درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

The present study addresses one of the most recently debated areas in postmodern literature and art, the revival of interest in theatricality. The researcher aims to introduce a few strategies which are used to turn the intertextual elements and the pastiche into working tools for creating theatricality. In order to do so, Thomas Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) which was later made into a movie version as well, directed by Stoppard himself, is examined. The study tries to show how theatricality can affect the performance as well as the contribution of the spectators to the dramatic text and performance. The shared experience of the pastiche made based on Hamlet by William Shakespeare, can contribute to the understanding of how theatricality can work when intertextuality is a powerful and positive force. The sample scenes chosen here are concluded to be the examples of how the illusion of having a stable identity is what not only the characters, the players or the author just assume to exist, but also what the text deliberately and constantly recreates. The playful nature of theatricality highlights the way each of these contributors willingly dupe themselves for the show to go on.

The purpose of this study is to explore the image of loss in modern American drama in the theme of family. The image of loss prevails the post-war era of American drama in three levels of psychological, physical, and moral space. This image is clearly observable in two of the prominent works of the era, Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Moreover, this image of loss is closely connected with the notion of time. The familial breakdown appears as a sustaining motif that plays a central role in the psychologically shattered personality of the major characters, as a result of the profound changes in the American post-war society and family. World War II was a milestone in the society as a whole, and in the family as a smaller society, and correspondingly among the people as entities which the image of loss seemed inseparable from. American post-War drama fully represents the tough conditions of that era particularly in the themes of familial breakdown and the image of loss.

In contemporary multicultural Britain, the concept of social cohesion has been a pressing priority for not only politicians and sociologists but also for the various British ethnic minorities. Race riots like those of 2001 in Northern Britain and the events of 7/7 in London (2005) put into question the allegiances of different British ethnic populations. They equally shed light on the real or perceived lack of social and cultural communication between the established British host population and the British ethnic and immigrant communities. Hence, social cohesion came to the fore as the new jargon of governance in contemporary Britain. This article analyzes on the concept of social cohesion and its applicability within an officially declared multicultural community like that of Great Britain. The concept will be reviewed, defined and approached from different liberal political perspectives while paying special attention to the British context. Bhikhu Parekh’s conception of the different theoretical approaches to the issue of social cohesion that are pertinent to liberal capitalist societies in general and the British context, in particular, is investigated. The aim of this study is to highlight the complexity of the normative accounts of the political scientists regarding the challenges that face multicultural Britain in coming to terms with its endeavor of creating “unity within diversity”. The 2002 White Paper and security speech of David Cameron (2011) political discourses are analyzed and evaluated to decipher how they understood national identity in relation to cultural diversity and social cohesion.