Books and Articles by Tatiana GOLBAN
South Central Review, 2024
This study focuses on Ian McEwan’s Nutshell (2016), a novel frequently viewed as an adaptation of... more This study focuses on Ian McEwan’s Nutshell (2016), a novel frequently viewed as an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1601), and explores the relationship between the birth of the foetus-narrator from McEwan’s fiction, the anthropogenesis (understood by Agamben as the “becoming human of man”), and the genesis of a work of art in contemporary period when art is perceived as commodity or as inferior to tradition and canon. Concomitantly, this study aims to reveal various facets of ethical and aesthetic engagement experienced by an artist in the process of creation when confronted with success, influence, diffusion, but also with the awareness of the ephemeral nature of art. The ethic and aesthetical quandaries which emerge out of Nutshell are explored in relation to the critical and philosophical discourse of Theodor Adorno, Giorgio Agamben, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, who offer insights into the significance of the artistic product.
Journal-of-European-Studies-1740-2379, 2024
Although lycanthropy is a medical term and a psychological phenomenon, depicted in myths and lite... more Although lycanthropy is a medical term and a psychological phenomenon, depicted in myths and literature as the metamorphosis of divine or human beings into various animals, the political theory has viewed it as a space to explore the biopolitical strategies of assimilation or exclusion in a sovereign state. This research focuses on Jo Nesbø’s Macbeth (2018), an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play which addresses the anxieties about being human at a time when humanism has been deeply challenged. Informed by Agamben views on the ‘wolf-man’ and homo sacer, together with Derrida’s shrewd insights on ‘political bestiary’ which conveys the shared ‘outlaw’ status of the beast and the sovereign, this study explores Nesbø’s Macbeth in relation to Shakespeare’s infinite complexities to reveal the lycanthrope, a liminal being, who is pushed to the threshold of community to live permanently under threat of expulsion and annihilation or who transforms into a beast to survive in the contemporary political climate.
Annals of Ovidius University Constanta - Philology, 2022
The present study examines the ways in which Jeanette Winterson’s novel
The Gap of Time (2015) en... more The present study examines the ways in which Jeanette Winterson’s novel
The Gap of Time (2015) engages in some intellectual reflections on the act of
adaptation and on the creative act in general, by revealing various “gaps” which
emerge in the process of adaptation and artistic creation, such as the one between the
original and the adaptation, or between the “lost” time of the past and the “found”
present, or between the transient and eternal existence of art. This article also focuses
on the “gap of time” as the novel’s central narratological means of expression, which
delivers a movement in time performed by the text itself. Concomitantly, this study
aims to reveal different dimensions which are employed by the novelist in her
representation of the relationship between time, self, and creative act through some explicit dialogues set with the critical discourse on adaptation and also through the philosophical reflections on time, namely Bergson’s concept of duration and Nietzsche’s notion of immortality as movement.
Humanitas, 2022
The first staging of Martin McDonagh’s play The Beauty Queen
of Leenane received extreme praise ... more The first staging of Martin McDonagh’s play The Beauty Queen
of Leenane received extreme praise and box-office success, but
this accomplishment was overshadowed by some contradictory
comments regarding the playwright’s attitude towards Irish
identity and culture. This study aims to argue that the Irish-born
dramatist engages with the grotesque conventions while
depicting the image of native land, culture, and societal norms.
In order to achieve this, our study reveals the ways in which
McDonagh’s play interacts with the myth of Atrides, Wolfgang
Kayser’s notion of grotesque, Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of
carnivalesque and grotesque, as well as Julia Kristeva’s state of
abject, which are used by the playwright to expose the societal
anxieties related to the issues of identity, motherhood,
emigration, and rootedness. Eventually, in the collision between
mythical matrix and the grotesque depictions, McDonagh raises
the spectators’ awareness of the necessity of some individual and
societal reforms
Trakya University Journal of Faculty of Letters, 2021
Assuming that the Byronic hero can be properly considered to be a literary myth and our contempor... more Assuming that the Byronic hero can be properly considered to be a literary myth and our contemporary popular culture keeps a constant interest in various ancient and modern myths by continuously rewriting and reshaping their thematic perspectives in its literary and not only products, the present study argues about and exemplifies these assumptions by focusing on E.L. James's famous novel trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey. This study draws on the Byronic hero as depicted in the nineteenth-century literature and attempts to reveal how this literary representation continues to fascinate the contemporary artists and readers and is reshaped unexpectedly in the contemporary romance. The postmodern romance fuses high and low culture and this study presents the ways in which the novelist wittily combines mythical and literary heritages with the striking images allowed by the romance mode in order to convey some stringent concerns of the present day society, such as childhood abuse, trauma and violence. The myth of the Byronic hero, as expressed in E.L. James's series, reveals a transformed version, a neo-Byronic protagonist who becomes adaptable to the norms of his community, is capable of moving beyond his trauma and is healed as a result of discovering his genuine love.
Humanitas, 2021
This study focuses on Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur (2005), a play which explores various meanings ... more This study focuses on Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur (2005), a play which explores various meanings related to a physical labyrinth, memory as a maze, mirror/glass as a labyrinth, etc. The present study aims to disclose primarily the significance of the physical labyrinth, presented in Ridley's play mostly as a radical space, a reminiscent of Foucault's "heterotopia", in which the characters cannot be domiciled, but are rather haunted, their inevitable entrapment creating a perpetual existential feeling of anxiety. This study also attempts to discuss the issue of memory as a maze, revealing the playwright's concern for the precariousness of memory while the national or individual identities are pursued. In a space in which everyone and everything is manipulated, Ridley's characters, in their struggle for survival, are forced to renegotiate all the known thresholds of cruelty and transgression in order to discover the path leading them to humanness and morality. PHILIP RIDLEY'İN KÜRKLÜ MERKÜR ADLI OYUNUNDA LABİRENTİMSİ MEKANIN TEMSİLİ Öz Bu çalışma, Philip Ridley'in bir labirent olarak hafıza ve ayna olarak labirent gibi fiziksel labirent ile bağlantılı çeşitli anlamları inceleyen Kürklü Merkür (2005) adlı oyununa odaklanmaktadır. Bu çalışma, öncelikle Ridley'in oyununda Foucault'nun "heterotopya"sını hatırlatan bir şekilde radikal bir alan olarak yansıtılan ve karakterlere yersizliğin ve yönsüzlüğün musallat olduğu fiziksel labirentin önemini ortaya koymayı amaçlar. Karakterlerin kaçınılmaz tutsaklığı onlarda bir varoluşsal kaygı yaratır. Bu çalışma ayrıca labirent olarak hafıza kavramını tartışarak milli ya da bireysel kimlikler konu edilirken oyun yazarının hafızanın güvenilmezliğine dair vurgusunu ortaya koyar. Herkesin ve her şeyin manipüle edildiği bir alanda varoluş mücadelesi veren Ridley'in karakterleri, kendilerini insanlığa ve ahlaka götüren yolu 1 Assoc. Prof. Dr.,
BODY AND BEAUTY AS FETISHISED COMMODITIES IN LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES’S NOVEL BIRDS WITHOUT WINGS, 2020
This study attempts to reveal the concept of commodity fetishism, with its distinctly postmodern ... more This study attempts to reveal the concept of commodity fetishism, with its distinctly postmodern concern of body and beauty, as reflected in Louis de Berniéres’s novel Birds Without Wings. In his work, Berniéres tries to emphasise the material exorbitance of the body and reconsiders some master concepts of Marxist and Freudian discourse, such as fetish and commodity, with reference to use-value and exchange-value of the body and beauty.
This study argues that Louis de Berniéres’s novel Birds Without Wings departs from both Marxist and Freudian representation of fetishism, and exhibits instead the social and discursive practices that encourage the fetishisation of objects, as well as the postmodern preoccupation with commodity-body-sign through the lenses of Jean Baudrillard. Louis de Bernières’s characters imagine that they can determine their own value in the world, as they are modern men, but they inevitably come to acknowledge that, as a result of modernity, their body and identity become enmeshed as signs in a symbolic exchange, their value being established by outer phenomena and not by themselves. In their plight for their own authority, these characters see only the annihilation of their assertions, since they become objectified in the political economy of signs, representing only symbolic or static beings whose worth is determined in the exchange process.
Messages, Sages and Ages, 2019
This study departs from the widespread interpretations of Mark Ravenhill's play Shopping and Fuck... more This study departs from the widespread interpretations of Mark Ravenhill's play Shopping and Fucking in terms of the commodification of the self in the consumerist world and proposes instead to explore the self through an engagement with Deleuze's and Guattari's ontology. Deleuze's and Guattari's concepts "body without organs" and "desiring machines" are employed in order to reveal Ravenhill's concern with the body and its relation to identity in a world where everything is commodified. This study seeks to address the question of shifting of boundaries of ethics, which arises with radical postmodern sensibilities. It tries to reveal the ways in which Ravenhill redefines the established codes, proposing instead an 'individual' self, which emerges as a radical and intensive body from an assemblage of forces, flows and different intensities, capable of creating new configurations and codes of ethics, which are adjusted through continuous flux of transformation and becoming.
Culture, Literature and Migration, 2019
Humanitas, 2019
The aim of the present study is to discuss the concept of identity formation in relation to Louis... more The aim of the present study is to discuss the concept of identity formation in relation to Louis de Bernières' novel Birds Without Wings. Primarily, this study presents the development of identity theories which investigate the social construction of identity with its impact on self, society and social structures. The postmodern novel Birds Without Wings depicts the stringent issue of identity construction in a period of global crises, when any identity markers are easily removed, changed and, therefore, destabilized as a result of the play of power. The characters of de Bernières' novel confront the agonizing truth of the fluid and changeable markers of identity revealing that any "certitudes" are easily deconstructed and reconstructed anew as a result of identity politics which deprives one of a stable sense of selfhood.
Suzanne Collins' novel The Hunger Games has as its central metaphor the monomythic journey of the... more Suzanne Collins' novel The Hunger Games has as its central metaphor the monomythic journey of the hero. This research focuses on the novelist's attempt to redefine the monomyth in terms of gender, and on the ways in which Collins's retold version represents human experience in the contemporary world. This study presents Collins's protagonist, Katniss, who embarks on the traditional heroic quest and confronts multiple challenges and frustrations on her journey to success. During her heroic enterprise, Katniss turns inward, discovers and embraces her feminine nature and seeks a satisfactory life paradigm as a result of which she attains the inner integration and reconciliation of both masculine and feminine aspects of her personality; she also understands and accomplishes her purpose in life. By recognizing the mythical and archetypal situations, which are subverted or inverted in the novel, Collins revises the significance of private and public achievements in the contemporary community.
Although Philip Ridley's popular play Mercury Fur (2005) represents, by its display of disturbing... more Although Philip Ridley's popular play Mercury Fur (2005) represents, by its display of disturbing powerful images of violence and rape, one of the most shocking examples of in-yer-face theatre, the play's major concern is rather with the authentic individual self and authentic human relationships. The purpose of this study is to reveal the ways in which Ridley's dramatic work displays the search for an authentic self in a highly consumerist world. In this respect, Heidegger's 'theory of being' along with various postmodern concepts such as memory, forgetting, and identity are discussed in relation to the success or failure of some characters of the play, who try to attain an authentic image of the self.
This article focuses on enchantment and metamorphoses motifs as used by Fay Weldon in her work Th... more This article focuses on enchantment and metamorphoses motifs as used by Fay Weldon in her work The Life and Loves of a She-Devil. Since the encounter with magic is frequently stimulated by the human's desire for more, the novelist explores these possibilities in order to represent the protagonists' quest for the self. This study aims at discussing the protagonists' encounter with marvellous and the way it triggers the process of metamorphoses. The transformation affects primarily the protagonists' personality, as in the process of enchantment he/she dares to disclose her/his own potential, of which he/she was unaware prior to the exposure to wonder. This article also tries to reveal how Fay Weldon uses and subverts the mechanisms of enchantment because of her awareness that the apparently inoffensive transformations can cause privilege or repression of an individual.
The present study proposes to investigate the system of the thematic elements of Electra myth fro... more The present study proposes to investigate the system of the thematic elements of Electra myth from the diachronic perspective of its beginnings, development and consolidation. Under the form of literary myth, that is being an independent literary system expressing its own fundamental situation, Electra myth develops and establishes itself as literary typology and dramatic tradition in Electra by Sophocles, Electra by Euripides, Mourning Becomes Electra by O'Neill and Electra by Giraudoux; under the form of literalised myth, that is being placed as literary system within the larger system of a different and ampler fundamental situation expressed by the myth of the Atreus family (as an ethno-religious myth rendered literary in dramatic texts), Electra myth reveals itself in Oresteia by Aeschylus, The Flies by Sartre and The Family Reunion by Eliot, all these texts, of both types, representing the actual object of our research. Özet: Bu çalışma Electra mitinin içerdiği tematik elemanlar sisteminin başlangıç, gelişim ve sonuç açısından artsüremli bir bakış açısından incelenmesini önermektedir. Kendi temel durumunu ifade eden bağımsız bir edebi sistem olan edebi mit formatında Electra miti, kendisini edebi bir tipoloji ve dramatik bir gelenek olarak Sophocles'in Electra, Euripides'in Electra, O'Neill'in Mourning Becomes Electra (Matem Elektra'ya Yakışır) ve Giraudoux'un Electra adlı eserlerinde geliştirir ve tesis eder. Edebileştirilmiş mit şeklinde, Atreus ailesi mitiyle (dramatik metinlerde edebi olarak sunulan dini-etnik bir mit) ifade edilen daha farklı ve daha geniş bir temel durum sistemi dahilindeki bir edebi sistem olarak, kendisini Aeschylus'un Oresteia, Sartre'ın The Flies ve Eliot'un The Family Reunion adlı her iki türe ait ve bu araştırmanın asıl hedefini teşkil eden eserlerinde gösterir.
Although Philip Ridley's popular play Mercury Fur (2005) represents, by its display of disturbing... more Although Philip Ridley's popular play Mercury Fur (2005) represents, by its display of disturbing powerful images of violence and rape, one of the most shocking examples of in-yer-face theatre, the play's major concern is rather with the authentic individual self and authentic human relationships. The purpose of this study is to reveal the ways in which Ridley's dramatic work displays the search for an authentic self in a highly consumerist world. In this respect, Heidegger's 'theory of being' along with various postmodern concepts such as memory, forgetting, and identity are discussed in relation to the success or failure of some characters of the play, who try to attain an authentic image of the self.
Louis de Bernières' novel entitled Captain Corelli's Mandolin is one of those postmodern works th... more Louis de Bernières' novel entitled Captain Corelli's Mandolin is one of those postmodern works that revives the myth in order to explore the socio-cultural and historical moments whch are of essential importance for the contemporary world. Since this novel is based on myth, there are multiple mythical perspectives that could be investigated. This article focuses solely on Odysseus myth, in general, and on character Mandras, as an Odyssean figure, in particular. Our purpose is to dissect the Odysseus scenario into mythemes, which are the smallest constitutive units of a myth, in order to observe the succession of the events and the association of these units to each other. Although the detected mythical units are easily recognizable, we discover that Louis de Bernières applies new signifiers each time he uses the mythemes, signifiers which prove to be pertinent to the age we live in. These signifiers include, among others, the association of the lover to the land, " museumification " , simulation, hyperreality, " language games " , use-value vs. exchange-value, and emancipation. We attempt to present myth as a system of signs and mythemes, which is universal but also dynamic, as it tends to recombine and create new meanings perpetually. The exhaustion of the mythical symbolism included in the detected units of Odysseus myth is prevented, because the reader is engaged, first, in the process of discovery of these mythemes; second, in the deconstruction of earlier established meanings; and, third, in the creation of his/her own meaning and symbolism, produced in relation to his/her cultural code.
Louis de Bernières' novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin revives some of the mythemes of the Odysseus... more Louis de Bernières' novel Captain Corelli's Mandolin revives some of the mythemes of the Odysseus myth, such as the hero's encounter with monsters and the hero's dominance by intelligence, among others. In the process of using these mythemes, the novelist revises and challenges both their structures and earlier established meanings. This study focuses on the representation of the character Dr Iannis as an Odysseus figure. In doing so, the novelist deconstructs the essence of Odysseus myth, namely the hero's assertion of his wisdom, supremacy and victory in each enterprise, and reconstructs the mythemes anew. By juxtaposing the old meanings with new ones, Louis de Bernières stresses the incapability of the earlier mythical units to serve forever as fixed signifiers. In Louis de Bernières' reworking of the myth, Dr Iannis as a postmodern Odysseus fails to rise to the expectations of the mythical paradigm, presenting instead his limits concerning intelligence, knowledge and authority.
Breakfast! Bon appétit! If you can. The manner of the breakfast declares the aspiration of the fa... more Breakfast! Bon appétit! If you can. The manner of the breakfast declares the aspiration of the family. Some breakfast standing, some sitting, some united in silence, some fragmented in noisiness and some, as in a television commercial, seeming to have all the time and money and good will in the world; and some in gloomy isolation. It is the meal at which we betray ourselves, being still more our sleeping than our waking selves. (Fay Weldon, Remember Me) ABSTRACT: Since the publication of her first novels, Fay Weldon has been continuously acclaimed as a feminist writer whose writings represent an angry retort at the oppressive conditions which trap the contemporary female personality within the traditional boundaries of a patriarchal society. It may be so, but there are many other literary concerns in her novels which, although regard directly the status of women, become independent thematic perspectives and as such deserve to be topics of critical interest. Among them, food and its consumption, which are the central themes of Remember Me. The present study aims to disclose the ways in which the novelist confers literary significance to food and employs it as a means of rendering the private and social experience of women, which comprises, in the case of this novel, such issues as self-identity, social interaction, wife-husband and mother-child relations, nourishment, love, desire, and sexuality.
The present study focuses on fictional history and historical fiction as forms of oppositional di... more The present study focuses on fictional history and historical fiction as forms of oppositional discourse in the East-Central European literature during highly Stalinized communist regimes. The study evaluates comparatively Danilo Kiš' A Tomb for Boris Davidovichand Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, two literary works that express a reality which takes place within restricted ideological limits. While exploring the fictional material reified by the writers' imagination being under the pressure of ideology, a number of aspects have attracted our critical attention. The first regards the importance of history, in general, and of the historical truth, in particular, as being expressed in the texts of the two writers. The second is represented by the authorial attitude towards the motif of 'memory and forgetting'. The third concerns the originality of the genre: both novels receive the form of a collection of individual stories consisting of certain narrative lines which, on one hand, are seemingly separate, but, on the other hand, are linked within a given collection as a means of expressing the historical truth. The fourth refers to the characteristic humor of Kiš and Kundera's novels. The works of the two writers reveal a very complex humor, alternating from black humor to thoughtful, from biting to sentimental, exposing the human experiences of grief, pain of existence and anguish at facing death. These aspects represent the main similarities between the two literary discourses, which were written in a period of crisis in the history of humanity, and, in order to reveal this, the investigation of these aspects in their thematic and narrative perspectives becomes the main aim of this study. Baskı Altındaki İmgelem: Danilo Kis'in Boris Davidovich için bir Mezar ve Milan Kundera'nın Gülüşün ve Unutuşun Kitabı Özet: Bu çalışma, Stalin etkisinin yoğun olduğu komünist rejimlerdeki Doğu ve Orta Avrupa yazınında kurgusal tarih ve tarihsel kurguya ilişkin karşıt söylemlerin irdelenmesini içerir. Bu bağlamda belirli ideolojik sınırlar içerisindeki gerçekliği dile getiren Danilo Kis'in Boris Davidovich Için Bir Mezar adlı yapıtı ile Milan Kundera'nın Gülüşün ve Unutuşun Kitabı adlı yapıtı arasında karşılaştırmalı bir inceleme yapılmıştır. Yazarın ideolojik baskı altındaki imgelemiyle somutlaştırdığı kurgusal yapıtını incelerken, genel anlamda tarihin, özel anlamda tarihsel doğruluğun önemi, " bellek " ve " unutma " motiflerine yazarın yaklaşımı, görünüşte farklı olsalar da, tarihsel doğruluğu dillendirme aracı olarak benzer anlatı biçimleriyle bireysel öyküler içeren birbirinin bütünleyicisi farklı eleştirel etmenlerin varlığı ve son olarak Kis ve Kundera'nın mizah anlayışlarıyla karşılaşılır. Her iki yazarın mizah anlayışının kara mizahtan düşündüren mizaha, iğneleyici olanından duyguları hedef alanına kadar farklı mizah anlayışına sahip olduklarının ve çeşitli şekillerde insanın ölüm karşısında duyumsadığı acıyı ve yası ortaya koyduklarının ayrımına varılır. İnsanlık tarihinin belirli bir kriz döneminde kaleme alınmış yapıtlar olarak, iki yapıtın yazınsal söylemi ve biçemi arasında benzerlikler olduğu göze çarpar. İzleksel ve anlatısal bir çözümlemeyle, iki yapıt arasındaki benzerlikleri açığa çıkartmak bu çalışmanın temel amacıdır.
Our intention in this study is neither to define myth nor to create an interpretative typology; r... more Our intention in this study is neither to define myth nor to create an interpretative typology; rather, it is to find a link between myth and literature by establishing a trace in the formation of a myth which is very old and dynamic. Our focus is on the story of Medea and its multiple versions, particularly on the way in which different literary accounts, which centre on the character of Medea, have led to the construction of a very complex and contradictory myth in Euripides' play Medea. Before Euripides, Medea is not regarded as an entirely fearsome sorceress, a monster obsessed with revenge, her children dying of other causes, but Euripides creates a new literary myth based on other existing versions. The main purpose of our study is the examination of the artistic means and procedures used by the ancient playwright Euripides to represent, in literary terms, the character of an ancient myth, Medea, as a literary archetype reproduced in various ancient texts. A special emphasis is on the manner in which the fundamental situation of the story of Medea has been subject to essential thematic changes which have led to the coining of what we know nowadays as the Medea myth.
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Books and Articles by Tatiana GOLBAN
The Gap of Time (2015) engages in some intellectual reflections on the act of
adaptation and on the creative act in general, by revealing various “gaps” which
emerge in the process of adaptation and artistic creation, such as the one between the
original and the adaptation, or between the “lost” time of the past and the “found”
present, or between the transient and eternal existence of art. This article also focuses
on the “gap of time” as the novel’s central narratological means of expression, which
delivers a movement in time performed by the text itself. Concomitantly, this study
aims to reveal different dimensions which are employed by the novelist in her
representation of the relationship between time, self, and creative act through some explicit dialogues set with the critical discourse on adaptation and also through the philosophical reflections on time, namely Bergson’s concept of duration and Nietzsche’s notion of immortality as movement.
of Leenane received extreme praise and box-office success, but
this accomplishment was overshadowed by some contradictory
comments regarding the playwright’s attitude towards Irish
identity and culture. This study aims to argue that the Irish-born
dramatist engages with the grotesque conventions while
depicting the image of native land, culture, and societal norms.
In order to achieve this, our study reveals the ways in which
McDonagh’s play interacts with the myth of Atrides, Wolfgang
Kayser’s notion of grotesque, Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of
carnivalesque and grotesque, as well as Julia Kristeva’s state of
abject, which are used by the playwright to expose the societal
anxieties related to the issues of identity, motherhood,
emigration, and rootedness. Eventually, in the collision between
mythical matrix and the grotesque depictions, McDonagh raises
the spectators’ awareness of the necessity of some individual and
societal reforms
This study argues that Louis de Berniéres’s novel Birds Without Wings departs from both Marxist and Freudian representation of fetishism, and exhibits instead the social and discursive practices that encourage the fetishisation of objects, as well as the postmodern preoccupation with commodity-body-sign through the lenses of Jean Baudrillard. Louis de Bernières’s characters imagine that they can determine their own value in the world, as they are modern men, but they inevitably come to acknowledge that, as a result of modernity, their body and identity become enmeshed as signs in a symbolic exchange, their value being established by outer phenomena and not by themselves. In their plight for their own authority, these characters see only the annihilation of their assertions, since they become objectified in the political economy of signs, representing only symbolic or static beings whose worth is determined in the exchange process.
The Gap of Time (2015) engages in some intellectual reflections on the act of
adaptation and on the creative act in general, by revealing various “gaps” which
emerge in the process of adaptation and artistic creation, such as the one between the
original and the adaptation, or between the “lost” time of the past and the “found”
present, or between the transient and eternal existence of art. This article also focuses
on the “gap of time” as the novel’s central narratological means of expression, which
delivers a movement in time performed by the text itself. Concomitantly, this study
aims to reveal different dimensions which are employed by the novelist in her
representation of the relationship between time, self, and creative act through some explicit dialogues set with the critical discourse on adaptation and also through the philosophical reflections on time, namely Bergson’s concept of duration and Nietzsche’s notion of immortality as movement.
of Leenane received extreme praise and box-office success, but
this accomplishment was overshadowed by some contradictory
comments regarding the playwright’s attitude towards Irish
identity and culture. This study aims to argue that the Irish-born
dramatist engages with the grotesque conventions while
depicting the image of native land, culture, and societal norms.
In order to achieve this, our study reveals the ways in which
McDonagh’s play interacts with the myth of Atrides, Wolfgang
Kayser’s notion of grotesque, Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of
carnivalesque and grotesque, as well as Julia Kristeva’s state of
abject, which are used by the playwright to expose the societal
anxieties related to the issues of identity, motherhood,
emigration, and rootedness. Eventually, in the collision between
mythical matrix and the grotesque depictions, McDonagh raises
the spectators’ awareness of the necessity of some individual and
societal reforms
This study argues that Louis de Berniéres’s novel Birds Without Wings departs from both Marxist and Freudian representation of fetishism, and exhibits instead the social and discursive practices that encourage the fetishisation of objects, as well as the postmodern preoccupation with commodity-body-sign through the lenses of Jean Baudrillard. Louis de Bernières’s characters imagine that they can determine their own value in the world, as they are modern men, but they inevitably come to acknowledge that, as a result of modernity, their body and identity become enmeshed as signs in a symbolic exchange, their value being established by outer phenomena and not by themselves. In their plight for their own authority, these characters see only the annihilation of their assertions, since they become objectified in the political economy of signs, representing only symbolic or static beings whose worth is determined in the exchange process.