"To the elements be free": Carnivalising the legacy of Shakespeare in Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed

• Published in: Shakespeare in Southern Africa 2023-01, Vol.36, p.83-96
• Main Author: Maufort, Marc
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Atwood, Margaret (1939- ); Canadian literature; English literature; Essays; Festivals; Imprisonment; Literary characters; Literary influences; Modernism; Novels; Postcolonialism; Prisoners; Prisons; Realism; Shakespeare plays; Shakespeare, William (1564-1616); Theater; Traditions; Wells, H G (1866-1946)
• ISSN: 1011-582X; 2071-7504
• DOI: 10.4314/sisa.v36il.9

[...]the inmates of Fletcher Correctional, through their performance of a parodic version of The Tempest, subvert the authority of the Shakespearean text through a camivalesque reversal of established rules of behaviour. [...]Atwood enlists the help of popular culture as the prisoners reinterpret the Shakespearean model through a series of provocative rap numbers. [...]thanks to the imaginary scenarios Hag-Seed's inmates write about the afterlives of the Shakespearean characters, the monologic authority of The Tempest is dialogised into a cacophony of unruly voices. [...]during the ensuing chaos, Felix manages to secure a recording of Tony's and Sebert's plotting against Sal, whom they wish to murder in order to fulfill their political ambitions. Nishevita Jayendran convincingly argues that the creativity of the Fletcher Correctional's inmates remains mediated through the power of Prospero.9 Friederike Danebrock likewise explores the mock-democratic implications inherent in the novel's power dynamics.10 Finally, Valdivieso Sofía Muñoz, thanks to her focus on strategies of adaptation, shows how, through its appropriation of the Shakespearean mastertext, Hag-Seed morphs into a hall of mirrors of sorts.11 However, none of these essays foregrounds, as my own contribution docs, the link between parody, carnivalisation and Bakhtinian dialogism as a conduit to freedom in Atwood's alternative version of The Tempest.