“Decipher its noises for us”: Understanding Sycorax’s Island in Marina Warner’s Indigo
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.2012.25.20Keywords:
Shakespeare, William, The Tempest, Warner, Marina, Indigo, InfluenceAbstract
The Marina Warner’s novel Indigo, or Mapping the Waters (1992) explores the effects of colonialism on the islanders of Liamuiga and the Everard family through a complex retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest that spans over three hundred years. Much like the appropriative novels of Gloria Naylor, in which past and present blend and meld, Indigo also suggests that time is not linear in its development. The subtitle, or Mapping the Waters, positions a sense of place at the crux of Warner’s novel. Moving back and forth between the twentieth century and the dawn of the seventeenth century, the novel also shifts between London and the Caribbean, suggesting the global import of Shakespeare’s late romance. The scene, in the Burkean sense, influences the actions of the characters as they struggle to be heard in their respective settings. Language also affects the ways in which these characters come to terms with their personal histories. Ultimately, the novel seeks to displace the hopelessness of Caliban’s decree in The Tempest —“You taught me language, and my profit on’t / Is I know how to curse” (1.2.364-65)— by giving a voice to the people silenced by colonialism.Downloads
Downloads
Statistics
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors publishing in this journal agree to the following terms:
1 Copyright. Authors retain copyright, but cede non-exclusive exploitation rights (reproduction, distribution, public communication and transformation) to the journal and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under the licence set out in clause 2. Authors are free to enter into additional agreements for non-exclusive distribution of works published in this journal, as long as the fact that the manuscripts were first published in this journal is acknowledged.
© The authors.
2 Licence. Works are published in this journal under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, the terms and conditions of which are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Under this licence, third parties are allowed to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially) the material, as long as its authorship and initial publication in this journal (Alicante Journal of English Studies / Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, University of Alicante, DOI of the work) are acknowledged, a link to the licence is provided and the fact of whether or not any changes were made is stated.
3 Self-archiving policy. Authors are encouraged to disseminate their work online in order to promote earlier circulation and dissemination of their work and possibly get more citations and achieve higher impact within the scientific and academic community, under the following conditions:
Authors are not allowed to upload preprint or postprint versions (respectively, versions before and after peer-review and acceptance for publication) of their work to an institutional or thematic repository, their own website, etc. prior to publication, only the final published article (publisher's version).