SOURCE: Sarnecki, Judith Holland. “Mastering the Masters: Aimé Césaire's Creolization of Shakespeare's The Tempest.” French Review 74, no. 2 (December 2000): 276-86.

In the following essay, Sarnecki explores the ways in which Césaire utilizes language to express his revolutionary views in A Tempest.

“Many a man's tongue shakes out his master's undoing” wrote William Shakespeare in All's Well That Ends Well (2.4.23). Aimé Césaire takes Shakespeare at his word when he rewrites The Tempest, taking on the “master” in a political and artistic quest to free himself and his people from the oppression they have suffered at the hands of their colonizers. Yet how does one so thoroughly educated in French language and culture fight against complete assimilation? Césaire's most powerful tool seems to be, paradoxically, the very language he was taught by those who would control him. What better way to spread the word—a “word” which...