic thing, which Aimé Césaire wants to convey in A Tempest and the rest of his writings, is his wish to see black people united, not in their acceptance of inferiority, but in their rejection of an inferior status, and such is his basic concept of political Negritude.
Work cited :
Ben A. Heller "Césaire, Aimé", in Daniel Balderston et al. (eds), Encyclopedia of Latin American and Caribbean Literature, 1900–2003, London: Routledge, pp. 128–30, 128.S
Césaire, Aimé. (1992). A Tempest. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Ubu Repertory Theater Publication.
Guo, Yuehua. (2008). A Rebel against Colonization: A Comparative Study of Césaire’s Caliban in A Tempest with
Shakespeare's Caliban in the Tempest. Asian Social Science 2(4), 13-16. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ass.v4n2p13.
James, A. Arnold. (1978). Césaire and Shakespeare: Two Tempests. Comparative Literature 30(3), 236-248. doi:
10.2307/1770825.
Literary Techniques: Intertextuality: The Matrix Literary Techniques Toolkit. 15 June 2020, www.matrix.edu.au/literary-techniques-intertextuality/.
Massai, Sonia. (2007). World-Wide Shakespeares: Local Appropriations in Film and Performance. London: Routledge.
Porter, Laurence M. (1995). "Aimé Césaire's Reworking of Shakespeare: Anticolonialist Discourse in "Une Tempête"". Comparative Literature Studies. 32 (3): 360–381. JSTOR 40247009.
Sanders, Julie. (2007). Adaptation and Appropriation. London: Routledge.
Sanders, Julie. (2007). Adaptation and Appropriation. London: Routledge.
Shakespeare, William. (1999). The Tempest. Oxford: The Arden Shakespeare.
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