“Earth, the chatterer father of all speech”: From Shakespeare’s brave new world! to William Carlos Williams’ Nuevo mundo!
When D.H. Lawrence wrote about Shakespeare’s Tempest in 1923, “whatever else you are, be masterless” (Lawrence 1923), he somehow found the perfect motto for William Carlos Williams’ own poetic art. Embarking upon his (con)quest for “the word” (GAN 165) to be the fertile humus on which to found all A...
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| Gepubliceerd in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles, |
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| Formaat: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Taal: | Anglais |
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Angles
2020
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| Online toegang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
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openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_1494 |
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openedition |
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OpenEdition Journal |
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Anglais |
| format |
Article ou chapitre numérique |
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0/Bibliothèque numérique/ 1/Bibliothèque numérique/OpenEdition Journals/ |
| topic |
sauvage Shakespeare William hétérotopie langue Williams William Carlos Tempête (La) Caliban Nouveau Monde poésie américaine fluidité liminaire dialecte balbutiement Shakespeare William heterotopia language Williams William Carlos Tempest (The) Caliban New World American poetry fluidity fluency liminal dialect wilderness stutter |
| spellingShingle |
sauvage Shakespeare William hétérotopie langue Williams William Carlos Tempête (La) Caliban Nouveau Monde poésie américaine fluidité liminaire dialecte balbutiement Shakespeare William heterotopia language Williams William Carlos Tempest (The) Caliban New World American poetry fluidity fluency liminal dialect wilderness stutter Aublet, Anna “Earth, the chatterer father of all speech”: From Shakespeare’s brave new world! to William Carlos Williams’ Nuevo mundo! |
| description |
When D.H. Lawrence wrote about Shakespeare’s Tempest in 1923, “whatever else you are, be masterless” (Lawrence 1923), he somehow found the perfect motto for William Carlos Williams’ own poetic art. Embarking upon his (con)quest for “the word” (GAN 165) to be the fertile humus on which to found all American literature, William Carlos Williams states: “Oh to hell with Masters and the rest of them. To hell with everything I have myself ever written” (176). He thus attempts to take Whitman’s “barbaric yawp” further and get rid of the old allegiance to the Crown once and for all. Much like Caliban’s voice in The Tempest, the poet’s speech is unstable, it fumbles around the wilderness, thus mimicking the very babbling of a New Continent. Language is therefore mutable, in that English words have to be grafted onto a new land. However they are also mutable insofar as they are very often silenced and hesitant. The poetry born in such a land is wild and wanders outside the confines of the Old World. The words and verses are dented and extravagant, in the first acceptation of the term: they are vagabonds attempting to define the contours of an ever-morphing ground whose first mutation was its name, from India to America, so that in the words of Tony Tanner, “if anything, it is the instability of language and society which has more often made itself felt to the American writer” (Tanner 1971, 27). Shakespeare’s play provides a fertile ground in the analysis of Williams’ modernist approach to language since it is itself set in a liminal space constantly drifting across many countries and continents. Miranda’s expression of bewilderment is somehow mirrored by Williams’ sailors in The Great American Novel (1923) as they first get visual contact with the shores of the New Continent. In this paper, I propose to chart the processes through which the poet manages to claim ownership of his land through language, in spite of its “nearly universal lack of scale” (IAG 75)1. I intend to use Shakespeare’s play, and in particular the figure of Caliban, not as the Native American enslaved by the settlers, as has already been done, but as the allegory of the pilgrimage for the word, the quest pursued by Williams. Like Ahab boarding for the hunt of his life, Williams sets off to capture and tame the brave new American word, using his sense of bewilderment in lieu of a harpoon. |
| author |
Aublet, Anna |
| author_facet |
Aublet, Anna |
| author_sort |
Aublet, Anna |
| title |
“Earth, the chatterer father of all speech”: From Shakespeare’s brave new world! to William Carlos Williams’ Nuevo mundo! |
| title_short |
“Earth, the chatterer father of all speech”: From Shakespeare’s brave new world! to William Carlos Williams’ Nuevo mundo! |
| title_full |
“Earth, the chatterer father of all speech”: From Shakespeare’s brave new world! to William Carlos Williams’ Nuevo mundo! |
| title_fullStr |
“Earth, the chatterer father of all speech”: From Shakespeare’s brave new world! to William Carlos Williams’ Nuevo mundo! |
| title_full_unstemmed |
“Earth, the chatterer father of all speech”: From Shakespeare’s brave new world! to William Carlos Williams’ Nuevo mundo! |
| title_sort |
“earth, the chatterer father of all speech”: from shakespeare’s brave new world! to william carlos williams’ nuevo mundo! |
| publisher |
Angles |
| publishDate |
2020 |
| container_title |
URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles |
| url |
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.1494 https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/angles/1494 |
| _version_ |
1877293947083030528 |
| spelling |
openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_1494 https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.1494 urn:doi:10.4000/angles.1494 en https://journals.openedition.org/angles/1494 2020-07-16T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/9n02 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ “Earth, the chatterer father of all speech”: From Shakespeare’s brave new world! to William Carlos Williams’ Nuevo mundo! Angles Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2274-2042 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles Aublet, Anna sauvage Shakespeare William hétérotopie langue Williams William Carlos Tempête (La) Caliban Nouveau Monde poésie américaine fluidité liminaire dialecte balbutiement Shakespeare William heterotopia language Williams William Carlos Tempest (The) Caliban New World American poetry fluidity fluency liminal dialect wilderness stutter When D.H. Lawrence wrote about Shakespeare’s Tempest in 1923, “whatever else you are, be masterless” (Lawrence 1923), he somehow found the perfect motto for William Carlos Williams’ own poetic art. Embarking upon his (con)quest for “the word” (GAN 165) to be the fertile humus on which to found all American literature, William Carlos Williams states: “Oh to hell with Masters and the rest of them. To hell with everything I have myself ever written” (176). He thus attempts to take Whitman’s “barbaric yawp” further and get rid of the old allegiance to the Crown once and for all. Much like Caliban’s voice in The Tempest, the poet’s speech is unstable, it fumbles around the wilderness, thus mimicking the very babbling of a New Continent. Language is therefore mutable, in that English words have to be grafted onto a new land. However they are also mutable insofar as they are very often silenced and hesitant. The poetry born in such a land is wild and wanders outside the confines of the Old World. The words and verses are dented and extravagant, in the first acceptation of the term: they are vagabonds attempting to define the contours of an ever-morphing ground whose first mutation was its name, from India to America, so that in the words of Tony Tanner, “if anything, it is the instability of language and society which has more often made itself felt to the American writer” (Tanner 1971, 27). Shakespeare’s play provides a fertile ground in the analysis of Williams’ modernist approach to language since it is itself set in a liminal space constantly drifting across many countries and continents. Miranda’s expression of bewilderment is somehow mirrored by Williams’ sailors in The Great American Novel (1923) as they first get visual contact with the shores of the New Continent. In this paper, I propose to chart the processes through which the poet manages to claim ownership of his land through language, in spite of its “nearly universal lack of scale” (IAG 75)1. I intend to use Shakespeare’s play, and in particular the figure of Caliban, not as the Native American enslaved by the settlers, as has already been done, but as the allegory of the pilgrimage for the word, the quest pursued by Williams. Like Ahab boarding for the hunt of his life, Williams sets off to capture and tame the brave new American word, using his sense of bewilderment in lieu of a harpoon. “Whatever else you are be masterless” (Lawrence 1923) écrivait D.H. Lawrence en 1923 au sujet de La Tempête de Shakespeare, mais sa formule s’applique particulièrement bien à l’art poétique de William Carlos Williams qui publia la même année son Grand Roman Américain. En quête du mot, “the word” (GAN 165), sur lequel fonder une nouvelle littérature américaine, Williams s’exclame : « Oh to hell with Masters and the rest of them. To hell with everything I have myself ever written » (176). Sa poésie est traversée par la volonté de poursuivre le travail inauguré par Whitman et prolonger son cri barbare sur les toits de l’Amérique, afin de dépoussiérer les vieilles grammaires qui enchaînaient encore l’Amérique à l’Angleterre. La langue de Caliban dans La Tempête se fait le miroir de la voix trébuchante et des bégaiements du poète qui tente de définir les contours d’un territoire aux mouvements ondulatoires. La langue même subit une mutation alors que le verbe britannique vient se greffer sur une terre nouvelle et provoquer l’efflorescence d’une poésie elle-même sauvage et vagabonde (étymologiquement « brave », comme le Nouveau Monde de Miranda). Les vers et vocables se heurtent aux contours du Nouveau Monde et reviennent écornés de leurs extra-vagances, en même temps qu’ils définissent le délinéament d’une terre en constante métamorphose dont la première mutation fut le nom qui la désigne : de l’Inde à l’Amérique. La pièce de Shakespeare se révèle un terreau fécond pour l’analyse de l’approche du langage de William Carlos Williams puisqu’elle se déroule dans un espace intermédiaire, liminaire, en déplacement continu à travers le monde. L’étonnement audible dans la célèbre exclamation de Miranda trouve un écho dans celle des marins du Grand Roman Américain (1923) de Williams en apercevant les côtes du continent. Nous nous proposons ici d’observer comment le poète parvient à prendre possession de sa terre par le langage malgré la « pénurie quasi-universelle d’échelle » (IAG 75)2 qui caractérise, selon lui, le continent. L’œuvre de Shakespeare, et en particulier la figure de Caliban, nous livre une version riche du pèlerinage pour le mot dans lequel nous entraîne Williams. Tel Achab embarquant pour la quête d’une vie, Williams se jette à corps perdu dans l’immensité pour capturer « à mains nues » (Paterson 2) l’idiome américain. |