Rewriting as a tool of literary response

This paper presents rewriting as an exercise of response and / or revindication, studying and analyzing two examples of rewriting: Una tempestad [A Tempest] by Aime Cesaire and Ancho mar de los Sargazos [Wide Sargasso Sea] by Jean Rhys. Cesaire takes William Shakespeare's The Tempest as source text, while Rhys works from the Victorian novel Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. The aim of this article is to identify the commentary or response made to these canonical works, modifying their meaning. For this, the concepts of canon and rewriting will be revised. The literary re-writings will be analyzed from their canonical base, and the central themes of the novels will be compared, as well as the treatment of characters and context, in order to detect the far and near reaches of these works in relation to the canonical texts, and identify the discourse intended by the authors of the rewrites.