preview

Intertextuality In 'Wide Sargasso Sea' By Aime Cesaire

Decent Essays

Intertextuality is the ongoing interaction between poems or stories. Some examples include:
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
In his novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys gathers some events occurred in the famous novel the novel, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. The purpose is to tell the readers an alternative tale. Rhys presents the wife of Mr. Rochester, who played the role of a secondary character in Jane Eyre. Also, the setting of this novel is Jamaica not England, and author develops the back-story for his major character. While spinning the novel, Jane Eyre, she gives her interpretation amid the narrative by addressing issues such as roles of women, colonization and racism that Bronte did not point out in her novel otherwise.
A Tempest by Aime Cesaire
Aime Cesaire’s play, A Tempest is an adaptation of The Tempest by William Shakespeare. The author parodies Shakespeare’s play from post-colonial point of view. Cesaire also changes the occupations and races of his characters. For example, he transforms the occupation of Prospero, who was a magician, and changes him into a slave-owner, and also changes Ariel in Mulatto, though he was a spirit. Cesaire, like Rhys, makes use of a famous work of literature, and put a spin on it in order to express the themes of power, slavery and colonialism.
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
In the following example, Hemingway uses intertextuality for the title of his novel. He takes the title of a poem, Meditation XVII written by John Donne. The excerpt of this poem reads: “No man is an island…and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Hemingway not only uses this excerpt for the title of his novel, he also makes use of the idea in the novel.
Chapter 6-- When in Doubt, It’s from Shakespeare…
A play that I am familiar with is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, by Tom Stoppard. This play was a way for the writer to copy William Shakespeare’s Hamlet play. These two literary works are connected thematically by both Hamlet and Stoppard’s work having the theme of the mystery of Death. And also death being the cause and consequence and revenge.
Chapter 7--...Or The Bible
James Joyce uses a lot of references to the bible in his story,

Get Access