SOURCE: "Aimé Césaire's Reworking of Shakespeare: Anticolonialist Discourse in Une Tempête," in Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3, Summer, 1995, pp. 360-81.

In the following essay, Porter provides comparative analysis of Césaire's adaptation of The Tempest. According to Porter. Césaire's parody of Shakespeare "constitutes a detailed condemnation of imperialism and racism, rivaled in Césaire's career only by his masterpiece, the Cahier."

During most of the Vichy occupation of Martinique and the remaining years of World War II (April 1941 to September 1945), Aimé Césaire carried out the program announced two years earlier in his Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, opposing racism by inspiring pride in his people. His journal, Tropiques, published a series of articles intended to put the Martinicans in touch with their own land, history, and traditions. But his political resolve appears to have been crystallized in 1944 by his seven-month visit to Haiti...