Review article
Utopian revolutionary impulses in Caryl Churchill's play Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976)
Svjetlana Ognjenović:
; University of East Sarajevo
Abstract
In her play Light Shining in Buckinghamshire Caryl Churchill dramatizes the development and fate of several populist movements in the seventeenth century (from Cromwell's protectorate to the Levellers, Diggers, and Ranters) in order to argue that history could have taken a radically different direction, the one that would have possibly lead to the establishment of the socialist and communal system based on equality and justice, and not the present one based on capitalism. This makes her contribution to the current debate about the nature of this historical event even more significant because it prevents liberal historians from diminishing the contribution made by free populist movements to this revolution by explaining it away as a “mere accident” or a “disagreement within a political fraction”. The purpose of this paper is to offer a detailed analysis of this complex and important play in order to present history in the making, reveal the causes of some events, and lead the readers to the understanding that things might have ended differently. Utopian space in this play can be interpreted as a kind of resistance to the ideological narrative, especially noticeable at the moment when the audience becomes aware of the contradictions in the past and the links between the past and the present.
Keywords
history; revolution; the Levellers; the Diggers; the Ranters; utopia; hope
Hrčak ID:
309963
URI
Publication date:
20.11.2023.
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