Essay on Post Colonial Interpretations of Shakespeare’s...

Post Colonial Interpretations of Shakespeare’s The Tempest â€Å"†¦do we really expect, amidst this ruin and undoing of our life, that any is yet left a free and uncorrupted judge of great things and things which reads to eternity; and that we are not downright bribed by our desire to better ourselves?† – Longinus Since the seventeenth century many interpretations and criticisms of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest have been recorded. Yet, since the play is widely symbolical and allegorical Shakespeare’s actual intentions behind the creation of the play can never be revealed. But it is precisely this ambiguity in intention that allows for so many literary theorists, historians, and novelists to offer their insight into the structure and†¦show more content†¦Up until this point the commonly accepted view of Prospero’s character was that of â€Å"a wise and rational ruler [who] could govern the forces of disorder that undermine the family and the state† (Vaughan 2). Many Europeans had even taken the character of Prospero to be none other than the bard himself, skilfully orchestrating the island’s affairs and inhabitants in a masterful culmination of his playwriting career; a metaphor for the sophisticated prosperity of Europeans. As well as this m ay be, this view represented only the colonial attitudes of the Europeans as influenced by such materials as William Strachey’s Bermuda Pamphlets[1] and other hearsay. No one had anything to say about the incursion of the European way of life into the native cultures of the Americas. But as time lapsed and the play grew a greater audience across both political and cultural boundaries those views began to change. As Vaughan cites in his introduction; â€Å"Not until the nineteenth century rejected neoclassical rationalism was Prospero’s authority challenged† (2). By the twentieth century, critics like Vaughan were being influenced by Post-Colonial interpretations of Caliban, forming the new understanding that, â€Å"[Caliban’s] true significance lies instead in emblematic identifications with modern men and women, especially Latin Americans and Africans, no matter how anachronistic those identifications may seem to Tempest specialists†Show MoreRelated tempcolon Confronting Colonialism and Imperialism in Aime Cesaires A Tempest1403 Words   |  6 PagesColonialism in A Tempest   Ã‚  Ã‚   A Tempest by Aime Cesaire is an attempt to confront and rewrite the idea of colonialism as presented in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.   He is successful at this attempt by changing the point of view of the story.   Cesaire transforms the characters and transposes the scenes to reveal Shakespeare’s Prospero as the exploitative European power and Caliban and Ariel as the exploited natives.   Cesaire’s A Tempest is an effective response to Shakespeare’s The Tempest because heRead MoreDiffering Reading On The Tempest 1219 Words   |  5 Pages4 Differing Reading on ‘The Tempest’ Simply looking at the text in isolation The Tempest is a complex mixture of a comedy, a tragedy and a romance. 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