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This thesis analyses selected works of Tom Stoppard in terms of Genette's notion of 'hypertextuality' as transtextual relationship and Bakhtin's 'polyphony' of voices and ideas, and examines how the playwright's (re)creative and (re)interpretive rendering of literature, philosophy, aesthetics, science, art, culture and history offers his contemporary perspective on the multiplicity of themes and texts in the plays. The thesis identifies the appeal in (re)reading or (re)spectating Stoppard's explicitly palimpsestuous texts, while considering the extent to which receivers of the hypertexts need to be aware of and conversant with the hypotexts in order to fully appreciate Stoppard's work. Following the opening chapter, in which the critical concepts of hypertextuality and polyphony are discussed, chapter 2 considers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) as a transfocalization of Shakespeare's Hamlet, demonstrating polyphony of dualities. Chapter 3 looks at Travesties (1974) as a hypertext which employs plural hypertextualities (pastiche, mixed parody and travesty) and which exhibits polyphony of perceptions on art and politics, using the device of mise-en-abyme. Chapter 4 explores Arcadia (1993) in terms of dramatic transposition of ideas from other disciplines and reactivation ofliterary pastoral traditions. In chapter 5, Indian Ink (1995) is analysed as a post-colonial perspective on the ethics of empire, re-contextualizing works of Anglo-Indian literature and art. Chapter 6 discusses The Coast of Utopia trilogy (2002) in terms of intermodal transmodalization, along with duplicity and polyphony of textual, structural and ideological layers. The concluding chapter questions the effect of Stoppard's hypertextual adaptation and polyphonic re-presentations on audiences and readers of different levels of familiarity with the hypotexts, arguing that the carefully constructed combination of contrasting ideas, paradoxes and dualities in Stoppard's hypertexts offers opportunities for appreciation at various levels of 'knowing', exposing the subjectivity of perceptions and celebrating the many- voicedness of society.

Jacques Derrida contended that Marxism is dead, along with its hopes, and its discourses (1994: 52). This thesis arose from an assertion that the socialist utopia as a paradigm of perfect justice, equality and freedom, has been progressively effaced from most cultural and artistic enterprises, supplanted by economic need, political consensus, and social compromise. Class differences remain acute, yet the notion of class struggle is effectively absent across the Humanities. I propose Edward Bond's philosophical model as a unique route to reclaiming this neglected utopian function of culture. Bond's plays and theoretical writings have been marginalized by the British theatrical mainstream. This study demonstrates that Bond's creative and ideological position is incompatible with any reactionary notion of 'mainstream'. Bond's radical materialism demonstrates an inherent and inevitable critique of most genres of theatre and performance. Through an exploration of key philosophical theories that underpin the work of the dramatist, I reach a re-evaluation of aesthetics as an ambiguous medium of the dominant bourgeois ideology. Art is a repository of cognitive truths, but not of universal cognitive truths. In terms of class culture, it really forms part of a tradition "of the oppressed" (Benjamin, 1999: 248). Habermas proposes a unity of experience in the arts by bridging "the gap between cognitive, ethical, and political discourses". I contend that these discourses are undermined by bourgeois aestheticization, which distorts values and understanding, manifested in the daily delivery of most culture as an industrial enterprise. Bond contends that, "[his] philosophy ... makes ethics an ultimate reality" (Stuart, 2000: 56). Identifying an interaction between Marx's theory of reification and Nietzsche's evaluation on men of ressentiment, I construct a platform for approaching this complicated ethical question. I evaluate the dialectical validity of what Bond calls "the problem"; the "extreme" lives we lead in our liberal democracies, establishing his philosophical position not as provocatively controversial but as logical, realistic, and materialistic. Capitalist reification progressively conceals human meanmg under "the essence of commodity-structure [ ... ] in all its aspects" (Lukacs, 1990: 83). With its emphasis on the meaning of the human self, Bond's dramatic strategy is in a sense the application of Lukacs's prescription against the reified mind. For Bond, drama is crucial because it allows reified individuals to enact human choices that are impossible in their daily lives. I conclude by addressing issues that arise from Bond's involvement in Drama in Education (DIE). Bond's theoretical output is evolving into a discrete, autonomous field and needs to be approached as such. Volume II, a transcribed interview with the dramatist himself, contributes further to the issues arising from this thesis.

The preceding study has been prompted by the inordinate stress placed on the separation between dramatic texts as literature and stage performances as theatre an approach still widely adopted in universities and colleges of education throughout the world. The traditional distinction between the dramatic text and its stage performance is first accounted for and then re-examined in the light of the new insights gained from semiotics. In the discussion of the relationship between the, dramatic text and performance, care is exercised not to approach the subject with a bias towards the text as more important than the performance or vice versa. The performance orientation of various elements of a dramatic text is then considered with special emphasis placed on dialogue and didascalies in dramatic texts generally. The focus of attention is eventually narrowed down to the dialogue and didascalies in Athol Fugard's Plavland and My Children! My Africa! / Afrikaans & Theory of Literature / M.A. (Theory of Literature)

In this thesis, I argue that plays written by Alan Ayckbourn during the period 1970 to 1990 are political and subversive. They are political in the sense that they offer an analysis of political and social constructions then current, taking an oppositional standpoint. They are subversive in that they do this using an adaptation of a form not usually associated with such analysis and for an audience not already politicised. Ayckbourn is frequently taken to be a farceur. I will argue that he uses some aspects of British farce, but that his adaptation of the form subverts the expectations of his predominantly middle-class audience. Rather than the two-dimensional, essentially unsympathetic characters and the reinforcement of the status quo usually found in farce, Ayckbourn's plays offer political analysis in the private sphere and promote an oppositional agenda in the public sphere. While it is recognised by some that Ayckbourn was indeed a political commentator during this period, there has been no substantial account of what I suggest is their specific agenda in the public sphere - namely, the promotion of collectivism in direct opposition to the ideology embraced by Margaret Thatcher. During the 70s and then under Conservative governments post-1979, the tenets of what was to become known as Thatcherism, frequently centring upon the supposed supremacy of the individual, came to dominate British public life. Thatcher, Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, declared herself openly against collectivism, disempowering the unions, establishing a major programme of privatisation that involved selling off previously State-owned assets such as the utilities, the railway network and social housing, and denying the very existence of society. Ayckbourn's plays of this period expose the solipsism that is the corollary of this anti-collectivist agenda, the moral bankruptcy of the selfishness it encourages and the dangers of a political system that actively sets itself against working together for the greater good of all. At the same time, many acknowledge that Ayckbourn writes about women in a particularly sympathetic way, reflecting the raised consciousness brought about through second-wave feminism. I shall argue that these plays not only demonstrate ways in which expectations of gender performance impact upon women, but also show pressures upon men to perform masculinities. The plays exhibit a complex picture of gender performance, frequently in settings that present a liminal arena between feminine or masculine associated spaces: the domestic garden of the middle-class suburbs. In this, they examine cross-gender conflicts in representations of situations familiar to the very audience by whom the plays are received.

The preceding study has been prompted by the inordinate stress placed on the separation between dramatic texts as literature and stage performances as theatre an approach still widely adopted in universities and colleges of education throughout the world. The traditional distinction between the dramatic text and its stage performance is first accounted for and then re-examined in the light of the new insights gained from semiotics. In the discussion of the relationship between the, dramatic text and performance, care is exercised not to approach the subject with a bias towards the text as more important than the performance or vice versa. The performance orientation of various elements of a dramatic text is then considered with special emphasis placed on dialogue and didascalies in dramatic texts generally. The focus of attention is eventually narrowed down to the dialogue and didascalies in Athol Fugard's Plavland and My Children! My Africa! / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / M.A. (Theory of Literature)

Bibliography: leaves 221-234 / This research explores the humour and laughter in Howard Barker's Theatre of Catastrophe in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalesque against the backdrop of the postSecond-World-War British (post-WWII) society and cultural tendencies and problems thereof. In this research, which explores the different stages of Barker's work – namely plays written in the seventies, the eighties and early nineties – I argue that comedy and laughter are pivotal to Howard Barker's theory for theatre which ultimately shaped his Theatre of Catastrophe as a tragic theatre. Howard Barker forged the appearance of a unique theatrical practice, the Theatre of Catastrophe, not only through the revival of pain, death and tragedy but also through the juxtaposition of the carnivalesque and death/tragedy. This research therefore, studies transformation in Barker's art of theatre in a period of twenty years and demonstrates how the playwright deviates from tenets he set for his tragic theatre without necessarily betraying its tragic spirit. It is worth highlighting the observation that, the marriage of catastrophe and the carnivalesque remains the most significant achievement of Barker's art of theatre. Chapter Two of the research explores Bakhtin's theory of the carnival through the elaboration of crucial concepts such as the grotesque imagery, laughter and the marketplace. Bakhtin's thoughts on laughter root in Henri Bergson's theory of laughter. Definitely the realm of laughter somewhere in between art and life, both Bergson and Bakhtin also emphasise on the negative aspect of laughter. The engagement of individuals in the marketplace creates the concrete presence which is crucial to the carnivalesque. Taking into account the tenets of the Bakhtinian carnivalesque, this second chapter also concisely studies the challenges posed to the carnival theory by philosophers such as Umberto Eco and Terry Eagleton. The chapter finally investigates the revival of the concept of the carnival in the post-war British drama by studying David Edgar's advocacy of Augusto Boal's thoughts on the theatre and the necessity of the carnival. Chapters Three and Four offer close analyses of the plays written by Barker in the seventies, eighties and early nineties with the primary aim to show the turns and shifts that he takes in the development of his career as an oppositional playwright in search of a remedy to the cultural malaise of his day. The plays selected for these chapters are the ones which the playwright has categorised as his best plays, namely, Claw (1975), Stripwell (1975), The Love of a Good Man (1978), The Power of the Dog (1984), The Castle (1985), The Europeans (1987), (Uncle) Vanya (1992). Chapter Five sums up the findings on the research and concludes that Barker's comic sense goes beyond the comic sense ascribed to many tragic playwrights. The comedy which permeates his theatre of catastrophe shares affinities with the carnival leading to a carnivalisation of catastrophe in Barker's tragic theatre despite the claims by the Barker and his downplaying of the comedy which exists in his oeuvre. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English Studies)

Caryl Churchill, the most widely performed female dramatist in contemporary British theatre, is a playwright preoccupied with the dissection of the traditional relations of power. She challenges social and dramatic conventions through her innovative exploration of the male gaze, the objectification of women, the performativity of gender, and women as objects of exchange within a masculine economy. In so doing, Churchill locates her concerns in the area of `materialism and gender'. Churchill explicates a socialist-feminist position by pointing directly at the failure of liberal feminism. The lack of a sense of community among women, highlighted by Churchill's portrayal of women such as Marlene in `Top Girls', forms a critical aspect of Churchill's work. Her drama re-iterates how meaningful change is impossible while women continue to oppress one another, and while economic structures perpetuate patriarchy. Altered consciousness, aligned to socio-political re-structuring, is necessary for both the oppressors and the oppressed, in a society where too much emphasis has been placed on individualism. The outspoken hope for a transgression of the conventional processes of identification and other omnipresent, oppressive socio-political phenomena, is a strong aspect of Churchill's work. Her plays reveal how signs create reality rather than reflect it, and she uses Brechtian-based distancing methods to induce a critical examination of gendered relations. Time-shifting, overlapping dialogue, doubling and cross-casting are used by Churchill to manipulate the sign-systems of the dominant order. Cross-gender casting, Churchill's most widely reviewed dramatic device, is employed to destabilise fixed sexual identities determined by dominant heterosexual ideology. She calls into question the traditional sign `Woman' - which is constructed by and for the male gaze - and addresses the marginality of the female experience in a non-linear framework. Although dealing with serious issues, Churchill's plays are often executed in a style that is at once amusing and thought-provoking to exclude the possibility of didacticism. With her skilful use of language and innovative techniques as her highly effective instruments, Churchill accomplishes her broader purpose with originality. In its originality and complexity, her drama is in itself a `new possibility' for different forms. / English Studies / M. A. (English)