4.

Postmodern Re-writings

Postmodernism consecrates the technique of re-writing texts of the literary canon by

changing perspective and style and by re-orienting their intentionality. It is again an attempt to
challenge and undermine the concepts of originality, uniqueness and authorship; by
operating within the narrative framework of a given text, characters might be guided towards
different endings, actions might by totally de- and re-contextualised, ideological standpoints
might be altered and adjusted to different social and political realities. The illusion of a certain
temporal distance interposed between one canonical text and its altered postmodern version is
sometime created with particular effects: it either underlines the parodic and ludic perspective of
writing in an era of disturbed certainties or stresses the virulent attacks on ready-made truths by
the ironic appeal to canonical authorities. Playing with intertextual perspectives and references,
these texts find their origin in well-known hypotexts and are built by accumulating intertextual
elements which re-orient the reader back towards easily identifiable literary sources and their
original meanings and forward to new significances.
Examples of postmodern re-writings abound highlighting the reversal of hierarchies, the
foregrounding of the marginalised and peripheral, the revelation of the unsaid along with the
break of restrictions and taboos. For Tamara Caraus, postmodern re-writing is meant to do justice
to the Other, whether this might be the lunatic, the woman or the colonial subject. What all the
three have in common is the exclusion from the canon, the biased perspective which
encapsulated them within patriarchal prejudices, stereotypical representations and marginal
references. Her theoretical approach of re-writing seen from the perspective of intertextuality is
sustained by examples mainly focused upon such authors as J. M. Coetzee, Jean Rhys and Jose
Saramago; these writers offer re-contextualisations of classic novels either by transforming a
former peripheral perspective into a central one (Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea retold from Mr
Rochesters mad wifes point of view) or by re-inscribing alterity within the main text (Coetzees
Foe is a re-writing of Robinson Crusoe who now becomes a woman).
Angela Carters re-writings of fairy-tales bringing a magic realist, psychoanalytic and
sometimes feminist touch, Salman Rushdies or Gabriel Garcia Marquezs re-writings of history
from an ambiguous, relativistic perspective which denies it its traditional claims of absolute
authenticity and objectivity are suggestive illustrations of the postmodern preference for the
already written in its attempt to debunk centres and traditions.

Discussion of Wide Sargasso Sea