Abstract

This article aims at analyzing Une Tempête by Aimé Césaire, writer, essayist, poet and politician from Martinique, also known to be the initiator and principal theorist of Negritude. This analysis of Une Tempête - a caribbean and postcolonial rewrite of the Shakespearean prototype - will focus on the processes that lead to the recognition and definition of an African identity. The analysis will develop along four lines: 1) the concept of rewriting; 2) The Tempest's Caribbean rewritings in relation to ethno-psychology by Mannoni; 3) the decodification of Césaire's text as a postcolonial and syncretic rewriting and performance; 4) finally, it will be offered a parallelism between Caliban and the Yoruba god Ogun. The parallelism will be shown to be necessary to assert the African legacy of Shakespeare's monstrous creature.