Shakespeare and Defoe in Modern and Post-modern African/Caribbean Literature
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Date
2023
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Mouloud Mammeri University , Tizi-Ouzou
Abstract
The present research has sought to study William Shakespeare's TheTempest (1611) in relation to Ngûgî WaThion'o's A Grain of Wheat (1967), Aimé Césaire's A Tempest (1969) and Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John (1985); it has also targeted to explore the connection which binds Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) to Nadine Gordimer's "Friday's Footprint" (1960), Derek Walcott's Pantomime(1978) and J. M. Coetzee's Foe (1986). This research, in terms of the oretical bearings, has been pillared on a paradigm constituted around Mikhail Bakhtin's historicist intertextual dialogism, Gérard Genette's notions and Raymond Williams' ideological and cultural materialist continuum. While conducting this study, I have reached a wide range of findings. First, each one of the six African/Caribbean adaptations, under scrutiny, has leaned on its source text, Shakespeare's or Defoe's, reproducing and stylizing, there fore, seen as stylization of, several elements from their 'originals'; however, it has to be highlighted, following this thread of arguments,that they have been far from being carbon copies. This would pertain to my second major finding, which is the fact that every single author has made use of his/her source of inspiration to suit his/her own purposes; the final outcome has been six texts which have, at times,parodied or engaged in a polemic, hidden or overt, with the English bard's last play or Defoe's novel; in accordance with my third finding, some adaptations have, at other times, treated the source work meta textually by either commenting on and criticising it, or deleting, reducing, amplifying and revising a variety of its aspects. The fourth finding might be associated with Williams' ideological and cultural spectrum which has uncovered, to me, the crucial importance of the background of every African/Caribbean literary attempt this study has dealt with. This has resulted in six texts which have had to explore and voice a great deal about the concerns, issues, certainties, uncertainties, perceptions and realities of their precise historical moment of production than Shakespeare's or Defoe's era and lifetime. This research has been divided into seven chapters; the first one has been devoted to the alleged source texts which have been contextualised and examined in their exact environment. The six following chapters have been organised into two parts, three chapters each, with every one of them being concerned with studying one African/Caribbean adaptation with its source at a time.
Description
305 f. ; 30 cm. + CD Rom
Keywords
Polemics, Robinson Crsoe :the tempest, Cultural materialism
Citation
Literature