A Comparative Study In Selected Postcolonial Plays English Literature Essay

A Proposal

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms defines postcolonial literature as a category devised to replace and expand upon what was once called Commonwealth Literature. As a label, it thus covers a very wide range of writings from countries that were once colonies or dependencies of the European powers. In practice, the term is applied most often to writings from Africa, the Indian sub-continent, the Caribbean, and other regions whose histories during the 20th century are marked by colonialism, anti-colonial movements, and subsequent transitions to post-Independence society.

Critical attention to this large body of work in academic contexts is often influenced by a distinct school of postcolonial theory which developed in the 1980s and 1990s, under the influence of Edward W. Said’s landmark study Orientalism (1978). Postcolonial theory considers vexed cultural-political questions of national and ethnic identity, ‘otherness’, race, imperialism, and language, during and after the colonial periods. The principal figures of postcolonial theory after Said have been Gayatri C. Spivak and Homi K. Bhabha.

The ‘post’ clearly refers to and implies a period ‘after’ colonialism and in this strict literal sense the object of postcolonial studies is the historical period of the late twentieth century as the European empires of the nineteenth and early twentieth century broke up and former colonies achieved their political independence.

Drama is one of the oldest and most highly regarded literary forms. Like other forms of literature, it can be used a vehicle for expressing complex thoughts and attitudes. Postcolonial writers used drama and the theater not merely as a dramatic performance. However, postcolonial theatre is performance staged as an act of resistanceto colonialism and its consequences. In addition to critiquing cultural ambiguities and traumas of imperialism, postcolonial theater acts as a vehicle for precontact community maintenance and for cultural transformation. Postcolonial theater takes a number of forms, ranging from the reworking of classics, ritual, history, storytelling, and the community-based performance.

The colonized subject is characterized as ‘other’ as a means of establishing the binaryseparation of the colonizer and colonized and asserting the naturalness and primacy of the colonizing culture and world view. In postcolonial theory, it can refer to the colonized others who are marginalized by imperial discourse, identified by their difference from the centre and, perhaps crucially, become the focus of anticipated mastery by the imperial ‘ego’. The term “othering” was coined by Gayatri Spivak for the process by which imperial discourse creates its ‘others’.

This dissertation attempts to trace the use of drama by a selection of postcolonial dramatists who wrote in English and in Arabic to represent the self/other or the colonizer/colonized dialectic. The writers selected are of the most celebrated in modern postcolonial literature whose works are among its landmarks. The dissertation also attempts to show how those different dramatists used this genre to express the self/other dialectic and what are the areas of resemblance/difference among them.

The dissertation falls into an introduction, three chapters and a conclusion.

Chapter One is an Introduction divided into two sections. Section one attempts to define postcolonial literature and sheds light on critics who are the pioneers of this discipline, namely Edward Said, Gayatri C. Spivak, and Home K. Bhabha focusing on the concept of the “other”. Section two sheds light on postcolonial theatre and how it is used to counter colonialism.

Chapter Two is divided into four sections. Each section discusses a postcolonial play written in English. The plays selected are: Wole Soyinka’s The Swamp Dwellers, Derek Walcott’s The Sea at Dauphin, Athol Fugard”s The Island, and Brian Friel’s Translations.

Chapter Three is also divided into four sections and in each section one play written in Arabic is discussed. The plays selected for study are: Sa’dun Al-Ubeidy’s Jisr Al-‘Adu, Sabah Atwan Al-Zaidy’s Raseef Al-Ghathab, Alfred Faraj’s Al-Nar wa Al-Zaitun, and Bneian Salih’s Sirat S.

Chapter Four tries to show the similarities/differences between the plays discussed.

The conclusion sums up the findings of the study.

Working Bibliography:

Primary References:

• Al-Ubeidy, Sa’dun. 1965. Jisr Al-‘Adu. Baghdad: Al-Sha’ab Printing Press.
• Al-Zaidy, Sabah Atwan. 1975. Raseef Al-Ghathab. Unpublished play.
• Faraj, Alfred. 1970. Al-Nar wa Al-Zaitun. Cairo: Dar Al-Ma’arif Al-Masriya.
• Friel, Brian. 1981. Translations. London and Boston: Faber and Faber.Fugard, Athol. 1993. The Road to Mecca. ?: Theatre Communications Group.
• Salih, Bneian. Sirat S.
• Soyinka, Wole. 2002. Death and the King’s Horseman. ?:W. W. Norton & Company.
• Walcott, Derek. 1971. Dream on Monkey Mountain. ?:Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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Articles:

• Garuba, Harry. 2001. The Island Writes Back: Discourse/Power and Marginality in Wole Soyinka’s “The Swamp Dwellers,” Derek Walcott’s “The Sea at Dauphin,” and Athol Fugard’s “The Island”. Research in African Literatures 32, no. 4 (Winter): 61-76. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3820807 (accessed: 08/11/2009).
• Olaniyan, Tejumola. 1992. Dramatizing Postcoloniality: Wole Soyinka and Derek Walcott. Theatre Journal 44, no. 4, Disciplines of Theatre: Theory/Culture/Text (Dec.): 485-499. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3208770 (accessed 08/11/2009).
• Boltwood, Scott. 2002. Brian Friel: Staging the Struggle with Nationalism. Irish University Review 32, no. 2 (Autumn – Winter): 303-318. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25504911 (accessed: 09/11/2009).