Shakespeare's The Tempest and Chamoiseau's Solibo the Magnificent would seem to share little in common with one another. The former almost certainly takes place in the Mediterranean; the latter in the Caribbean. Yet both tragicomedies touch upon both the causes and the effects of European colonialism. After all, Naipaul dubs the Caribbean "Europe's other sea, the Mediterranean of the New World," (212). Shakespeare penned The Tempest well after European discovery of the New World. Therefore, the playwright may have contemplated the potential short- and long-term impact of colonialism on the indigenous societies of Europe's other sea. Because there is little to no Italian colonization of Caribbean islands, the Milanese context of The Tempest provides a relatively neutral framework from which to explore issues like language, colonialism, and racism. In Solibo the Magnificent, Chamoiseau focuses on the French Caribbean island of Martinique to offer a sardonic portrait of racism, language, and...
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