“The Isle is Full of Noises”, Yet Sycorax Cannot Be Heard: Silence in William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and Marina Warner’s “Indigo”
“The Isle is Full of Noises”, Yet Sycorax Cannot Be Heard: Silence in William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and Marina Warner’s “Indigo”

Summary/Abstract: Postmodernism offered the context for feminist and postcolonial writers to challenge the canon, by rewriting canonical texts from fresh perspectives or by filling the gaps, voicing the silences and narrating the untold stories. Such is the case of Marina Warner’s novel “Indigo”, a lyrical narrative that abounds in intertextual references to William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”. I argue that Marina Warner uses female characters that in Shakespeare’s play are either absent or simple pawns in the patriarchal game, to give voice to the enslaved natives and to the silenced women and to emphasize the importance of oral history. Marina Warner’s novel is an invitation to look back in order to revisit history, to challenge it and/or to recover it through the act of storytelling. Moreover, storytelling also becomes the instrument that can help in constructing a better future

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