Publicação
Irresistible Wound: the representation of violence in post-Second World War drama
| Resumo: | British realist drama after the Second World War tests the “rhetoric of ineffability” of the horror and violence and tried to understand a terribly new world. The representation of violence was regarded as a moral and ethical imperative in reaction to the progressive trivialisation of evil in which drama was an act of positive consequence. We can call this type of playwriting “synecdoche dramaturgy”, i.e. one that offers a part of the world but aims at intervening in all of it, transforming it, denouncing its iniquities and, in some cases, suggesting ways of correcting and improving it. It was a dramaturgy that started from clearly political motivations but showed confused political thinking based mainly on idiosyncratic visions of the world. Its main traits included: a superlative manifestation of the cult of honesty, leading to a tendency to make confessions in which the leading characters were often regarded as their playwrights' alter-egos; an appreciation of real emotion and the expression of this emotion; nostalgia for the past, often mystified times; opposition between those who have ideas or intentions and those who actually do something; a taste for the freedom offered by manual work; attention to real historical events; the disturbing presence of babies, often regarded as a sign of death; domestic escapes unaware of the problems of the world; dialectic hesitation between a pacifistic or combative attitude, manifestation of a sometimes unclear feeling of rebellion and, of course, the representation of violence. |
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| Autores principais: | Coelho, Rui Pina |
| Assunto: | Portrayal of violence Contemporary British Theatre British Realist Theatre Violence |
| Ano: | 2016 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | capítulo de livro |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso aberto |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade de Lisboa |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | Repositório da Universidade de Lisboa |
| Resumo: | British realist drama after the Second World War tests the “rhetoric of ineffability” of the horror and violence and tried to understand a terribly new world. The representation of violence was regarded as a moral and ethical imperative in reaction to the progressive trivialisation of evil in which drama was an act of positive consequence. We can call this type of playwriting “synecdoche dramaturgy”, i.e. one that offers a part of the world but aims at intervening in all of it, transforming it, denouncing its iniquities and, in some cases, suggesting ways of correcting and improving it. It was a dramaturgy that started from clearly political motivations but showed confused political thinking based mainly on idiosyncratic visions of the world. Its main traits included: a superlative manifestation of the cult of honesty, leading to a tendency to make confessions in which the leading characters were often regarded as their playwrights' alter-egos; an appreciation of real emotion and the expression of this emotion; nostalgia for the past, often mystified times; opposition between those who have ideas or intentions and those who actually do something; a taste for the freedom offered by manual work; attention to real historical events; the disturbing presence of babies, often regarded as a sign of death; domestic escapes unaware of the problems of the world; dialectic hesitation between a pacifistic or combative attitude, manifestation of a sometimes unclear feeling of rebellion and, of course, the representation of violence. |
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