Revisiting William J. Shakespeare’s The Tempest From a Colonial and Postcolonial Lens
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1306.05Keywords:
colonialism, decolonization, post-colonialism, resistanceAbstract
The current paper shows colonialism as a concept and how European countries have created colonies in Australia, Asia, Africa, and America, capturing and overexploiting the colonies’ natural resources and dominating the colonies’ natives. The new nation discoveries accomplished by Europeans stuck in Shakespeare’s mind, naming these discoveries the “New World”. Shakespeare’s The Tempest approaches Prospero’s colonial attitude and Caliban’s postcolonial standpoint. With that being said, this paper aims to demonstrate that Shakespeare stands in the middle making no approval or disapproval of the European colonization. The Tempest by Shakespeare can be reviewed from a colonial and postcolonial lens. Fanon (1991) establishes that violence-based struggle is a component of the decolonization process represented by Caliban. Towards the end of the paper, key related interpretations of India’s overexploitation by Great Britain are adopted to make a piece of evidence that one of the deadly sins of European history rests in colonialism.
References
Abd-Rabbo, M. M. (2019). Overlapping character variations in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. JNT-Journal of Narrative Theory, 49(1), 55-81. https://doi.org/10.1353/jnt.2019.0002
Al-Ghammaz, S., Al-Khatib, W., & AbuRas, F. (2022). Emotional Abuse in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan Journal for Human and Social Studies, 3(3), 213-223.
Bell, W. (1991). Colonialism International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. 2nd. London: Elsevier.
Boehmer, E. (2005). Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press.
Caroti, S. (2004). Science Fiction, Forbidden Planet, and Shakespeare's The Tempest. Comparative Literature and Culture, 6(1), 1-13.
Césaire, A. (1955). Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000. p. 52.
Dobson, M., Wells, S., Sharpe, W., & Sullivan, E. (2001). The Oxford Companion of Literature, Oxford University Press.
Elam, D. (2020). World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth: Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics. New York: Fordham University Press.
Fanon, F. (2008). Black Skin, White Masks United Kingdom; Pluto Press.
Fanon, F. (1991). The Wretched of the Earth (1983). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Gray, D. (2020). Command these elements to silence: Ecocriticism and The Tempest. Literature Compass, 17(4), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1111/lic3.12566
Hakluyt, R & Morley, H. (1880). Voyagers’ Tales farm the Collection of Richard Hakluyt. Palala Press.
Hemmerle, O.B. (2006). Lumpenproletariat. In Odekon, Mehmet (ed.). Encyclopedia of World Poverty Volume 1: A-G. SAGE Publications. pp. 655-656. ISBN 978-1-4129-1807-7.
Ko, Y. (2012). The Tempest (review). Shakespeare Bulletin, 30(3), 353-358. http://doi:10.1353/shb.2012.0051
Macaulay, T. (1848). The History of England from the Accession of James II. Philadelphia: USA.
Motlagh, M. (2015). The Tempest: A Negotiable Meta-Panopticon. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 6(2), 1-8.
Nimavat, S. (2019). Colonial and postcolonial perspectives in The Tempest. International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews, 6(2), 1-4.
Qutami, M. (2022). Countering normalized violence in Aboulela’s “The Museum” and El Guindi’s “Trading in my Arab”. Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan Journal for Human and Social Studies, 3(3), 224-235.
Tharoor, S. (2016). An Era of Darkness. Aleph Book Company.
William, S. (1998). The Tempest. Oxford University Press.
Young, R. (2001). Post-Colonialism: A Historical Introduction, London: Blackwell.