SOURCE: Little, Roger. “Questions of Intertextuality in La tragédie du roi Christophe.” French Studies 48, no. 4 (October 1994): 439-51.

In the following essay, Little considers the function and value of intertextuality in The Tragedy of King Christophe.

Readers or spectators of Césaire's plays cannot help being drawn into a web of intertextuality. Our understanding of Une tempête must of necessity take account of the play's relationship with the Shakespeare original and, to a subsidiary degree, with those readings of The Tempest which view the relationship between Prospero and Caliban as emblematic of that between colonial master and colonized slave.¹ The impact of La tragédie du roi Christophe is indissociable from the many songs, French, Creole and African, incorporated in the text. Even in Une saison au Congo, there is the occasional unacknowledged quotation woven into the texture of the play. Only the early, highly poetic Et...