Pregledni rad
England and english dramatic heroes in the expressionist mirror of W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood
Tomislav Pavlović
; Filološko umetnički fakultet Univerziteta u Kragujevcu
Sažetak
The essay deals with The Dog Beneath the Skin, the play that belongs to the group of expressionist dramas composed by W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood in the 1930s. Inspired by the theatrical achievements of both German expressionist drama and Berthold Brecht’s epic theatre, the two authors embarked on an experiment unprecedented on the modern British stage. Although they did not initiate revolutionary changes, they were remembered for their perseverance in the promotion of the aesthetic principles of theatrical expressionism. The analysis identifies the play as a truly expressionist one, shaped primarily as a critique of totalitarian society or the state that establishes itself as the embodiment of repression and national chauvinism turning against other states as well as against their own subjects failing to comply with the ruling ideology. The pronounced leftism of the authors undoubtedly influenced the choice of their own homeland as the ground the repressive apparatus operates on. Their political orientation serving as a powerful source of poetry is counterbalanced with parody and grotesque capable of unleashing the subversive potential of the drama. Shaped as a modernist pseudo-myth, the plot of this drama contains seemingly never-ending line of antinomies such as justice–injustice, sublime–funny, mundane–timeless, realism–fantasy, tragedy–parody or grotesque. The clashes of these opposing qualities reveal the gloomy panorama of totalitarian England, fragmented to the level of an ironic-grotesque kaleidoscope, but at the same time universalized as an almost doctrinal condemnation of any kind of institutional violence or as a critical exposure of its mechanisms. The rigid division of the characters into the good and evil ones and the lack of the profound psychological analysis are strictly functional in the sense of radicalizing the dramatic conflict as required by the aesthetic principles of theatrical expressionism. The analysis disputes some issues of the play brought out by some contemporary literary critics and hints at the possibilities of its further creative interpretations.
Ključne riječi
expressionism; epic theater; pseudo-myth; parody; grotesque; ideology; totalitarianism
Hrčak ID:
247743
URI
Datum izdavanja:
13.12.2020.
Posjeta: 652 *