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Non-Western Societies
Tempest and of Cannibals
The idea that Europeans brought enlightenment to the savage colonies has always fascinated modern writers so much so that many of them employed their imagination to create pictures of 'barbaric' individuals who inhabited these colonies. Shakespeare and Montaigne in their attempts to recreate those savage communities gave us the powerful characters of Caliban and Cannibal. Focusing on this obsession of writers with the image of a savage non-western man, Bartra (1994) writes: "The identity of the "civilized" has always been flanked by the image of the Other, yet the common image of the Other as a wild and barbaric figure, as opposed to Western man, has been considered a reflection - albeit distorted - of non-Western peoples, a eurocentric expression of colonial expansion from which evolved an exotic and racist version of those whom the conquistadors and colonizers had discovered and subdued." [p. 3]
While Shakespeare borrowed heavily from Montaigne's essay, Of Cannibals, as far as the core concept was concerned but his reason for creating a non-western character...
Montaigne was more interested in exploring the untainted, pure and almost heavenly side of the inhabitant of an unadulterated society. On the other, Shakespeare believed that savagery is not connected with enlightenment or lack of it, it is essentially an inner trait that anyone can possess regardless of his social circumstances. The essential difference of belief is evident from the characters that the two writers created.
Montaigne's sole reason for writing Of Cannibals was to highlight and accentuate the importance of a wild non-western man. He believed that someone who had not been exposed to the realities of the modern world was essentially an uncontaminated soul that represents the heavenly ideals of purity. Discussing the nature of Montaigne's fascination with non-western societies, O'Toole writes: "[Montaigne] presents a highly idealized characterization of the natives of the New World. He perceives these "cannibals," as he calls them, to be men who live in the way Nature intends them to live, unadorned and unfettered by modern civilization. Montaigne goes so far…
References
Bartra, Roger (1994) Wild Men in the Looking Glass: The Mythic Origins of European Otherness Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Michael O'Toole, Shakespeare's Natives: Ariel and Caliban in The Tempest
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/lithum/gallo/tempest.html
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