A Tempest by Aime Cesaire

Aimé Césaire's play Une Tempête was first published in 1969. The English translation by Richard Miller was first translated in 1985 and revised in 1992.

I continually broke away from the original. I was trying to “de-mythify” the tale. To me Prospero is the complete totalitarian. I am always surprised when others consider him the wise man who “forgives.” What is most obvious, even in Shakespeare’s version, is the man’s absolute will to power. Prospero is the man of cold reason, the man of methodical conquest—in other words, a portrait of the "enlightened" European. And I see the whole play in such terms: the "civilized" European world coming face to face for the first time with the world of primitivism and magic. Let's not hide the fact that in Europe the world of reason has inevitably led to various kinds of totalitarianism. [...] Caliban is the man who is still close to his beginnings, whose link with the natural world has not yet been broken.

—Pier Paolo Frassinelli, "Shakespeare and Transculturation: Aimé Césaire's A Tempest,"
Native Shakespeares: Indigenous Appropriations on a Global Stage, eds. Craig Dionne and Parma Kapadia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008): 175–76.

Student

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

June 15, 2009

Reading Response 1

Title

Text

Links

Aimé Césaire, act 1 scene 2, A Tempest, trans. Richard Miller (1992)

Négritude

"Négritude," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2014)
"Négritude," Africana Age, New York Public Library
"A Brief Guide to Négritude," Academy of American Poets (2004)

Criticism

Brenda McNary, "He Proclaims Uhuru—Understanding Caliban as a Speaking Subject," Critical Theory and Social Justice 1 (2010)
Steven M. Almquist, "Not Quite the Gabbling of 'A Thing Most Brutish': Caliban's Kiswahili in Aimé Césaire's A Tempest," Callaloo 29.2 (2006)
Joan Dayan, "Playing Caliban: Césaire's Tempest," Arizona Quarterly 48.4 (1992)

Media		"Aimé Césaire" (2001 interview; 1:54 min.)
		"Aimé Césaire—Poet, Politician Activist, 1913–2008," Democracy Now! (2008; 8:11 min.)
		Tempests, Thespians Club, NYU Shanghai (2015; 1 hr. 45:47 min.)
		Charles Keith, "French Imperialism," Yale University (2008 guest lecture; 43:55 min.)

Aimé Césaire

Interviews

Charles H. Rowell, "It is through Poetry that One Copes with Solitude: An Interview with Aimé Césaire," Callaloo 31.4 (2008)
Ann Scarboro, "In the shadow of Mount Pelée: Interview with Aimé Césaire," The New Gong Magazine (2002 interview excerpt)

Biography

Meredith Goldsmith, "Aimé Fernand Césaire," Poetry Foundation
Thomas A. Hale, "Aimé Césaire: A Bio-Bibliographical Note," Callaloo 17 (1983)

Césaire, Aimé. A Tempest. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Ubu Repertory Theater Publications, 1992. Print.