A Letter to the English Faculty of John Cabot University LEOPOLDINE RIGAUD
AS AN ADVO CATE of diverse curriculums,
as a powerfully optimistic gaze aimed at its
it has come to my attention that your
Martinique’s independence. With this letter, I
syllabus provides a three-week-long section
intend to demonstrate that any Shakespearian
on
my
class that seeks to teach The Tempest should
grandfather’s, Aimé Césaire’s, 1969 A Tempest
imperatively parallel its analysis with that of
lacks any proper mention. Considering the socio-
Césaire’s A Tempest.
Shakespeare’s
The
Tempest;
yet
political climate that the young adult generation
A Tempest introduces students to a
is living in, I believe it is of the highest imperative
new way of reading Shakespeare and allows
you introduce them to one of the most prominent
a discussion surrounding the changes made
plays written by the creator of the Négritude
by Césaire regarding the play’s narrative and
movement. Not only would this work allow
their implications. The author’s focus on the
students to discover a particularly exceptional
circumstances surrounding colonized lands—
anti-colonial perspective on Shakespeare’s play,
Martinique as the example in particular—is
but it would also provide these students with an
embodied by his depiction of the relationship
opportunity to enjoy a more modern writing style
between Caliban and his master Prospero.
to relieve them from Shakespeare’s Elizabethan
In contrast to Shakespeare’s original work,
writing. Not to say that Shakespeare’s writing
Césaire’s insistence on the idea of race and
should be ignored, but rather that students be
equality is front and center in his version of
more versed in a comparative understanding
the play. The critic Laurence Porter drives
of the work. A Tempest is a confrontational
this point home when he eloquently states
piece about colonialism but also an ode to the
that “Shakespeare’s essentialist views, not
Martiniquaise culture. In addition, it stands
necessarily racist themselves, can readily be
L EO P O L D I N E R I G AU D (’21) is a senior graduating this May. She wrote this paper for Dr. Barbara Rico’s ENGL 3889: Shakespeare’s World. Although she is an English major, she always enjoys using her French background in her papers.
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