A Postcolonial study of John Millington Synge‟s Riders to the Sea (1904) and Wole Soyinka‟s The Baccahae of Euripides: A Communion Rite (1973)

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Date

2020

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Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou

Abstract

The present research paper is a Postcolonial study of the two plays: The Baccahae of Euripides: A Communion Rite (1973) and Riders to the Sea (1904) written respectively by the Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka, and the Irish John Millington Synge. The aim of our research is to study the two plays as Postcolonial tragedies and to uncover the way the two playwrights through their respective works write back to the Centre, challenge the western authority and restore the dignity of their countries. To give our research work a theoretical basis we made an appeal for three complementary theories which are The Empire Writes Back (2002) written by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, Theatre of the Oppressed (2000) written by Augusto Boal and The Fourth Stage (1976) by Wole Soyinka. Our paper explores the different means adopted by the two dramatists to answer back the Colonial Discourse and to dismantle the cultural hegemony of the colonizer. They did so by their Appropriation and Abrogation of the colonizer‟s language, and by the rehabilitation and revival of their respective traditional and native cultures that were long misunderstood and misrepresented by the British „Centre‟. In addition to this, we expanded our research to show that the two plays fall in the Postcolonial Dramatic scope of what Boal called Theatre of the Oppressed and the tragic nature of the two plays is closer to the Soyinkan theoretical constellations of the tragic as explained in his Fourth Stage, than to the Aristotelian canonical theory of tragedy. These plays, actually, are good examples of a Canonical-Counter Discursive Literature, as they truly embodied the aspirations of Postcolonial enterprise, succeeded to act against the Colonial Discourse, depart from the Western literary canon of Tragedy and challenge the western authority.

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30cm ; 73p.

Keywords

Colonialism, Cultural trauma, Postcolonial literature, Postcolonial Theory, Colonial discourse, Counter Discourse, Appropriation and Abrogation, Indigenous Culture, Tragedy, Sacrifice, Fate, Poetics of the oppressed.

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