Name :- Hitixa Goswami
Class :- M. A. Sam 2
Roll No :- 9
Enrollment No :- 2069108420200013
Subject:- The American Literature
Assignment Topic :- comparison of Shakespeare 's " The Tempest" and cesaire' s "A Tempest"
Email:- hitixagoswami28@gamil
Submitted to :- S.B.GARDI, Department of English Bhavnagar University
World :-2009
Introduction :- Tempest was originally written in 1969 in French by Aime Cesaire and translated into English in 1985 by Richard Miller. It is written as a post colonial response to the Tempest by William Shakespeare. The story is the same:-a big storm,an angry Duke who's been usurped by his brother, all the devoted courtesans and of course the natives. This play deals mostly with the natives, Ariel and Caliban. It is Cesaire's comment on the colonization of the "New World".
First of all I wrote about Shakespeare's ' The Tempest'.so let's see
" The Tempest" by Shakespeare
" The Tempest" was written by William Shakespeare in 1610-11. It is the last play of Shakespeare. Setting is on a remote island, where Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place using illusion and skillful manipulation. He conjures up a storm, the eponymous tempest, to lure his usurping brother Antonio and the complicit king Alonso of Naples to the island. There, his machinations bring about the revelation of Antonio’s lowly nature, the redemption of the king, and the marriage to Alonso’s son, Ferdinand.
The story draws heavily on the tradition of remote, and it was influenced by tragicomedy. Character of Prospero represent art through his magic, he is representation of Shakespeare. The play portrays Prospero as a rational and character of Sycorax, her magic is frequently described as destructive and terrible.
The play begins with a ship with a ship-master and a boatswain trying to keep the ship from wrecking in a tempest. There is a heavy storm and boat splits in half and the people float off into the sea. At that time Prospero chatting with his daughter Miranda. He knows magic that’s why he caused the storm that sank this boat, but he did it for good reason.
When Prospero busy with learning magic in his library at that time he used to be a duke of Milan until his brother, Antonio, betrayed him and stole the dukedom. Then stealing Prospero’s power and position he and the three-year’s old Miranda were shuttled out to the ocean in a wreck of a boat. They ended up on this island, where the ex-duke has raised his daughter for the last twelve years.
All the folks were responsible for stealing Prospero’s dukedom. Alonso the king who allowed the wicked Antonio to take Prospero’s dukedom. Because of this fear he lost his son, Ferdinand. Alonso, Antonio, Alonso’s brother Sebastian- set off to find Alonso’s son, the lost Prince Ferdinand. Meanwhile, the Prince is alive and conceived that his father and everyone else from the boat are dead.
Then Ferdinand fell in love with Prospero’s daughter Miranda. Hard task given by Prospero to Ferdinand and he happily done this. When he meets second time to Miranda he knows about her name and promises to marry her. During her whole life she has ever seen third person except her father and Caliban, the son of Devil. Back with the search party looking for the Prince, everyone feels weary and assumes the guy is dead. A banquet appears in front of the shipwrecked group, set up by silent fairy spirits. Yes, this is weird, but the search party is hungry and wants to eat.
Then Prospero accepts Ferdinand, saying that he was just testing the young man with all that hard labor. Since the Prince has worked carrying heavy wood, he has permission to marry Prospero’s daughter. Other side second story going on that Caliban has been plotting with the king’s drunken butler, Stephano and jester, Trinculo to murder Prospero so they can rule the island. Caliban and Trinculo is very drunkard. Caliban pledges to be Stephano's slave and kisses his feet way more than we are comfortable with.
The drunken schemers are led off by Ariel playing music. Ariel leaves the group in a pool that smells like the lesser part of a horse to await his master's orders. The trio eventually gets out of the muck pool and sets off to murder Prospero. However, Prospero sets hounds upon them, and the would-be-murderers run off.
However, Prospero starts some banter about how he i lost his daughter to the tempest too, commiserating with the King. Prospero changes the subject and asks if they'd like to see his cell. He pulls back the curtain covering his dwelling to reveal you guessed it two very-much-not-dead children, who are very much in love. Alonso rejoices to see his son, Ferdinand rejoices to show-off his new girl, and Miranda rejoices at seeing so many hence the line "O brave new world that has such people in it." Prospero promises to explain most of this eventually. Tonight he'll tell some of his life story and everyone will head back to Naples via ships in the morning. Prospero says he'll watch the kids get married, and then he'll retire to his dukedom in peace. He charges Ariel to make sure the ships get to Naples safely, and then frees him from the servant gig.
' A Tempest' by Aime casaire
A Tempest by Aime Cesaire was originally published in 1969 in French by Editions du Seuil in Paris. Cesaire, a recognized poet, essayist, playwright, and politician, was born in Martinique in 1913 and, until his death in 2008, had been instrumental in voicing post-colonial concerns. In the 1930s, he, along with Leopold Senghor and Leon Gontian Damas, developed the negritude movement which endeavored to question French colonial rule and restore the cultural identity of blacks in the African diaspora.
A Tempest is the third play in a trilogy aimed at advancing the tenets of the negritude movement. In 1985, the play was translated into English by Richard Miller and had its American premiere in 1991 at the Ubu Repertory Theater in New York after having been performed in France, the Middle East, Africa, and the West Indies.
A Tempest is a postcolonial revision of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and draws heavily on the original play—the cast of characters is, for the most part, the same, and the foundation of the plot follows the same basic premise. Prospero has been exiled and lives on a secluded island, and he drums up a violent storm to drive his daughter’s ship ashore. The island, however, is somewhere in the Caribbean, Ariel is a mulatto slave rather than a sprite, and Caliban is a black slave.
A Tempest is a postcolonial revision of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and draws heavily on the original play—the cast of characters is, for the most part, the same, and the foundation of the plot follows the same basic premise. Prospero has been exiled and lives on a secluded island, and he drums up a violent storm to drive his daughter’s ship ashore. The island, however, is somewhere in the Caribbean, Ariel is a mulatto slave rather than a sprite, and Caliban is a black slave.
A Tempest focuses on the plight of Ariel and Caliban—the never-ending quest to gain freedom from Prospero and his rule over the island. Ariel, dutiful to Prospero, follows all orders given to him and sincerely believes that Prospero will honor his promise of emancipation. Caliban, on the other hand, slights Prospero at every opportunity: upon entering the first act, Caliban greets Prospero by saying “Uhuru!”, the Swahili word for “freedom.” Prospero complains that Caliban often speaks in his native language which Prospero has forbidden.
Comparison between " The Tempest and " A Tempest "
The Tempest is one of William Shakespeare's final plays, written around the year 1610 and considered to represent the "culmination of his career". Centered around a deposed ruler, Prospero, the play takes place exclusively on a distant island after the ship carrying the King of Naples encounters a powerful storm and the crew is forced to abandon the vessel. We find out that this is caused by the spirit Ariel, a servant of Prospero's.
After reassuring his daughter Miranda that no one on the ship was hurt, Prospero proceeds to inform her of how they ended up on the island, being betrayed by his brother Antonio who took his title as Duke of Milan. We then meet Caliban, a slave of Prospero's and the rightful owner of the island by his Mother Sycorax who owned it previously. Soon Ferdinand, the Kings son happens upon Miranda and the two instantly fall in love. Although this is just what Prospero expected and hoped to happen he plays the suspicious father and enslaves Ferdinand despite his daughters protest.
The next characters we come across are Alonso, the King of Naples and his party, including his scheming brother Sebastian, Antonio and the good hearted Gonzalo. We find Sebastian and Antonio both plotting against the king despite the dire situation they appear to be in. The next scene has the jester Trinculo and Stephano, a drunk, come across Caliban as he hides from what he takes to be an agent of Prospero's. By the end of this scene Caliban has decided to swear his loyalty to Stephano and secure his aid in killing Prospero.
Aime Cesaire's A Tempest is a politicized take on Shakespeare's play created during the late sixties, a time of great social change. It is really a "post-colonial response to The Tempest " and as such deals much more with the story from the point of view of Caliban and Ariel . In this version Caliban is a black slave and the spirit Ariel is represented as a mulatto slave.
In The Tempest there are quite a few characters that might be easily identifiable as villains but the main figure, Prospero seems to play many roles, good and bad. All of the events in the play are more or less orchestrated by him in his attempt to get justice and return to Milan. It can even be argued that he is largely at fault for his current situation by neglecting his duties as Duke and passing off responsibility to his brother. Whether Prospero is a villain or not is not so difficult to figure out in Cesaire's work as that is his purpose as a oppressive European colonist.
Prospero is also a good example of the role power plays in the story. He wields great magic and has the loyalty of a powerful spirit which he uses to exact his revenge and control all of the characters in the around him. Not least of all is his daughter Miranda whom he very much uses to reconcile with King Alonso by marrying her off to his son.
Miranda plays a unique role as she is really the only female character present on the island. She is also depicted as a helpless character whom was the focus of Caliban's unwanted attention thus resulting in his current situation. In this way his treatment is justified, he comes to represent "bestial desire", and Miranda establishes herself as an innocent in need of constant protection.
Conclusion :-
In short, A Tempest presents colonial angle towards black identity or mulatto. The Tempest more focused on the shipwrecked, magic, revenge and happy marriage of Miranda and A Tempest more concentrate on attitude of Negro, status of their mind and relationship of master-slave. Idea of rebel, Idea of resistance shown by Aime Cesaire in the play through the character of Caliban. Caliban is a speaking subaltern and subjugated for himself, not killing Prospero.
Work sited
Césaire, Aimé, and William Shakespeare. A Tempest: Based on Shakeskpeare’s the Tempest : Adaptation for a Black Theatre. London: Oberon, 2000. Print.
Hulme, Peter; Sherman, William H. ‘The Tempest’ and Its Travels London: Reaktion Books, 2006.
Césaire, Aimé. A Tempest : Based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Adaptation for a Black Theatre. New York :TCG Translations, 2002.
http://jlcs.in/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/JLCS-Vol.-1-No.-1-April-2020_Hossain-Al-Mamun.pdf
Thank you…
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